This calculator needs JavaScript. The worked example: a person thinking at a desk for 10 minutes uses about 18.9 Wh; one long AI reasoning answer uses about 3.91 Wh.

Human vs AI

Power Task with How many Food. Who gets further?

An app crashes when someone saves a form. A developer finds the cause, fixes it and writes a test: about an hour. An AI coding agent does the same, usually in about 3 tries.

Budget: one potato chipEnergy available: 12 Wh (10 kcal)Same for both sides

Human thinking, not lifting44% of the bug fix

🏁 done

On the energy in one potato chip, a person thinking at a desk gets through 44% of the bug fix.⏱ 27 min · ⚡ 12 Wh

AI Claude Opus 5.536% of the bug fix

🏁 done

On the same energy, Claude Opus 5.5 gets through 36% of the bug fix.⏱ 5.5 min · ⚡ 12 Wh

🏆 Gets furtherHuman22% further on one potato chip of energy

📊 See the details: time, energy and cost for one bug fix, side by sideShow ▾

Human

Loser60 min

Time

Winner15 min

Winner2.3 × 26 Wh

Energy

Loser2.7 × 32 Wh

Winner3.4¢the food you eat

Cost

Loser$2.36API price

What the AI handles for one bug fixReads 2 million tokens (90% already cached) · writes 60,000 tokensA token is about ¾ of a word: a page is about 500, a novel about 120,000. Includes this task's thinking and tries.

For the nerds

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What energy counts

Count only the energy the task adds, not what you'd burn sitting still anyway.
Counting only the extra energy: the person's effort above resting and the AI's active chips.

Show the math

Human, extra effort	0.3 MET × 75 kg × 60 min = 26 Wh
AI, one bug fix	2,000,000 in + 60,000 out tokens = 32 Wh · $2.36
The budget	1 × 10 kcal × 1.1622 = 12 Wh · 1.5¢
How far	budget ÷ one bug fix

For the really nerdy

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Change any number the race uses, add your own task or food, and see where every number comes from.

Change any number

These are the numbers the race uses for this task. Change any of them; empty a box to put the default back. Changes stay in this browser and travel in a share link. Picking another task resets them.

The person

Time for the task (min)0.1–2,400Effort (MET)1.05–20Body weight (kg)20–300

The AI's work (one bug fix, before think and tries)

Tokens it reads (tokens)0–50,000,000Tokens it writes (tokens)1–50,000,000Reads already cached (%)0–100AI time (min)0.01–2,400

Energy per token

Light (small, fast) (Wh per token written)0.000001–0.1Moderate (mid-size) (Wh per token written)0.000001–0.1Frontier (large, thinking) (Wh per token written)0.000001–0.1A token read, vs written (×)0–1A cached token, vs written (×)0–1Share that is the active chips (0–1)0.01–1

Price (Claude Opus 5.5, $ per million tokens)

Reading ($/M)0–1,000Writing ($/M)0–1,000Cached reading ($/M)0–1,000

Add your own task or food

Your own foodName

Calories (kcal)Price $ (optional)

Picture

Your own taskName

Minutes for a personAI model size

Tokens the AI readsTokens the AI writes

A token is about ¾ of a word. If a person reads a whole book for the task, the AI reads it too: about 120,000 tokens. Count your own text with OpenAI's tokenizer or .

Where the numbers come from

The person's energy

Effort levels (MET): sitting 1.0, computer work 1.3, walking 3.8, running 9.3: 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities
Converting calories to watt-hours: 1 kcal = 1.162 Wh: NIST SP 811, 1 kcal = 4184 J

The AI's energy

0.24 Wh for a median Gemini prompt; 0.10 Wh counting only the AI chips (moderate tier): Google, Measuring the environmental impact of delivering AI at Google scale (2025)
3.91 Wh for a long ~5,000-token reasoning answer (frontier tier): Oviedo et al., Joule (April 2026), preprint arXiv 2509.20241

The AI's price

List prices per million tokens for every model, retrieved 2026-10-09: LiteLLM public model price list (vendor list prices)

The food

Calories in each food: USDA FoodData Central
Typical US grocery prices (bananas $0.65/lb): US BLS average retail food prices

Your own computer

Average US home electricity: about 18¢ per kWh: US EIA average residential electricity price

Vendors don't publish energy per model. Each model sits in an estimated size tier anchored on Google's measured Gemini figure and an independent study. Food prices are US averages and estimates.

Just for fun. This is a thought experiment, not a measurement. The energy, time and cost figures are best guesses built from public estimates and averages; real numbers vary a lot by model, data centre, person and task. Check the sources under For the nerds, and change any number you disagree with.

Your data stays with you. Nothing you type or save here is sent to or stored on our server. Your custom foods, tasks and settings stay in this browser, and you can clear them anytime. A share link carries your settings inside the link itself. (The site uses standard analytics to count page visits.)

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