Wood Heating Cost Calculator
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A 1,500 sq ft house in a cold climate burns roughly 4 cords of mixed hardwood a season, costing about $1,000 at the $250 default cord price. The per-MMBTU table below shows whether wood beats propane. Stove efficiency and species move the number most.
Annual cost covers fuel only, stove installation, chimney cleaning (50–00 per year), and any insurance adjustment are not in the estimate. The appliance type input matters most: switching from an open fireplace to an EPA-certified stove can cut cord count by 60 percent or more.
Whether wood heat pencils out for your house depends on two numbers: how many cords your climate demands and what a cord costs where you live. This page pairs your home size and climate with current cord prices so you see the annual figure before you commit to a stove.
Ways to save on this project
Green wood burns at 30–50% of seasoned efficiency, so a $250 cord of green wood effectively costs more to heat with than a $300 seasoned cord.
Buy seasoned, or buy green in spring and stack it for fall.
A stove too large for the space gets damped down, and damped-down burns create creosote.
Match stove BTU output to room cubic footage; an oversized stove also burns through wood faster than a correctly sized one.
Airflow dries wood faster than any sealed cover; a wrapped pile traps moisture against the splits.
A shed roof with open sides seasons a cord 30–60 days faster than a fully tarped pile.
Count your cords before you order more wood
The cheapest fuel audit available: before ordering next season, measure what you actually burned.
Stack height x length x depth in feet, divided by 128, is cords. Most people who think they burned 5 cords burned 3.5, and most quoted a cord got a face cord.
If your real number is well above the climate range on this page, the fix is insulation or a stove upgrade, not a bigger wood order.
Where these numbers come from, and where they don't
Fuel prices for propane, heating oil, natural gas, and electricity come from EIA residential series, which update through the heating season.
Stove efficiency ranges are EPA-certified test figures. Cord prices vary locally more than any other input, because firewood does not travel far enough to have a national market.
What none of these sources price is your stove purchase, your chimney work, your wood storage, or your own hours splitting and stacking. Those are real costs not in the number above.
What a MMBTU actually costs you, by fuel
This is the only comparison that matters. Not price per cord, not price per gallon. Price per million BTU that actually leaves your stove or furnace and lands in the room.
| Fuel | Typical Price | BTU Content | System Efficiency | $/MMBTU Delivered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mixed hardwood, seasoned | $250 per cord (calculator default) | $18–$22 | $63–$83 | $14 to $22 |
| Propane | $1.74–$3.61 | 91,500 BTU/gal | 80% [5][3] furnace | $24 to $49 |
| Heating oil | $4.15–$6.92 | 138,500 BTU/gal | 85% furnace [5] | $35 to $59 |
| Natural gas | $12.72–$23.62 | 1.037 MMBTU/MCF | 90% furnace [5] | $14 to $25 |
| Electric resistance | $0.15–$0.22 | 3,412 BTU/kWh | 100% at the element [5] | $44 to $64 |
Two things jump out. Natural gas is the one fuel that genuinely competes with wood on cost, which is why almost nobody with a gas line installs a wood stove for money reasons.
Electric resistance is the worst deal on the board even at 100% efficiency [5], because you pay retail for the energy before it ever becomes heat.
Fuel prices here come from EIA energy data, which tracks residential heating fuels weekly through the heating season.
Species is an 87% swing in what a cord is worth
A cord is a volume, 128 stacked cubic feet. It is not an amount of heat. Two sellers can hand you an honest full cord and one delivers half again as much heat as the other.
| Species | Approx. MMBTU per cord | Cords to match 4 cords of mixed hardwood |
|---|---|---|
| Osage orange / hickory | 26 to 28 | 3.1 |
| White oak | 24 | 3.5 |
| Mixed hardwood | $18–$22 | 4.0 |
| Red maple / birch | 18 | 4.7 |
| Pine / spruce | 15 | 5.6 |
Read the right column as your real shopping list. If somebody offers you softwood at a discount, the discount has to be about 30% before it breaks even with mixed hardwood.
You still stack, carry, and load 40% [4]more pieces to get the same heat. Cheap pine is a labor tax with a fuel discount attached.
Full species detail lives on the Firewood BTU Calculator.
