How Much Does a Basement Dehumidifier Cost?

The purchase price, by type

The 35-pint Frigidaire and Hisense and the 50-pint Midea Cube sit in the same budget tier on Amazon, so let capacity decide between them. A moderately damp basement under 2,000 square feet needs 20 to 30 pints a day on ENERGY STAR’s table, which either 35-pint unit covers; a very damp, wet or larger basement points to the Midea Cube, the top pick in the basement roundup.

The Midea Cube with a built-in pump cost a little more than the plain one at Amazon’s November 2026 prices, and you need one only if the water has to travel up to a sink or out a window. With a floor drain below the unit, a garden hose is enough.

The two Sylvane crawl space units cost about 4.3 to 6.1 times what Abt charges for the Frigidaire portables, and the AlorAir on Amazon sits well below them. All three have a lower, longer cabinet that fits under a floor. Their warranties also run longer than the single year on the Midea Cube and the Frigidaire: AlorAir gives six years with the first two full, Santa Fe five years complete on the Compact70 and AprilAire five years on the E070. The crawl space guide sizes the AlorAir, the Compact70 and the E070 by square footage and cold rating.

The AprilAire E100 is rated for 100 pints a day at 80°F and can connect to the house’s ductwork; the Santa Fe Classic is rated for 110 at the same condition and sits on the floor. Neither is rated to run below 50°F, so I’d consider one only for a basement that stays warm through winter and has already beaten a 50-pint portable; the whole-house vs portable guide walks through that test.

What it costs to run

The five portables in the table each carry an ENERGY STAR integrated energy factor of 2.01 liters per kWh, measured on the Department of Energy’s 65°F test; the AlorAir’s is 2.08. A pint is 0.473 liters, so each pint one of those five removes takes about 0.24 kWh. At 18.16 cents per kWh, the US residential average for August 2026 in the Energy Information Administration’s preliminary figures, that is about 4.3 cents a pint; the AlorAir comes to about 4.1 cents. A basement that gives up 20 pints a day costs about 85 cents a day, or about $26 over 30 days.

A 50-pint unit running flat out all day would spend about $2.14. A humidistat shuts the compressor off once the basement reaches its setting, so a unit that has dried the space runs only part of the day. ENERGY STAR’s yearly estimates in the table, 363 to 520 kWh for the portables, put a year of electricity at roughly $66 to $94 at the same rate. ENERGY STAR estimates each model separately, so same-size units differ a little: 363 kWh for the Hisense, 379 for the Frigidaire. The AlorAir’s figure looks low for a 55-pint unit because ENERGY STAR rates it at about 36 pints a day on the 65°F test. To use your own rate, multiply the kWh column by the price per kWh on your bill.

The AprilAire E100 is rated at 2.35 liters per kWh at a warmer 73°F, about 3.7 cents a pint. The two tests ran at different temperatures, so the gap is approximate. The saving, about 0.6 cents a pint, won’t pay back the E100’s higher price through the electric bill.

Costs that are easy to miss

Neither 35-pint unit ships with a drain hose, so budget for a standard garden hose if you want continuous draining. The Midea Cube includes one. None of the crawl space or whole-house units has a bucket, so each needs a floor drain, a sump or a condensate pump; Sylvane sells pumps separately for the E100 and the Compact70.

Ducting the E100 to the rest of the house takes an HVAC installer, and none of the prices here include that bill. Run standalone in the basement, it needs only an outlet and a drain.

The Hisense carries two years of warranty to the Frigidaire’s one, so Hisense covers parts and labor on a second-year repair. The Santa Fe Classic carries six years on components, and the E100 a five-year replacement warranty.