What you give up under $500 — and what you don’t
You don’t give up speed. Charging speed is set by amps, and amps are cheap. The Emporia, WOLFBOX and EVIQO picks here all publish 48 amps hardwired, which is the practical ceiling for a home charger on a 60-amp circuit. The 40-amp picks are 40 amps because they are plug-in units on a NEMA 14-50 receptacle, where 40 is the most any charger may draw, not because they are cheaper hardware.
You don’t give up safety. Every charger we list carries a safety listing from a nationally recognized testing laboratory. Price is not the safety signal; the listing is. Our guide to cheap charger safety explains how to read one in a minute and which phrases only sound like certification.
You sometimes give up the app. The ELEGRP here has no Wi-Fi at all, just an on-unit delay timer. For a lot of households that is the right amount of charger, because the car already schedules charging on its own. Our smart versus basic comparison works through when an app earns its keep.
You sometimes give up the rebate listing. Plenty of utility rebates require an ENERGY STAR-certified charger. The Emporia, EVIQO, Lectron NACS and Autel carry that listing; Grizzl-E publishes UL/cUL for the Classic Connect but no ENERGY STAR listing; the ELEGRP is not ENERGY STAR listed; and WOLFBOX prints ENERGY STAR on its spec table for a 48-amp configuration the ENERGY STAR database does not list, so we treat that one as unconfirmed. If a rebate is part of your budget, check the certified list for the exact model before you count on it.
The install usually costs more than the charger
If you are shopping by price, look at the whole job. PG&E, a large California utility, publishes an average installation cost of $400 to $1,200 on top of the charger itself, and a long wire run, a full panel or a service upgrade sits above that range. A $100 difference between two chargers is noise next to that, which is why the cheapest route to Level 2 is often a plug-in unit on an outlet you already have, rather than the cheapest hardwired box.
That is also why the plug-in picks are here at all. If a four-prong NEMA 14-50 outlet already exists within reach of your parking spot, the Grizzl-E and the ELEGRP need no electrician on the day. If your only 240-volt outlet is a dryer receptacle, see our NEMA 14-30 dryer outlet picks instead — that is a 30-amp circuit, and the chargers above are not built for it. Our installation cost guidecovers the five things that move an electrician’s quote.
How to choose between the picks
Most households:the Emporia. It is the site’s most-used recommendation for a reason — 48 amps, ENERGY STAR, a 25-foot cable and an app that tracks what charging actually costs. Its one gap is that Emporia does not publish an adjustable current range below 40 amps, so on a panel with little spare capacity look at the WOLFBOX, which publishes five current steps down to 16 amps.
A driveway with no roof:the Grizzl-E, whose metal case is rated UL Type 4 and published down to -22°F, or the Autel when the daily check has it under the line — its NEMA 4X shell is the toughest enclosure rating on this page.
A charger a long way from the car: the EVIQO, whose 25-foot cable plus a 40-inch input lead gives the longest total reach here.
A Tesla: the Lectron NACS, a native Tesla plug at 48 amps with no adapter to carry. If you also have a non-Tesla car, buy a J1772 charger and a cheap adapter instead; our NACS home charger roundup explains why.
Just over the line
A few chargers we rate highly sit near $500, and the daily check moves them across it. The ChargePoint Home Flex — our pick for the widest adjustable range, from 16 to 50 amps in the app — has been on both sides of the line in our own price history, and so has the Leviton EV40P. When they dip under, they do not appear here automatically, because this list only ranks the candidates above; see our Level 2 roundup for how they compare with everything else.
