With the rapid increases in the price of electricity and water over the past decade, the question is: what does a shower or bath cost in South Africa in 2024?

Most South Africans know electricity prices have skyrocketed — a 937% increase between 2007 and 2024. But water prices have been climbing even faster over the same period.

In fact, water price increases have outpaced electricity. (For the full story, see our blog post Municipal water & electricity tariff increases vs inflation since 1996.)

South Africans didn't used to think twice about the cost of a shower or bath. Both electricity and water were cheap enough to ignore.

That's no longer true in 2024. Our previous studies in 2022 were eye-opening: a 10-minute shower using a standard 15 litre/min showerhead cost just over R21 per shower.

We've now updated the study using the latest approved municipal tariffs for July 2024 to June 2025. As you might expect, the numbers have gotten worse.

Here's what we found for 2024 to 2025:

For an average middle-class household in South Africa (LSM7-10), a 10-minute shower now costs over R24 with a standard 15 litre/min showerhead. That's about R2.43 per minute. Switch to a low-flow showerhead and cut your shower time to 6 minutes, and you'll bring that down dramatically — to about R7.78 per shower, or R1.30 per minute.

Either way, cheap showers are becoming a thing of the past. We could all benefit from paying closer attention to how much water and electricity we're using.

Conventional wisdom says showering uses less water than running a bath. But a typical bath uses 90 litres of water. If you shower for longer than 6 minutes with a standard showerhead, you'll actually use more water than if you'd taken a bath. With the average shower time internationally sitting at 8 minutes, a shallow bath might actually be kinder to your wallet and the environment.

Of course, even better than a shallow bath is switching to a low-flow showerhead and keeping showers short. During the Day Zero water crisis, the City of Cape Town recommended showers under 2 minutes. And switching to low-flow showerheads (less than 10 litres/min) is compulsory under City of Cape Town bylaws.

The graphs below show more detailed information on water and energy use, and cost per shower for normal and low-flow showerheads compared to a standard 90-litre bath.

References, methodology & assumptions for calculations

• Shower & bath temperature of 40°C. See e.g. Lawrence JC & Bull JP. 1976. Thermal conditions which cause skin burns. Engineering in Medicine 5(3):61-63.

• Average residential water consumption data was obtained from: Viljoen N. 2016. Presentation: City of Cape Town Residential Water Consumption Trend Analysis 2014/15. Last accessed: 21/08/2017.

• Average residential electricity consumption data was obtained from: Goliger, A. and Cassim, A. (14 and 15 July 2017). Tipping Points: The Impacts of Rising Electricity Tariffs on Households and Household Electricity Demand. 3rd Annual Competition and Economic Regulation (ACER) 2017 Conference, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Last accessed: 21/08/2017.

• Average bath uses about 90 litres of water. Waterwise. Last accessed: 12/09/2017.

• "Normal" or standard showerheads use 15 litres of water per minute or more, and low flow showerheads use about 8 litres water per minute. Eskom fact sheet on showerheads. Last accessed: 12/09/2017.

• Average effective residential water & electricity tariffs were calculated from the published 2024/25 tariffs of the following four metropolitan municipalities: City of Johannesburg, City of Tshwane, City of Cape Town and Ethekwini, using the average residential water and electricity consumption values for LSM7-10 obtained from the above references.

• For 'low income' households, the average marginal water tariff is somewhat lower across the four municipalities (due to lower average consumption), at R2.63/kWh for electricity and R47.24/kilolitre for water & sanitation. This yields a cost per bath of R11.11, a cost per 10-minute 'normal showerhead' shower of R18.52/shower, and a cost per 6-minute low-flow showerhead shower of R5.93/shower.

• Energy cost of hot water based on heating water from 15 to 60°C, which requires approximately 5.22 kWh per 100 litre.

• A study by the Alliance for Water Efficiency also found a shallow bath to be better than a long shower with a high flow showerhead.

• Average shower time: a recent study at a South African university found an average shower time of over 9 minutes.