Zcash Mining Calculator: Is a Z15 Pro Worth Buying After ZEC’s 71% Run?
Pick your Antminer, enter your power price, and read the ZEC price where that machine breaks even. The calculator pulls the live Zcash network hashrate and price, then projects up to 48 months with difficulty growth and the third halving built in.
Zcash profit calculator
loading live dataAssumptions: 75-second blocks, a miner reward of 1.25 ZEC (80% of the 1.5625 ZEC subsidy), and a flat ZEC price at the value you enter. Difficulty grows monthly at your rate. At the third halving, about month 26, the calculator cuts the miner reward to 0.625 ZEC, which assumes the 20% funding share is renewed. The machine switches off in any month it would lose money. Pool luck, downtime, transaction fees and resale value are ignored.
How Zcash mining pays you
Zcash is a proof-of-work chain that finds a block about every 75 seconds. The 2Miners pool API reported an average of 75.99 seconds when this page was updated, close enough to the target that the calculator uses 75. The live strip shows the current average.
That is 1,152 blocks a day. At 1.25 ZEC of miner reward per block, the network pays out 1,440 ZEC a day to miners.
Your share equals your hashrate divided by the network hashrate. A Z15 Pro at 840 kH/s against 30.06 GSol/s holds about 0.0028% of the network, which is 0.0398 ZEC a day after a 1% pool fee.
Do miners really keep only 80% of the Zcash block reward?
Yes. After the second halving in November 2024, the subsidy fell to 1.5625 ZEC per block. ZIP 1015 and ZIP 1016 route 8% to Zcash Community Grants and 12% to a lockbox controlled by coin holders, and ZIP 214 carries both streams to the third halving.
That leaves miners 80%, or 1.25 ZEC. Both ZIPs are published at zips.z.cash, and the 2Miners ZEC page shows the same 1.25 ZEC block reward.
A calculator that uses the full 1.5625 ZEC overstates your revenue by 25%. Check which number any tool uses before you trust its payback date.
Antminer Z15 Pro vs Z15K vs Z15: which one earns its price?
Efficiency in joules per kilo-solution decides what happens when power gets expensive or the price drops. The newest machine is not the most efficient one.
| Miner | Released | Hashrate | Power | Efficiency | Noise | Listed price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro | Jun 2023 | 840 kH/s | 2,780 W | 3.31 J/kH | 75 dB | $13,400 |
| Bitmain Antminer Z15K | Aug 2026 | 525 kH/s | 2,483 W | 4.73 J/kH | 75 dB | $8,600 |
| Bitmain Antminer Z15 | Jun 2020 | 420 kH/s | 1,510 W | 3.60 J/kH | 72 dB | $5,500 |
Source: asicminervalue.com listings read on 30 Sep 2026. The Z15K draws 43% more power per solution than the Z15 Pro.
The 2020 Z15 is the cheapest per kH/s at $13.10, against $15.95 for the Z15 Pro and $16.38 for the Z15K. It also has the oldest silicon, so check the seller’s warranty and hours of use.
What ZEC price does a Z15 Pro need to break even?
The breakeven price is your daily electricity bill divided by the ZEC you mine per day. At $0.08/kWh a Z15 Pro costs $5.34 a day to run and mines 0.0398 ZEC, so the power-only breakeven is $134 per ZEC.
ZEC trades at $1,397, rank 10 by market cap at $23.7B on CoinGecko, after a 71.2% gain in 30 days. The price could fall about 90% before daily revenue stops covering power.
That number flatters the machine. It ignores the $13,400 you paid, and it ignores that difficulty will rise as other miners buy the same hardware.
The calculator therefore shows a second price: the ZEC price needed to pay off the hardware within your projection window. For the Z15 Pro at $0.08/kWh and 3% monthly difficulty growth, that price is $788 over 36 months. Read that row as your real floor.
Worked examples: a Z15K at $0.10 and a Z15 Pro at $0.17
You buy a Z15K for $8,600 and pay $0.10/kWh. With ZEC at $1,397 and the network at 30.06 GSol/s, it mines 0.0249 ZEC a day, worth $34.78.
It burns 59.6 kWh, which costs $5.96. That leaves $28.82 a day, or $877 a month. With difficulty up 3% a month, you pay the machine off in month 13 and hold $6,204 of profit after 36 months.
Now halve ZEC to about $700. The same machine ends 36 months at minus $3,712 and switches itself off in month 27.
You buy a Z15 Pro for $13,400 and pay $0.17/kWh, the US residential average. Difficulty grows 6% a month as more Z15-class hardware lands on the network.
