5 BEST Crypto Miners for Beginners with a Budget [2022 Rankings]

Crypto mining is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down, especially if you are interested in the possibilities of crypto long-term. 

But that doesn't make it any easier to start. The information you find on Google is misleading, or highly-promotional at best, the industry is filled with scammers, and it seems easy to do the wrong thing and lose money!

We want to simplify things in this article. We mine because it’s profitable and because it’s fun.

Who are we?

We've been mining for a while. Kevin is a software engineer, formerly at IBM, with a BA Computer Science from Cornell University. Xu is an industry veteran with 7 years of mining experience, and has profitably mined Litecoin throughout the past 3 crypto cycles. We write to help new miners avoid the mistakes we learned along the way.

Starting Out on a Budget

The biggest question you need to answer is:

Do I want to mine Bitcoin or an Altcoin?

If you’re starting out, you probably want to make a few hundred dollars a month, learn the ropes, and invest in better machines if things are going well. You’re not trying to drop $200K into top of the line machines.

Keeping this in mind, we’ve chosen devices that suit beginners. These are miners that fit under two budgets: a $5K budget and a $2K budget.

There is nothing quite like seeing your mining profits roll in for the first time. Realizing that you’re generating valuable assets with nothing but electricity! So let’s dive in!

Whatsminer M30s 88TH/s

The Whatsminer M30s is our selection for budget Bitcoin miner. It has a solid hashrate of 86TH/s.

Goldshell KD-BOX

The Goldshell BOX-series is perfect for beginner miners, because they are the only miners that are designed with home mining in mind. They take 110V (standard home USA outlet), they are MUCH quieter than typical ASICs, and they mine a selection of good Altcoins. These go for $1000 each right now.

Antminer L3++

The L3 has been around for a while, and it’s stuck around. We recommend it because it’s inexpensive, it can mine a number of coins including Litecoin and Dogecoin.

L3+ is profitable and is a great miner to get started with. Right now you can find these for $700-800 (US sellers as well) and can run them off 120 or 240 (depending on the power supply they sell with it.) There is also a tremendous amount of community support for these and lots of tweaks and mods to get more out of them.