What Is Hashrate?

Hashrate is the single most important number in cryptocurrency mining — it measures how many hashing calculations a mining device (or an entire network) can perform every second. The higher the hashrate, the more attempts a miner makes per second at solving the cryptographic puzzle required to add the next block to a blockchain, and the better its chances of earning the block reward.

How Is Hashrate Measured?

Hashrate is expressed in hashes per second (H/s), but because modern mining hardware performs trillions of calculations every second, the raw unit is almost always combined with a metric prefix:

  • kH/s – kilohashes per second (thousands)

  • MH/s – megahashes per second (millions)

  • GH/s – gigahashes per second (billions)

  • TH/s – terahashes per second (trillions) — the standard unit for most modern Bitcoin ASIC miners

  • PH/s – petahashes per second (quadrillions) — used for large mining farms or the newest multi-chip hydro-cooled ASICs

  • EH/s – exahashes per second (quintillions) — used to describe the entire Bitcoin network's combined hashrate

Hashrate Unit Converter

Device Hashrate vs. Network Hashrate

There are two very different things people mean when they talk about hashrate:

  • Device hashrate – the computing power of a single miner, like an Antminer S21 rated at 200 TH/s, or a Whatsminer M70S rated at up to 258 TH/s.

  • Network hashrate – the combined hashrate of every miner currently securing a blockchain. The Bitcoin network as a whole operates in the hundreds of EH/s range, meaning it is the sum of millions of individual ASIC chips worldwide.

Why Hashrate Matters for Profitability

Your share of a mining pool's block rewards is directly proportional to your hashrate relative to the pool's (and ultimately the network's) total hashrate. A higher personal hashrate means a bigger slice of the reward pie, but it also usually means higher power consumption — which is why efficiency (measured in joules per terahash, J/TH) matters just as much as raw hashrate when comparing ASIC models. You can compare real hashrate and efficiency figures across current machines on our Bitmain, Whatsminer, and Canaan Avalon model pages, each with a built-in profitability calculator.

Hashrate and Network Difficulty

As total network hashrate rises, the mining difficulty automatically adjusts upward to keep block production time roughly constant (about 10 minutes for Bitcoin). This means a miner's real-world earnings depend not just on its own hashrate, but on how that hashrate compares to an ever-growing global total — which is why efficiency upgrades and firmware tuning (see our custom ASIC firmware) matter so much for staying competitive over a machine's multi-year lifespan.

See also