It nets $44.31 a day at launch. It pays back in month 22, turns unprofitable in month 27, and finishes the 36 months with $303. You carried two years of price risk for almost no return.
Both examples use the calculator’s defaults for everything not stated, so you can reproduce them by typing the inputs in.
The third halving cuts your reward in about 26 months
The third Zcash halving happens at block 4,406,400, per ZIP 214. The 2Miners API puts the chain at block 3,501,184, so 905,216 blocks remain, roughly 786 days at 75 seconds, or late November 2028.
The subsidy then drops from 1.5625 to 0.78125 ZEC. The 8% and 12% funding streams are specified to end at that height, so miners could keep all 0.78125 ZEC if nobody renews them.
The calculator takes the cautious path. It halves your 1.25 ZEC to 0.625 ZEC, which assumes the 20% split continues. If the streams lapse, your real revenue after month 26 would be 25% higher than shown.
One more rule change could arrive earlier. ZIP 218, still a draft, proposes cutting the block time to 25 seconds at the NU7 upgrade, with a third of the reward per block. Daily issuance would stay the same.
Works for you
- At $0.08/kWh, power eats under 10% of a Z15 Pro’s revenue
- Live hashrate and price come from two public APIs you can check
- The power-only breakeven sits near a tenth of today’s price
Works against you
- Each new Z15K plugged in adds hashrate and lowers every other miner’s share
- The reward halves in late 2028
- A $13,400 machine needs the price to hold for about a year
How to start mining Zcash
- Price your power first. Take your all-in rate per kWh from your bill, then run the three presets. The Z15 Pro pulls 2,780 W, so budget a dedicated 240 V circuit.
- Buy from a source that ships and supports. Order from Bitmain or a reseller with an address and a warranty. Compare the listed price against asicminervalue.com first.
- Create a ZEC wallet. Use a wallet that supports Zcash, such as Zashi, or a hardware wallet. Write down the seed offline.
- Pick a pool. 2Miners charges 1.0% and its ZEC minimum payout is 0.1 ZEC. Compare that against other pools before you commit.
- Point the miner. Enter the stratum URL and your wallet address in the miner’s web panel. Check the pool dashboard after 30 minutes for accepted shares.
Each Z15 model is rated 72 to 75 dB. The Z15 Pro turns 2.78 kW into heat all day, so plan ventilation and the room before the purchase.
Risks to price in
As of 30 Sep 2026 the ZEC price had risen 71.2% in 30 days and fallen 12.2% in the last 7. Your payback depends on a price you do not control.
New supply matters as much. The Z15K was released on 19 Aug 2026, and every unit plugged in raises difficulty for the machines already running. Type a lower price and higher difficulty growth into the calculator before you order.
ASIC resale value also collapses when a more efficient model ships. The Z15 Pro dates from 2023, so a better machine can land at any time.
Zcash mining videos worth watching
Zcash mining FAQ
Is Zcash mining profitable in 2026?
At ZEC $1,397 and $0.08/kWh, a Z15 Pro nets about $50 a day, and its power-only breakeven is near $134 per ZEC. Hardware payback is the harder test. It takes about 11 months at 3% monthly difficulty growth, so your purchase date matters.
How much ZEC does a Z15 Pro mine per day?
About 0.0398 ZEC a day after a 1% pool fee, worth roughly $55.65 at $1,397. That assumes 840 kH/s against a 30.06 GSol/s network. The figure shrinks whenever more miners join the network, so recheck the live hashrate before you buy a machine.
What is the breakeven ZEC price for mining?
Divide your daily electricity cost by your daily ZEC output. At $0.10/kWh that gives about $167 for a Z15 Pro, $182 for a Z15 and $239 for a Z15K. Paying off the hardware needs a much higher price, which the calculator shows in a separate row.
How much of the Zcash block reward do miners get?
Miners get 80%, or 1.25 ZEC of the 1.5625 ZEC subsidy. ZIP 1015 and ZIP 1016 send 8% to Zcash Community Grants and 12% to a lockbox. Both streams are set to end at the third halving, so the split could change after late 2028.
When is the next Zcash halving?
At block 4,406,400, which is about 905,216 blocks away today. At 75 seconds per block that lands in late November 2028. The subsidy then falls from 1.5625 ZEC to 0.78125 ZEC per block, and the calculator models that cut from about month 26 of your projection.
More mining and staking calculators
Want to compare mining against simply holding? Run the same budget through the crypto ROI calculator, or see what staking would pay in the staking yield calculator.
Estimates only, not financial advice. Mining revenue depends on network difficulty, coin price, pool luck and uptime, all of which change daily. Hardware specs and prices are as listed on asicminervalue.com on 30 Sep 2026.