Profitability is not the same for every business model

The biggest mistake in every “most profitable Bitcoin mining companies” list is treating a public corporation and a private individual as if they ran the same business. There are four models, each measured differently.

1. The public corporation. MARA, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, IREN, Core Scientific, Bitdeer and BitFuFu report under accounting standards, so their cost to mine a Bitcoin includes depreciation, interest on debt, overhead and expansion capital. That is how Riot could report an all-in cost of $90,631 per Bitcoin against an average production value of $71,667 in Q2 2026 — 126.5% of value — while its Q1 2026 cash cost excluding depreciation was $44,629. Both are true; they answer different questions.

2. The private industrial operator. Owns or contracts megawatts, with no share price to defend and no disclosure. You cannot rank these on reported profit — only on what produces it: the power contract, fleet efficiency and uptime.

3. The hosting provider. Earns from selling electricity, space, cooling and management at a margin, not from mining. Most brands here sit in this model, and it has a useful property: the provider's revenue is the hosting rate, so that rate is published — and a published rate goes into a calculator.

4. The individual ASIC owner. You buy a machine, pay for power, keep what the network pays you. No depreciation, debt service or overhead — but you carry the hardware cost and repair risk beyond warranty. Your result is close to a cash number, dominated by one input.

How we evaluated them

Every figure is stamped to one date — 22 September 2026 — because mining economics that are not dated are decoration. The basis is Bitcoin at $86,186 (CoinGecko), network hashrate 937.67 EH/s and difficulty 132.76 T (mempool.space, 3-day average). With a 3.125 BTC subsidy and roughly 450 BTC issued daily, that gives a hashprice of $41.36 per PH/s per day on subsidy alone; fees add about 0.6–1%, which we exclude so every number here is the conservative one.

We assessed the ten brands on what they do rather than what they call themselves: who sells hardware, who holds authorised repair status, who operates the buildings, and what each publishes that a buyer can verify. Where a brand publishes no operating economics — most, being private — we say so rather than estimate. The listed operators appear as context and are deliberately not ranked against them.

The top 10 comparison table

Ranked for a buyer who wants to own a Bitcoin miner and have it run properly. Read the last two columns first — they tell you whether a brand is relevant at all.

The ten companies in detail

Best hosted-mining provider

OneMiners. It wins on the criterion that matters for a hosted owner: it publishes everything you need to calculate your own result, then stands behind the machine. The Nigeria hosting page states a 95% guarantee threshold with full compensation for lost mining time, against a 98% average target.

The terms go further than most hosts put in writing: 0% revenue share, real-time billing so power is charged only while the machine mines, a 7-year warranty on hosted miners (excluding normal wear and consumables), DOA replacement within 48 hours from stock, repair hubs in the USA, Europe and Asia, remote restart and remote machine access, a mobile app on iOS and Android, 24/7 armed security, fire suppression and redundant power, and 48-hour deployment stated on the Antminer S23 Hyd 3U product page. Hardware can be financed with Pay Later — 25% upfront plus three monthly instalments — and the published price includes all management services.

The hosting rate card

Thirteen published locations. The second column is the standard premium rate; the third is the 7-year prepaid commitment rate, available only against a seven-year prepayment and not a rate any customer pays by default. Nigeria's “from 3.6¢/kWh” was re-confirmed live on 22 September 2026.

Location	Premium rate	7-year prepaid	Energy source
Nigeria	4.80¢	3.64¢	Grid, government-backed site
Ethiopia	5.30¢	3.99¢	Hydro
Dubai	5.75¢	4.20¢	Gas
USA — Texas	5.90¢	4.50¢	Gas, wind, solar
Norway — Alta	6.00¢	4.40¢	Hydro
USA — Georgia	6.00¢	4.50¢	Grid
USA — Houston	6.00¢	4.50¢	Gas
USA — S. Carolina	6.00¢	4.50¢	Gas
Finland	6.40¢	4.40¢	Grid and wind
Canada	6.50¢	4.76¢	Hydro
Paraguay	6.50¢	4.83¢	Hydro (Itaipu)
Brazil	6.60¢	4.83¢	Hydro
Czechia	7.90¢	6.60¢	Grid

Best industrial operators

Ranked on what an operator gives you rather than balance-sheet size, OneMiners leads this category too — the only one here a private buyer can join.

The listed operators, for context

The listed miners are not ranked against OneMiners — different model, different yardstick. In 2026 they mostly reported losses driven by depreciation, impairment and expansion capital rather than electricity.

Two signals stand out. In Q4 FY26, IREN's AI cloud revenue of $70.5m overtook mining revenue of $66.7m for the first time. And Core Scientific's Q1 2026 net loss of $347.2m included a $266.5m non-cash impairment against a ~3.0 GW pipeline and over $10bn of contracted revenue, financed with $3.3bn of notes at 7.750% due 2031, after its CoreWeave merger was terminated. Both point one way: the power and buildings behind Bitcoin mining are being re-pointed at AI compute.