Cord count by climate zone for a 1,500 sq ft house
Cord estimates float around the internet with no house attached. Here is the version with the house: 1,500 sq ft, average insulation, mixed hardwood, EPA stove.
| Climate | Example region | Cords per season | At $250 per cord |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mild | Coastal Carolinas, Pacific NW lowlands | 1.5 to 2.5 | $375 to $625 |
| Moderate (Zone 4) | Mid-Atlantic, southern Midwest | 2.5 to 3.5 | $625 to $875 |
| Cold (Zone 5) | Northern Midwest, Northeast | 3.5 to 4.5 | $875 to $1,125 |
| Very cold (Zone 6-7) | Northern New England, Upper Midwest | 4.5 to 6 | $1,125 to $1,500 |
Scale roughly with floor area: a 2,400 sq ft house burns about 1.6x the cords in the same climate. Older houses with single-pane windows and an uninsulated rim joist push toward the top of each range.
If you burned significantly more than the range last winter, the house is the problem, not the wood. Stove-by-stove sizing for those loads is on the Wood Stove Heating Cost Calculator.
Stove efficiency in cords, not percentages
Everybody says get an efficient stove. Nobody shows the bill.
EPA-certified stoves run $63–$83, and that range is wide enough to change your fuel order. Same house, same 60.5 MMBTU of delivered heat needed:
| Stove efficiency | Gross MMBTU needed | Cords of mixed hardwood | Cost at $250 per cord |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50% (pre-EPA, older airtight) | 121.0 | 5.8 | $1,450 |
| 63% [3] (low end certified) | 96.0 | 4.6 | $1,150 |
| 72% (typical EPA stove) | 84.0 | 4.0 | $1,000 |
| 83% [3] (high end certified) | 72.9 | 3.5 | $875 |
Bottom to top of the certified range is 1.1 cords and about $275 a season. Against a pre-EPA stove it is 2.3 cords and roughly $575 a season.
That is the honest payback math on a stove swap: a $3,000 stove replacing a smoke dragon pays for itself in five to six seasons of fuel alone. The EPA Burn Wise program publishes certified efficiency figures by model.
The worked example, all the way through
Setup: 1,500 sq ft, Climate Zone 5, 4 cords of mixed hardwood at $300 per cord, EPA stove at 72%.
Mixed hardwood runs about 21 MMBTU per cord. Four cords is 84 MMBTU gross.
At 72% efficiency that is 60.5 MMBTU delivered, costing $1,200 at $300 per cord.
A gallon holds 91,500 BTU. An 80% [5][3] furnace delivers 73,200 BTU.
To hit 60.5 MMBTU you need 826 gallons. At $2.00 a gallon that is about $1,653, or $27.32 per MMBTU.
Push propane to $3.61 a gallon, the top of the residential range, and the wood advantage jumps past $1,700 a season. At $1.74 a gallon, the bottom of the range, wood at $300 per cord barely wins.
find your last propane delivery ticket and run those gallons and price through the calculator. Your local propane price is the single biggest variable.
The side-by-side version lives on the Firewood vs Propane Calculator.
The cord price where wood stops winning
Flip the math. Instead of asking what wood costs, ask how much you could pay per cord and still break even against your propane bill.
At 72% stove efficiency, one cord of mixed hardwood delivers about 15.1 MMBTU. An 80% [5][3] propane furnace delivers 73,200 BTU per gallon, so one cord replaces about 207 gallons of propane.
Multiply 207 by your actual price per gallon to get your break-even cord price.
| Propane price per gallon | Break-even cord price |
|---|---|
| $1.75 | $362 |
| $2.25 | $466 |
| $2.75 | $569 |
| $3.25 | $673 |
| $3.60 | $745 |
If you live where propane runs at or above the national average and you can buy delivered hardwood under about $400 a cord, wood wins and it is not close.
If propane in your area is unusually cheap, the margin thins fast and the hassle may not pay. State-level heating fuel prices are tracked by the Maine Governor's Energy Office and EIA weekly.
Green wood costs more than it looks like it costs
Green oak is cheaper. It is also useless until next spring, and that is if you stack it right.
Freshly cut wood sits at 30% [4]to 50% moisture. Seasoned wood is under 20% [4]. That water does not just fail to burn, it steals heat while it boils off.
Net usable BTUs drop 25% to 35%. A cord of green wood at $250 delivering 30% fewer BTU [4]s is really costing you $250 / 0.70 = about $357 per seasoned-equivalent cord.
If seasoned hardwood is available at $300, the green wood is the more expensive purchase.
Green wood is only a good buy when you are buying a year ahead. Order in spring, split it, stack off the ground with top covered and sides open, and it is cheap fuel by the following November.
