Is an ice maker cheaper than buying bags of ice?
The electricity is almost free and the machine is not, so this comes down to a single question: how much ice do you actually go through? Below is the arithmetic with every figure shown, so you can put your own usage into it.
Ice prices and tariffs checked 9 September 2026
What bagged ice costs
Across 12 Australian vendors we could price, bagged ice runs from $0.70 to $1.30 a kilogram, with a middle of about $1.00. Most bags are five kilograms.
| Vendor | Bag | Price | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spudshed Baldivis | 5kg | $3.49 | $0.70 |
| Goondiwindi FoodWorks | 5kg | $3.75 | $0.75 |
| FoodWorks Lorne | 5kg | $4.50 | $0.90 |
| Tucker Fresh IGA Rossmoyne | 5kg | $4.99 | $1.00 |
| Point Lonsdale IGA | 5kg | $5 | $1.00 |
| IGA Riverfresh Margaret River | 5kg | $5 | $1.00 |
| Thirsty Camel The Highway, Plympton | 5kg | $5 | $1.00 |
| FoodWorks Inverloch | 5kg | $5.50 | $1.10 |
| Chris' Supa IGA Carina | 5kg | $5.75 | $1.15 |
| IGA Shop Online | 5kg | $6.40 | $1.28 |
| Marks Supa IGA Mansfield | 3.5kg | $4.50 | $1.29 |
| Ritchies IGA Bentleigh East | 5kg | $6.50 | $1.30 |
Bagged ice is one of the least transparently priced grocery items in Australia. It is sold by the bag, not by weight, bag sizes are not standard between states, and the two largest supermarket chains do not publish a price on a public product page without a store or delivery address selected. Every price below is taken from a public retailer page that displayed a price on the date checked. Prices vary by store, by state and by season, and ice is frequently discounted in multi-buy deals in summer.
What machine ice costs
Almost nothing, per kilogram. The full working is in the running cost register, but the short version is that the electricity to make a kilogram of ice in a countertop machine is a matter of cents, roughly a tenth of what the same kilogram costs in a bag. Every dollar of the decision is therefore in the purchase price.
How long a machine takes to pay for itself
Break-even against $1.00 a kilogram bagged ice, for a cheap, a mid-priced and an expensive machine from the set we could cost. "Days" assumes 2kg of ice a day, which is heavy household use.
| Machine | Price | Electricity per kg | Break-even | At 2kg a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devanti 12kg Ice Maker Machine - White | $89.85 | $0.06 | 96kg | 48 days |
| Devanti Portable Ice Maker 120W 3.2L Silver | $169.95 | $0.06 | 182kg | 91 days |
| Morphy Richards 17KG Nugget Ice Maker Stainless Steel | $499 | $0.07 | 537kg | 268 days |
Read the last column as summers rather than as days, because almost nobody makes ice every day of the year in Australia. A machine that breaks even in around ninety days of heavy use has paid for itself in one summer. One that needs three hundred days of heavy use has paid for itself in about three.
So which should you do
- Ice a few times a year, for parties. Buy bags. A machine will not pay for itself and you will store it eleven months of the year. This is most people and it is a perfectly good answer.
- Ice most days through summer, for drinks at home. A machine wins clearly, usually inside one season. Buy a cheap bullet machine and do not overthink it.
- Filling an esky for a boat, a campsite or a work site. Bags, or both. Countertop machines make ice in small batches and cannot fill an esky in a hurry, and their hollow ice melts faster than a solid block once it is in there. A machine at home plus a bag on the way is the common answer.
- You specifically want chewable nugget ice. This calculation does not apply, because bags will not give you it at any price. See nugget machines.
The thing that actually decides this. Not electricity, and not really the purchase price either: it is whether the machine survives. A $200 machine that lasts one summer is worse value than bags. The same machine lasting five summers is overwhelmingly cheaper. That makes warranty and parts support the most financially important page on this site, which is not where anyone expects to be sent from a cost comparison.
Common questions
Is making your own ice cheaper than buying it?
Per kilogram, dramatically. Bagged ice in Australia runs about $0.70 to $1.30 a kilogram, and the electricity to make a kilogram in a countertop machine is single-digit to twenty-odd cents. The catch is the machine itself: you are paying a few hundred dollars up front to save roughly a dollar a kilogram, so whether it works out depends entirely on how much ice you actually use.
How long does an ice maker take to pay for itself?
For a household using a couple of kilograms a day through summer, a cheap machine typically pays for itself inside one season and a more expensive one takes two or three. For a household that wants ice a few times a year for parties, it never does, and bags are the right answer. The honest dividing line is roughly whether you use ice weekly or only occasionally.
What does this calculation leave out?
Three things, and they do not all point the same way. It ignores the trip to buy ice, which is a real cost in time and fuel and favours the machine. It ignores the machine eventually failing, which favours the bags, and in this category that is not a remote risk. And it ignores that bagged ice is usually a solid cube that lasts longer in an esky than the hollow bullet ice most machines make, so a kilogram of each is not quite doing the same job.
Does a freezer full of ice cube trays beat both?
On cash, easily: the trays cost a few dollars and the freezer is already running. What it cannot do is volume or speed. A tray makes a couple of hundred grams every several hours, so filling an esky means planning days ahead and giving up freezer space. Machines and bags exist to solve that, not to beat a tray on price.