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# A day of eight medium GPT-4o queries uses about as much energy as charging two phones
- URL: https://aiadoption.org/data/chatgpt-query-energy-vs-everyday/
- Published: 2026-10-19T14:40:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T06:01:24.000Z
- Description: One medium-length GPT-4o query uses about 1.21 Wh, around four Google searches. Eight a day add up to 9.7 Wh, roughly charging two phones.
- Author: Manu
- Tags: Data, AI Infrastructure, Large Language Models, #chart, #ai-index-2026, #hub-infrastructure

1.21 Wh

estimated energy for one medium-length GPT-4o query (March 2025), about four Google searches

GPT-4o (Mar 2025) – medium query1.21 Wh

1 Google search0.30 Wh

## What the chart shows

A single medium-length GPT-4o query uses an estimated 1.21 watt-hours, about four times a Google search (0.3 Wh). A short query uses 0.42 Wh and a long one 1.79 Wh.

A daily session of eight medium-length queries comes to 9.7 Wh, about the same as charging two smartphones (10 Wh). Small per person, the total grows large across hundreds of millions of daily queries.

## Key numbers

| Measure                         | Value   |
| ------------------------------- | ------- |
| GPT-4o, short query             | 0.42 Wh |
| GPT-4o, medium query            | 1.21 Wh |
| GPT-4o, long query              | 1.79 Wh |
| One Google search               | 0.30 Wh |
| Daily session, 8 medium queries | 9.71 Wh |
| Charging 2 phones               | 10.0 Wh |

## How to read it

- AI Index estimates for GPT-4o as of March 2025.
- Comparisons use commonly cited figures for a Google search and phone charging.

**Source:** [AI Index](https://aiadoption.org/sources/#ai-index), 2025, via the AI Index Report 2026 (Stanford HAI), figure 1.4.7: *Per-query and daily energy consumption: GPT-4o vs. common activities*. Chart and text by AI Adoption.  
Numbers checked against the published data on 19 October 2026.  
[Download the data (CSV)](https://charts.aiadoption.org/ai-index/csv/chatgpt-query-energy-vs-everyday.csv?ref=aiadoption.org) · [Cite this chart](#source)