Firewood vs Heating Oil Cost Calculator

Compare fuels in dollars per million BTU delivered, never in dollars per gallon against dollars per cord. Every wrong conclusion about wood heat starts with that one substitution.

Your instinct is to compare $275 a cord against $3.80 a gallon. Those numbers can't be compared. One is a volume of solid fuel, the other a volume of liquid, and neither burns at 100%.

Convert both to dollars per million BTU delivered into the room. That's the only number that settles the argument.

Oil holds 138,500 BTU per gallon. A modern boiler runs about 85% efficient, so $3.80 ÷ (0.1385 MMBTU × 0.85) works out to roughly $32 per million BTU delivered.

Mixed hardwood holds about 20 MMBTU per cord. A modern stove runs about 75%, so $275 ÷ (20 × 0.75) is roughly $18 per million BTU.

That's a 44% gap in wood's favor at those inputs. Change the oilPrice field above to your last delivery price and watch where the crossover sits. Weekly national and regional pricing comes from the EIA Heating Oil and Propane Update, which is why this page moves and a static guide doesn't.

Abstract per-MMBTU numbers don't pay bills. Here's a 2,000 sq ft home in a New England-style climate, average insulation, priced both ways.

Look at that bottom row. The fuel gap is wide enough that the ongoing wood costs barely dent it. Adjust the cords input above if you burn three instead of four; the savings move faster than most people expect, because every cord you don't burn is roughly 200 gallons of oil you do.

Almost nobody rips out a working oil boiler. The realistic outcome is wood as the daytime heat, oil covering overnights, travel weeks, and the cold snaps a single stove can't hold.

The hybrid is not a compromise, it's the highest-return version of the switch. You keep the backup, keep resale appeal, and still kill most of the fuel bill.

Roughly how it scales: a stove running six or more hours a day cuts 40% to 60% of annual oil use. Three or four hours a day cuts 20% to 35%. Evening-only burning saves closer to 10%, which mostly just keeps pipes safe.

Set the oilGallons input to your reduced backup number, say 300 instead of 600, and leave the cords input at your realistic burn. That's your hybrid season cost.

If you want to sanity-check the wood half on its own, the wood stove heating cost calculator breaks a season down by burn hours and stove size.

You've decided wood is cheaper. Now the real question: what does it cost to get there?

A freestanding stove runs $1,200 to $3,500 for the unit plus $800 to $2,500 installed, so $2,000 to $6,000 all in. An EPA-certified insert runs $2,000 to $4,500 for the unit plus $1,500 to $3,000 installed, so $3,500 to $7,500.

Decommissioning the oil boiler entirely adds $500 to $1,500, which is why most people don't.

What quotes routinely omit: flue condition. An old unlined chimney can need $1,500 to $3,000 of lining work before a stove is safe, and that line item appears after the site visit, not in the phone estimate.

Ask directly before you sign: "Is the liner included at this price, or is it quoted after inspection?" A straight answer takes one sentence. If you want the itemized version of a full install, the wood stove cost calculator splits unit, liner, and labor. Anything over $3,500 total, get three bids.

Most buyers don't know this one exists, and it's the single biggest lever on the switching math.

Qualifying biomass stoves earn a 30% federal residential clean energy credit, claimed on IRS Form 5695. The stove has to hit 75% or better efficiency, which most EPA 2020 certified units do. The credit covers the unit and the installation, not just the appliance.

Run it: a $5,000 install × 30% = $1,500 back. Your effective switching cost is $3,500. At $1,600 a year in fuel savings, breakeven drops from 3.1 years to 2.2 years.

Get the certification statement from the dealer at purchase and keep it with the invoice. No paperwork, no credit.

"Is a wood stove worth it?" is really one division problem.

Effective switching cost ÷ annual fuel savings = years to breakeven. A $5,000 install against $2,800 of oil replaced by $1,200 of wood is $5,000 ÷ $1,600, or 3.1 years. Apply the tax credit and it's 2.2.

Then read your answer against three brackets. Under 3 years, switch. Three to five years, go hybrid instead and keep the cheaper stove. Over five years, your oil price or your house size doesn't justify the capital yet.

Enter your real oilGallons and oilPrice above, take the annual savings the calculator shows, and divide your quoted install cost by it. That quotient is your decision, not the national average.

If the house came with a stove and you're assuming it competes with a modern boiler, check its age first.

A pre-1990 uncertified stove runs 50% to 65% efficient. EPA 2020 certified units run 70% to 80%. That's not a rounding difference.

The mechanism is combustion staging. Older stoves vent unburned gases straight up the flue, which is the same reason they coat the chimney faster. Newer units reburn those gases in a secondary chamber, so more of the cord's energy lands in the room instead of the sky.

Plug the math at 55% instead of 75% and wood's cost per million BTU rises by about a third. Running that old stove for a season is honest, but don't let it price your decision. If your stove predates 1990, treat the savings numbers here as 20% to 30% optimistic for your setup.

Anyone who bought oil in the winter of 2022 remembers what happened.

Heating oil moves with crude. EIA weekly data has shown it swing from roughly $2.80 a gallon in a soft season to $5.99 in New England at the 2022 peak. That's a doubling on a bill you can't opt out of.

Cordwood doesn't do that. It's priced by local sellers hauling local logs, so it moves 15% to 20% in a bad year rather than 100%. There's no futures market setting your cord price.

The hedge has cash value. A home spending $4,000 on oil in a normal year is exposed to a $4,000 swing. The same home spending $1,300 on wood is exposed to about $260. Run the oilPrice input at both $3.20 and $4.50 to see your own exposure band before you decide oil-only is safe.

You can do every calculation on this page correctly and still lose the math at the delivery truck.

Green wood delivers 30% to 40% less usable heat than seasoned wood at the same price. Water in the cell walls has to boil off before the wood burns, and that energy comes out of your house rather than going into it.

Wet wood also hisses, burns cool, and lays creosote in the flue, which is a fire risk before it's a cost.

Species sets the ceiling. Oak and hickory pack far more energy per cord than pine or cedar at prices that aren't proportionally higher, and the density figures behind that come from the federal Wood Handbook published by the USDA Forest Products Laboratory.

Buy a $15 to $40 moisture meter and test the load before the driver leaves. Under 20% is burnable. To see how much heat you're actually buying per species before you set the cordPrice input, run the numbers through the firewood BTU calculator.

The honest cases, because a page that says wood always wins isn't worth trusting.

Case one: an old stove. At 55% efficiency against a 92% boiler, the fuel gap narrows enough that the switch stops paying for itself in any reasonable window.

Case two: burn restrictions. Parts of Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and California sit in air-quality non-attainment zones with mandatory no-burn days. Heat you can't legally run on the coldest nights isn't primary heat.

Case three: your time. Sourcing, stacking, daily loading, and ash hauling runs about 50 hours a season. Value that at $25 an hour and it's $1,250, which can eat most of a $1,600 fuel saving. If your weekends are already spoken for, oil is buying you something real.