Guide ¡ Hashrate

What is hashrate?

By the CloudMineCrypto teamUpdated 7 min read

The short answer

Hashrate is hashes per second: how many guesses a miner makes at the next Bitcoin block each second. It’s written H/s, with prefixes like TH/s (trillions) and EH/s (quintillions). The whole network runs at about 1003 EH/s (1 ZH/s) right now, or 1 sextillion hashes every second (live estimate, updated hourly). Your share of that is your share of the rewards.

Key takeaways

  • Units go up in steps of 1,000: kH/s, MH/s, GH/s, TH/s, PH/s, EH/s, ZH/s.
  • Network hashrate isn’t measured. It’s estimated from how fast blocks arrive at the current difficulty.
  • Your expected reward is your hashrate divided by the network’s, times the blocks and the block reward.
  • Hashrate says how much work you do. Efficiency (J/TH) says what that work costs in power.

The hashrate scale, zoomable

From a person with pencil and paper to the whole Bitcoin network. Drag to move, pinch or use the buttons to zoom, and tap anything on the ruler.

Logarithmic scale: every tick is ten times the one before it.

A free app plan

live

4.6 GH/s

What one free claim in the CloudMineCrypto app runs at, for 8 hours. Live from the app, updated hourly.

What a plan earns

The Bitcoin network equals about 218 billion of these, working at once.

To match what the network does in one second, one of these would need about 6,903 years.

What is hashrate?

Definition ¡ Hashrate

The number of hashes a miner, or the whole Bitcoin network, computes per second. It’s the measure of mining power, written in hashes per second (H/s) with SI prefixes such as TH/s and EH/s.

A hash is one run of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 function over a candidate block. Miners change a small number in the block and hash it again, over and over, until one result falls below the network’s target. Each try is a lottery ticket, and hashrate is how many tickets you buy per second. The full picture is in our proof of work guide.

You can feel the number yourself. The demo below hashes in your browser and shows your own hashrate next to the network’s.

Interactive ¡ mine a block in your browser

Real SHA-256d proof of work, simplified header

Block #1Previous hash0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000Nonce0

Block hash (double SHA-256)

Edit the transactions: the hash changes completely with a single letter.

Attempts: 0

Your hashrate: n/a

Time: 0.0 s

What do H/s, MH/s, TH/s and EH/s mean?

They’re the same unit with a different prefix. The prefixes are the standard SI ones, and each is 1,000 times the one before it. A “kilo” is a thousand, a “tera” a trillion, an “exa” a quintillion.

Each step is 1,000 times the one below it

  1. H/sone100 H/s
  2. kH/sa thousand103 H/s
  3. MH/sa million106 H/sa laptop CPU, a graphics card
  4. GH/sa billion109 H/sa free app plan (live)
  5. TH/sa trillion1012 H/sone ASIC machine
  6. PH/sa quadrillion1015 H/sfive 200 TH/s machines
  7. EH/sa quintillion1018 H/s5,000 of those machines
  8. ZH/sa sextillion1021 H/sthe network: 1003 EH/s (live)
SI prefixes (kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta). Examples are typical values; the network’s step is a live estimate, updated hourly.

Watch the capital letters. Lower-case k is the SI symbol for kilo, so it’s kH/s, not KH/s. And MH/s means megahash (a million), while a lower-case m would mean milli, a thousandth. Nobody mines in millihashes, but you’ll see “mh/s” misused on forums.

How do you convert EH/s to TH/s?

Count the steps between the units and multiply by 1,000 for each one. EH to PH is one step, EH to TH is two, so 1 EH/s is 1,000 × 1,000 = 1,000,000 TH/s. Going the other way, divide.

Common conversions. Every row is exact.
FromIn TH/sIn GH/s
1 ZH/s1,000,000,0001,000,000,000,000
1 EH/s1,000,0001,000,000,000
1 PH/s1,0001,000,000
1 TH/s11,000
200 TH/s200200,000
1 GH/s0.0011

Try it: type a hashrate in any unit

Hashrate

Type in any field and the rest update instantly. Each step is ×1,000.