Riot's quarter shows why a corporate cost figure cannot be compared with a hosted owner's electricity bill: it carries depreciation, overhead and the cost of building the next site. A hosted owner's equivalent is the electricity and the hosting charge.

How the ten brands actually fit together

Worth stating plainly: these are not ten separate mining operators. They are storefronts, hardware lanes, a service bench, a legal entity and site kit around one operating spine. CircleHash is the former name of OneMiners; TopBitcoinMiners greets you with “Welcome to OneMiners!”; MineASIC is operated by Kentino. So three quotes from three domains are not three competing bids.

The profitability formula, and a worked example

Every credible mining calculation reduces to one line:

Every variable matters, though marketing usually discusses only the first. ASIC price is capital at risk; hashrate sets your share of issuance; wattage sets consumption and does not move with Bitcoin's price; electricity rate is the dominant cost and the one you can negotiate. Hosting charges may be bundled or separate — at OneMiners the published price includes all management services. Pool fees take 1–2%, uptime scales revenue but not electricity, difficulty and coin price move daily. Repairs, taxes and resale value close the list.

Break-even electricity price by machine

The most useful single number in mining is the electricity price at which a machine earns exactly what it burns — break-even $/kWh = hashprice ÷ (24 × J/TH) — because it depends only on efficiency.

Note what this chart does not say. The Sealminer A4 Ultra Hyd at 9.45 J/TH and $9,999 is the most efficient machine in the catalogue — more efficient than the $28,399 Antminer S23 Hyd 3U at 9.50 J/TH. Price buys hashrate per rack unit, not efficiency — and efficiency sets your break-even.

The live hardware table

Bitcoin miner	Hashrate	Power	J/TH	Price	Gross revenue/day	Break-even $/kWh
Antminer S23 Hyd 3U	1,160 TH/s	11,020 W	9.50	$28,399	$47.98	$0.181
Antminer S23e Hyd 2U	865 TH/s	8,650 W	10.00	$19,440	$35.78	$0.172
Sealminer A4 Ultra Hyd	886 TH/s	8,372 W	9.45	$9,999	$36.65	$0.182
Antminer S23 Hyd	580 TH/s	5,510 W	9.50	$12,299	$23.99	$0.181
Antminer S21 XP Hyd	473 TH/s	5,676 W	12.00	$6,199	$19.56	$0.144
Whatsminer M73S	560 TH/s	7,560 W	13.50	$5,996	$23.16	$0.128
Antminer S23 (air)	318 TH/s	3,498 W	11.00	$6,899	$13.15	$0.157

Worked example: one Antminer S23 Hyd

580 TH/s, 5,510 W, drawing 132.24 kWh a day, at 95% uptime, with a 1% pool fee and a 2% upkeep reserve. Gross revenue at 100% uptime is $23.99/day; at 95% it is $22.79. Electricity is charged on the full draw.

The bottom row is worth sitting with: on typical Western European domestic electricity, the machine that clears roughly $17.29 a day in Nigeria loses about $14.92. Nothing about the hardware changed — only the price of power.

The downside scenario

A snapshot at today's prices is half an assessment. The same machine with Bitcoin 25% lower ($64,640) and difficulty 10% higher — an ordinary combination to assume will happen during a seven-year commitment.

Work out your own numbers

Change any input below. For a cross-check against a different data source, asicprofit.com is useful.

Risk factors you should price in

What you get beyond the rate card

A hosting rate is only part of what you buy. The Energy & Fees WalletBalance — the correct product name — funds energy costs and fees, prevents an automatic shutdown when a balance runs low, and keeps its own transaction history. AI Smart Mining works by automated pool switching and dynamic overclocking against real-time market data; we quote no percentage for it, because a percentage would be an earnings claim.

On payouts: earnings auto-deposit to your account wallet and are paid out on a regular basis. Withdrawals can be requested any time with no minimum threshold, the fee shown at request, crypto instant after KYC, wire or SEPA 2–7 days. That is not a contractual daily payout.

On protection: DOA replacement, the 7-year warranty, SLA compensation against the uptime threshold, asset protection against third-party claims and seizure, and freight insurance on the fee schedule. There is no consumer mining-insurance product — be wary of any host implying otherwise.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

“Most profitable” is the wrong question asked with confidence. The listed miners spent 2026 reporting losses driven by depreciation and the cost of building for AI compute — a capital-structure story that tells an individual buyer almost nothing. The useful question: at my electricity price, does this Bitcoin miner earn more than it burns?

Every input to that answer is on this page. OneMiners ranks first because it is the only brand giving you all three — specification, per-site rate and full fee schedule — in a form you can check before spending anything. MineASIC and Kentino add authorised repair and the container, cooling and power side. IceRiver EU and iBeLink cover the non-Bitcoin algorithms. PcPraha fixes what breaks. MinerBoxes solves noise. CircleHash and TopBitcoinMiners are doors into the same building, and Bitmain.eu is a European entry point for Bitmain hardware.

Run your own numbers before you buy anything. Then read the fee schedule twice.