Delivered versus cutting your own, honestly priced
Cutting your own is free the way a garden is free. Count it properly.
Standing tree to stacked cord is roughly 15 to 20 hours: felling, bucking, splitting, hauling, stacking. At $25 an hour that is $375 to $500 per cord in labor, before chainsaw fuel, splitter costs, and truck fuel.
Against delivered split hardwood at $250 to $350, cutting your own is a loss on paper for most people. It wins only if you have free wood already down, or you genuinely have nothing else to do with those Saturdays.
Middle ground most people miss: buy log-length delivered and do only the splitting and stacking. You skip felling risk, cut the price per cord, and spend a third of the hours.
What this calculator does not price
The number above is fuel cost. It is not the full cost of heating with wood.
$2,000 to $5,000 for the stove, plus chimney or liner work that can match the stove price on an older house.
annual, non-optional. Budget one visit a year at minimum.
four cords is a stack 4 ft high, 4 ft deep, and 32 ft long. It needs a dry, ventilated spot you can reach in February snow.
stacking, hauling in, loading, ash removal. Wood heat is the only fuel with a daily chore.
None of these change whether wood beats propane per MMBTU. All of them change whether the switch is worth making.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it cheaper to heat with wood or propane?
Wood usually wins, and the gap widens the colder and more rural your area gets, because that is exactly where propane costs most.
The comparison only works if you adjust both sides for efficiency. Comparing a cord price to a gallon price without that step can misstate your seasonal cost by $200 to $400.
Where propane is unusually cheap, the advantage narrows to the point where the labor is not worth it. Run your own delivery ticket through the calculator rather than trusting a national average.
How many cords of firewood do I need to heat my house?
Scale roughly with floor area. Double the square footage and you are near double the cords in the same climate.
Three things push you above the range: an older uninsulated house, softwood instead of hardwood, and a pre-EPA stove. Any two of those together can add two cords to a season.
If you burned well past the range last winter, look at the house envelope before you blame the wood.
How much does stove efficiency actually change my wood bill?
Efficiency is a direct multiplier on cords burned. Heat needed stays the same; efficiency decides how much wood it takes to produce it.
At 83% [3] you burn about 3.5 cords for the same heat that takes 4.6 cords at 63% [3], and 5.8 cords with a 50% pre-EPA stove.
EPA publishes tested efficiency by model, so check the specific stove rather than assuming a showroom number.
Does seasoned versus green wood make a cost difference?
The water in green wood has to be boiled off before the wood burns, and that energy comes out of your heat.
Green wood is a good buy only when you are buying a year ahead. Split it, stack it off the ground with the top covered and sides open, and burn it the following winter.
Buying green in October to burn in November is the most expensive wood you can buy, regardless of the sticker price.
How does firewood compare to heating oil and electricity?
Electric resistance heat is the most expensive common option even though it converts 100% of electricity [5] [5] to heat, because you pay retail rates for that energy up front.
Heat pumps are the exception; a modern cold-climate heat pump moves several units of heat per unit of electricity and competes with wood directly.
Natural gas is the one conventional fuel that genuinely rivals wood on cost, which is why wood stoves are rare where gas lines run.
Buying All Your Firewood: At What Price per Cord Does a Wood Stove Break Even?
The fuel math holds whether you cut your own or buy it. Buying delivered split hardwood at typical prices still beats propane and oil per delivered MMBTU.
What changes is the payback window on the equipment. Add stove, install, chimney or liner work, and annual sweeping, then divide by your seasonal fuel savings.
If you are on natural gas, buying firewood is a lifestyle choice, not a savings one. The per-MMBTU costs are too close.
Content Sources
- EIA -- Annual Energy Review Table 10.3: Wood Energy by Type (as of June 2026)
- EIA -- Weekly Retail Heating Fuel Prices: Propane, Heating Oil (US Average) (as of 2026-07)
- EPA Burn Wise -- Pellet Stoves (efficiency range 70-90%, typical 80%) (as of June 2026)
- EPA Burn Wise -- Wood Smoke and Your Health (as of June 2026)
- Maine DOER Heating Fuel Price Survey (as of June 2026)
- EIA -- Residential Natural Gas Price (as of June 2026)
- EIA -- Residential Electricity Price (as of June 2026)
- EPA Burn Wise -- Frequent Questions: Wood-Burning Appliances (stove efficiency 63–84%) (as of June 2026)
- USDA Forest Products Lab -- Wood Handbook Chapter 4: Moisture Relations and Physical Properties (as of June 2026)