EH/s
PH/s
TH/s
GH/s
MH/s
kH/s
H/s
The same converter as our full hashrate converter tool. It works in whole hashes, so nothing is lost to rounding.

How is the Bitcoin network hashrate estimated?

Nobody can count the network’s hashes. Miners don’t report them, and many run privately. What everyone can see is the blocks: how often they arrive, and how hard each one was to find. That’s enough to work the hashrate out.

Difficulty says how many hashes a block takes on average: about difficulty × 2³² of them. Blocks are aimed at one every 600 seconds. So:

network hashrate ≈ difficulty × 2³² ÷ 600 seconds
If blocks come faster than one every 10 minutes, divide by the real average time instead, and the estimate rises.

Current difficulty

132.8 trillion

From the latest block (live, mempool.space)

× 2³² ÷ 600

7,158,278

Hashes per unit of difficulty, per second of block time

Hashrate

950 EH/s

The app’s live figure: 1003 EH/s

The catch is luck. Blocks arrive at random, so a network that should find 144 blocks a day might find 130 or 160 without anything changing. A one-day estimate jumps around; a one-week one is much calmer. Try it:

Estimate the network from blocks alone

Blocks found

153 of 144 expected

Estimated hashrate

1.07 ZH/s

Off by

+6.3%

true hashrate (bars above read high, bars below read low)

oldereach bar is one simulated daylatest

The real hashrate never changed. Only luck did. A one-day reading is typically off by about 8%. A one-week reading, by about 3%.

Simulation, not real data. The true line uses the live network estimate, updated hourly.

That’s why charts like mempool.space’s show several averages, and why sites often disagree by a few percent. Difficulty itself follows the same logic: every 2,016 blocks it resets to match the recent hashrate. Our difficulty guide shows how.

What does hashrate mean for mining rewards?

Your share of the network’s hashrate is your expected share of its blocks. Around six blocks are found an hour, so the expected reward per hour is simple:

BTC per hour = your kH/s ÷ network kH/s × 6 blocks × block reward
The same formula the CloudMineCrypto app uses for its estimates. Boosts left out.

With live numbers, for a free plan: 4,604,889 kH/s ÷ 1,003,107,267,295,000,000 kH/s × 6 × 3.145 BTC = 0.00000000008663BTC per hour (estimate, before boosts, updated hourly).

A free app plan (4.6 GH/s, live)

Share of the network

1 in 218 billion

live estimate

Expected reward

0.0000000006930BTC

per 8-hour plan, estimate before boosts

One 200 TH/s mining machine (typical)

Share of the network

1 in 5.02 million

at today’s network

Expected reward

0.00009030BTC

per day, before power and pool fees

A real miner doesn’t get that reward smoothly. On its own, that 200 TH/s machine would wait about 95 years on average for a block. That’s why miners join mining pools that share out rewards as work is done. And when the network’s hashrate grows, everyone’s share shrinks, even if their own machines haven’t changed. The same happens to app estimates. Live figures for every plan are in how much Bitcoin will I earn.

Is hashrate the same as efficiency?

No. Hashrate is how much work a machine does. Efficiency is what that work costs in electricity, in joules per terahash (J/TH). Two machines with the same hashrate can have very different power bills:

Power needed for 200 TH/s, by machine efficiency

Antminer S9 era
98 J/TH
19,640 W
Antminer S21
17.5 J/TH
3,500 W
Antminer S21 XP
13.5 J/TH
2,700 W
Antminer S23 Hyd.
9.5 J/TH
1,900 W
Manufacturer-rated efficiency; the Antminer S9’s is derived from its rated 1,375 W and 14 TH/s (Bitcoin Wiki). Model details are in our mining machines guide. Power = 200 × J/TH.

