Home mining vs hosted mining: which one fits your miner

Neither is better in general. The machine settles part of it: an air-cooled unit can run in a house, a hydro unit cannot. After that, your power price and what you can do with the heat decide.

Pick hosted mining if

• You want a hydro machine such as the Antminer S21+ Hyd., which needs 380-415 V three-phase power and a coolant loop.
• You pay a residential rate, and your own numbers in the calculator do not work at that price.
• There is nowhere in or around the house for several kilowatts of heat and continuous fan noise.
• You would rather pay for metered power and on-site repairs than do the electrical work and the repairs yourself.

Pick home mining if

• Your power is cheap: a low off-peak or interruptible tariff, or solar output you would otherwise export for little.
• The heat is useful: a cold basement, a workshop or a room you would otherwise heat with electricity.
• Your machine is air-cooled and you have, or can add, a dedicated 240 V circuit for it.
• You want the machine where you can see it, and fixing it yourself is part of the appeal.

Yes, with an air-cooled machine and the right circuit. Bitmain's Antminer S21, a common air-cooled model, is rated at 200 TH/s and 3,500 W, and takes 220 to 277 V AC at up to 20 A on a single input. In a North American house that means a dedicated 240 V circuit, the kind that feeds a dryer or an oven, not an ordinary wall socket.

Most of the setup is electrical work. Before you buy, go through these with a licensed electrician:

• Spare capacity in your panel for a continuous load of several kilowatts, on top of what the house already draws on its coldest and hottest days.
• A dedicated circuit and receptacle rated for the machine's current, run to a spot where the heat and noise are acceptable.
• Any rules your utility, landlord or insurer has about continuous loads of this size.

Once it is powered, the machine joins a mining pool, and the pool pays out to an address you control. At home nobody else sits in that path. The pool account, the worker names and the wallet are all yours.

Your power rate decides most of it. A miner draws close to its rated power whenever it is hashing, so an S21 at 3,500 W uses 84 kWh in a full day. Multiply that by what you pay per kWh and by the days in your billing period, and you have the power bill before any other cost.

Residential power is the expensive kind. In July 2026 the U.S. average residential price was 18.31 cents per kWh, against 9.77 cents for industrial customers, according to the EIA's Electric Power Monthly. Prices vary widely by state and by tariff, so work from your own bill, delivery charges and any time-of-use rate included, not from the average.

What that power produces in bitcoin moves with the bitcoin price and network difficulty, and nobody can promise either. The mining calculator shows every input, so you can enter your own rate and machine and see what changes when you move an assumption. It leaves out curtailment, seasonal derate, shipping, customs and insurance, so allow for those yourself. A hosted machine's power is priced on a different basis, covered in what bitcoin mining hosting costs and how a quote is built.

Into your house, unless you plan otherwise. Every watt a miner draws comes out as heat, so a 3,500 W machine warms a room like a 3.5 kW electric heater that never switches off. In a cold basement in January that can be welcome. In August it is a second load on your air conditioning, and you pay for that too.

Noise is the other half. An air-cooled miner moves its heat with high-speed fans, and the sound is continuous. The usual homes for one are a garage, a shed or a vented utility room, often with ducting to push the hot air outside. Some owners swap the stock fans or lower the power target to quiet it down, which also lowers the hashrate.

This is where home mining makes its best case. If you would heat that space with electricity anyway, the miner's heat is not waste: the same power runs the machine and warms the room. Heat you have to remove is the opposite case, because you pay for it once in the miner and again in the cooling.

Because a house has neither the power nor the cooling it needs. Bitmain's manual for the Antminer S21+ Hyd. lists three-phase input at 380 to 415 V, and the 395 TH/s version draws 5,925 W. Houses are normally supplied with single-phase power, so the supply alone would mean a new service from the utility.

The cooling is the bigger job. A hydro machine has no fans. Cold plates over the chips pass the heat into coolant, which enters and leaves through two OD10 ports at 8 to 10 litres a minute, per the same manual. Something has to pump that coolant, keep it clean and reject the heat outdoors: a coolant distribution unit, manifolds and a dry cooler, which you would design, buy and maintain.

For a hydro machine, hosting is the only practical option. The site has to supply three-phase power and a coolant loop before the machine can hash at all.

How hydro cooling works in bitcoin mining explains the two loops, from the cold plate to the cooler on the roof.

You stop running a small power and cooling project and start reading statements. A host supplies the power, cooling, network and hands on site, and charges for them. You still own the machine. What you give up is having it in the next room, and you take on the risk that the host runs the site as agreed. How bitcoin mining hosting works follows one hosted machine from quote to first statement.

At Proton, each part of that is set out in writing before anything ships:

• Power: quoted per kWh, per site, metered at the PDU and billed on actual draw, not nameplate.
• Setup, minimum, deposit and term: setup is a one-time charge per machine, quoted in writing; the minimum and deposit are stated in your quote; term, renewal and exit notice are in your hosting agreement.
• Repairs: reboots, reseats, firmware, coupling and PSU swaps, and hashboard replacement from on-site spares, charged as your hosting agreement sets out.
• Curtailment: expected hours per year are stated in your quote, and you are not billed for power you do not draw.

The bitcoin path stays the same as at home. Your hashrate points at your own pool, and payouts go from your pool account to your wallet. You hold the keys and the pool credentials. Proton asks only for read-only pool access for reporting, and never takes custody of mined bitcoin.

Hosting brings its own questions: who controls the site's power contract, what happens if the site is curtailed or changes hands, and how you get your machines back. How to choose a bitcoin mining host lists them.

Alberta, 160 kW: acquisition in progress. Join the waitlist.

Every other location is proposed and marked Coming soon on the hosting page, which shows a planned capacity and an indicative rate for each region. Proposed locations have no confirmed hosting start date, and an enquiry about one does not reserve a slot or establish a start date.

That timing is part of the comparison. A home setup can start the day the electrician finishes. A hosted one starts when capacity and timing are confirmed per site and set out in writing.

Hosting at Proton is for hydro-capable machines bought through Proton. Capacity, timing, rate and terms are confirmed per site and set out in writing before anything ships.

A good fit if

• You are choosing hydro machines such as the S21+ Hyd. from the Proton catalogue.
• Your residential power price makes home mining hard to justify on your own numbers.
• You want metered billing and a statement with per-machine kWh, uptime and hashrate.
• You want your hashrate on your own pool and payouts straight to your own wallet.

Not a fit if

• You run, or plan to buy, an air-cooled miner: hosting is for hydro-capable models only.
• Your machine was bought elsewhere: hosting is only for machines bought through Proton.
• You have cheap power and a use for the heat: home mining is probably the better fit.
• You need a start date now: proposed locations have no confirmed hosting start date.
• You want cloud mining, a hashrate plan or promised returns: none of these is offered.