NerdMiner vs Bitaxe: which one should you buy?

Short answer: buy the NerdMiner V4 if you want to learn how Bitcoin mining works on a 1 W gadget that sits on your desk and holds a real but tiny chance of a block. Buy the Bitaxe Gamma if you want actual hashrate: its BM1370 chip delivers 1.3 TH/s at 17 W, about 5 million times the 250 KH/s of the NerdMiner, for a far better shot at a solo block. We stock both, and both ship from the EU with VAT included.

The rest of this page puts the two devices side by side: hashrate and odds, power and running cost in euros, firmware and setup, noise and size, and five typical buyers with a clear recommendation for each. New to mining altogether? Bitcoin mining for beginners explains proof of work, pools and solo mining first.

Side by side

Device data from our product pages, odds and electricity figures calculated as explained below. Current prices and availability are on the product cards further down.

Hashrate and odds explained

Hashrate is the number of guesses a miner makes per second. The NerdMiner V4 makes 250,000 guesses per second (250 KH/s) on an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, a chip made for Wi-Fi gadgets, not for mining. The Bitaxe Gamma makes 1.3 trillion guesses per second (1.3 TH/s) on a BM1370, an ASIC from the Antminer S21 Pro generation that does nothing but SHA-256. Divide the two and you get the whole story: the Gamma is about 5 million times faster.

In solo mining your chance of winning a block is your hashrate divided by the network hashrate. On 23 September 2026 the network hashrate was about 920 EH/s, and one EH/s is a million TH/s. For the Gamma that works out to about 1 in 708 million per block, or an expected 13,500 years between blocks. For the NerdMiner it is about 1 in 3.7 quadrillion per block and an expected 70 billion years. Both numbers are averages, not countdowns: the chance is the same every ten minutes, and a block can come on the first day or never.

What this means in practice: nobody should buy either device to get rich. The Gamma is a genuine lottery ticket that is drawn every ten minutes for a few euros of electricity a month. The NerdMiner is a lottery ticket too, but the honest reason to buy one is to watch mining happen on your desk, read the shares and best difficulty on the display, and understand what the big machines are doing at scale. The odds for every miner we sell, with the formula, are in our solo Bitcoin mining guide.

Power and running cost

Electricity is the only running cost, and it is where the two devices are furthest apart in absolute terms and closest in what it means for your bill. A month has about 720 hours, so monthly consumption is watts times 720 divided by 1,000:

The NerdMiner costs less to run for a year than a single coffee. The Gamma costs about as much as a streaming subscription per month at the higher tariff, and it delivers 5 million times the hashrate for 17 times the power. Per hash, the Gamma is by far the more efficient machine; per euro on the bill, both are small enough that nobody will notice them.

The NerdMiner draws its power from any USB port or phone charger, so it can live next to a router or a monitor. The Gamma comes with its own 5 V / 8 A power supply; use that one, because a power supply that sags under load is the usual reason for random restarts.

Setup and firmware

Both devices are set up the same way and take about five minutes: plug in, join the setup network the miner opens, enter your 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and your Bitcoin address, save, restart. Neither needs software on your computer, and both come preset to a solo pool, so the first shares appear within minutes. The step-by-step walkthroughs with screenshots are the NerdMiner setup guide and the Bitaxe setup guide.

The difference is what you get afterwards. The NerdMiner runs the open-source NerdMiner firmware: the colour display shows hashrate, shares, best difficulty, block height and a clock, and the settings live in the setup portal. The Bitaxe runs AxeOS, also open source, with a web interface in your browser: live hashrate, temperature, chip frequency and voltage, pool settings and firmware updates, all from any device on your network. If you like to tinker with frequency and voltage, the Bitaxe is the one that lets you.

Noise, size and where it sits

The NerdMiner V4 weighs 40 g, sits in a 3D printed case in one of six colours and runs quietly from a USB port. It is a desk object first: people put it next to the monitor, on a shelf or in a display cabinet, where the colour screen is the point.

The Bitaxe Gamma weighs 73 g, measures about 10 by 6 cm and stands on its 3D printed stand with a fan over the BM1370. With the standard fan you hear it in a quiet room, the way you hear a small desktop fan. With the Noctua option it stays under 12 dB, which is quieter than most rooms are at night, and the hashrate is the same either way. Keep the fan side clear so warm air can leave, and it will run in a living room, a study or a bedroom without drawing attention.

Five scenarios

1. A gift for someone into Bitcoin. NerdMiner V4. It is affordable, looks good on a desk, and the recipient sets it up in five minutes and watches the display do real work. A Bitaxe is a fine gift too, but it is a bigger purchase and it asks for a place with airflow.
2. Learning how mining works. NerdMiner V4 to start, Bitaxe Gamma if you want to go further. The NerdMiner shows the mechanics: shares, difficulty, pool connection. The Bitaxe adds the ASIC layer, temperature, voltage and frequency in AxeOS, and the numbers from a real chip.
3. The best real chance in the single-chip class. Bitaxe Gamma. 1.3 TH/s at 17 W and 13 J/TH is the whole reason the Gamma exists. If you want a ticket that is drawn every ten minutes with a chance you can put a number on, this is the device, and its odds are 5 million times those of the NerdMiner.
4. A quiet desk. Either one. The NerdMiner has no fan noise to speak of. The Gamma with the Noctua option stays under 12 dB. If silence matters more than hashrate and you have no space for airflow, take the NerdMiner; if you want both, take the Gamma with Noctua.
5. Both. Nothing stops you from running a NerdMiner on the desk and a Bitaxe on the shelf, both pointed at the same solo pool with the same Bitcoin address. Two devices, one wallet, and the pool shows them side by side.

What about NerdAxe Gamma and NerdAxe Gaia?

The NerdAxe Gamma is a single BM1370 miner as well, with a colour display like the NerdMiner and hashrate like the Bitaxe Gamma, so it sits between the two devices on this page. The NerdAxe Gaia moves up a class with a BM1373 chip and 2.6 TH/s, and the NerdAxe Gaia Copper Pro puts the same chip under a copper cooler for 3 TH/s at 33 W. The NerdQAxe++ and the NerdOctaxe put four and eight chips into one box. Hashrate, power draw and efficiency of every miner we stock are in one table on our miner comparison page, and the whole family of small solo miners is described on our Bitcoin lottery miners page.