Hashrate decides your share of the rewards. Efficiency decides whether that share is worth more than the power it burns. That’s why old machines get switched off even though they still hash fine. More on the energy side is in Bitcoin mining and energy, and you can run the numbers in the mining profit calculator.

What hashrate do CloudMineCrypto plans have?

In the app you mine Bitcoin for free. Claim the free plan, watch an ad, play a game, complete an offer or do the daily check-in, and each one gives you a plan with its own hashrate. Your BTC balance grows while your plans run, and you withdraw to your own wallet, Lightning included. No machine, no noise, no power bill.

Live from the app, updated hourly. BTC per hour is an estimate at today’s network, before boosts.
PlanHashrateRuns forBTC per hour
Free plan4.6 GH/s8 hours, then claim again0.00000000008663BTC
Ad, game, offer or daily check-in plan7.4 GH/s24 hours each0.0000000001386BTC
Optional paid plans (21 sizes)148 GH/s to 5.9 TH/sshown before you buy0.000000002789BTC to 0.0000001118BTC

Plans stack, so their hashrates add up while they overlap, and each game or offer reward point adds another 24-hour plan. Continuity and loyalty boosts can raise your rate on top; the details are in the reward rules. Want more speed? Add an optional paid plan, with the price shown before you confirm. Rewards are estimates and aren’t guaranteed. Terms apply.

What you get

  • Free Bitcoin mining from the free plan, ads, games, offers and the daily check-in
  • A BTC balance that grows while your plans run
  • Hashrate in the same units as any miner, shown up front
  • Withdrawals to your own wallet, Lightning included

Good to know

  • Rewards are estimates that move with the network
  • A plan doesn’t give ownership of any machine or pool
  • It’s not an investment, and there’s no fixed return

Frequently asked questions

What is hashrate in simple terms?

It’s how many guesses a miner makes per second. Each guess is one run of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 hash, so 1 TH/s means a trillion guesses every second.

How many TH/s are in 1 EH/s?

1 EH/s is 1,000,000 TH/s. Each unit step (kH, MH, GH, TH, PH, EH, ZH) is 1,000 times the one below, so EH to TH is two steps: 1,000 × 1,000.

What is the Bitcoin network hashrate right now?

It’s in the hundreds of exahashes per second or more, and it changes daily. This page shows a live estimate, updated hourly. Nobody measures it directly; it’s worked out from how fast blocks are found at the current difficulty.

Is a higher hashrate better?

For a single miner, more hashrate means a bigger share of the network and so more expected reward. What it costs to run matters as much, which is why miners also compare efficiency in joules per terahash (J/TH).

What is a good hashrate for a Bitcoin miner?

Current ASIC machines typically run at roughly 100 to 500 TH/s each. Laptops and graphics cards manage megahashes, millions of times less, which is why they can’t mine Bitcoin in any meaningful way.

Does a CloudMineCrypto plan’s hashrate mean I own a mining machine?

No. A plan doesn’t give you ownership of, or a share in, any specific hardware or pool. Its hashrate is the number the app uses, with live network data, to work out your estimated rewards.

Sources and further reading

  1. Hash per second ¡ Bitcoin Wiki
  2. Difficulty (including how hashrate relates to it) ¡ Bitcoin Wiki
  3. Mining guide: solo and pool mining ¡ Bitcoin developer documentation
  4. Hashrate and difficulty chart ¡ mempool.space
  5. SI prefixes (kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta) ¡ BIPM
  6. Mining hardware comparison ¡ Bitcoin Wiki
  7. Non-specialized hardware comparison (CPU and GPU hashrates) ¡ Bitcoin Wiki

Live figures on this page (network hashrate, block reward, BTC price) come from the CloudMineCrypto API, refreshed hourly, and are labelled where they appear. This guide is educational and not financial advice. CloudMineCrypto is not an investment product; rewards in the app are estimates and aren’t guaranteed.

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