Find your rung, then your charger
This is the table this page exists for. Read down the first column to the breaker you can dedicate to charging, and everything to the right of it follows.
Circuit size to charger setting to real charge speed, at 240 volts. The amp column is the NEC’s 80% continuous-load limit; the kW column is amps × 240 V; the miles-per-hour column is OUR arithmetic at a reference of roughly 3.5 miles per kWh, printed so you can re-run it for your own car. Nothing in this table is a manufacturer speed claim, and the gap that matters is at the bottom of the range, not the top.| Circuit | Charger setting | Power | Range added | Our pick at this rung | When you are on it |
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| 20 A | 16 A | 3.8 kW | ~13 mi/hr | ChargePoint Home Flex or Autel 50A, dialled to 16 A | A panel with almost nothing spare. Still roughly three times Level 1 speed, and enough for a 40-mile commute overnight |
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| 30 A | 24 A | 5.8 kW | ~20 mi/hr | Any adjustable unit at 24 A; nobody builds a native 24 A charger | A reclaimed dryer circuit, or what a 100-amp service can give up without a load calculation fight |
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| 40 A | 32 A | 7.7 kW | ~27 mi/hr | Ampure Go (native 32 A), or an adjustable unit set down | An older range circuit. Also the ceiling many plug-in hybrids and older EVs can actually use |
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| 50 A | 40 A | 9.6 kW | ~34 mi/hr | EVIQO 40A plug-in, or the ELEGRP 40A portable on a budget | By far the most common: this is the circuit behind a NEMA 14-50 receptacle, and the reason every plug-in charger stops at 40 A |
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| 60 A | 48 A | 11.5 kW | ~40 mi/hr | EVIQO 48A hardwired, or the Emporia Level 2 hardwired | The standard new-install pairing, and the fastest speed most cars on the road can accept |
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| 70 A | 50 A | 12 kW | ~42 mi/hr | Autel MaxiCharger AC Elite Home 50A | Buys under two extra miles an hour over 48 A for a bigger breaker and heavier conductors. Worth it only if the panel is being rebuilt anyway |
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| 100 A | 80 A | 19.2 kW | ~67 mi/hr | Autel MaxiCharger 80A | Almost entirely theoretical at home: very few vehicles accept more than 48 A on AC, so the charger delivers nothing the car will take |
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Three things are worth drawing out of it. The first is that the speed gain is front-loaded. Going from 16 amps to 32 roughly doubles your overnight range. Going from 40 to 48 adds about six miles an hour. Going from 48 to 50 adds under two. Yet the install cost rises the other way: the top of the table is where the heavy conductors and the panel arguments are.
The second is that two rungs have no native hardware.Nobody builds a 24-amp home charger, and almost nobody builds a native 32-amp one — the Ampure Go is the only 32-amp unit in our registry. If your circuit is 30 or 40 amps, your charger is an adjustable unit set down to fit, which is the single strongest practical argument for buying adjustable.
The third is that the bottom of the table is not a consolation prize. Sixteen amps on a 20-amp circuit is about 13 miles of range an hour — roughly three times what a 120-volt outlet does, and about 130 miles over a ten-hour night. If your panel is full, that is a working home-charging setup, not a failure, and it is why our small-panel roundup exists.
The 125% rule, and the two numbers it creates
Almost every confusing thing about 240-volt charger shopping comes from one code provision, so it is worth stating plainly once. The NEC classifies EV charging as a continuous load — three hours or more at full draw, which overnight charging obviously is — and a branch circuit serving a continuous load must be rated for 125% of that load.
Run forwards it gives you the breaker: 40 × 1.25 = 50, 48 × 1.25 = 60, 50 × 1.25 = 62.5. Run backwards it gives you the charger: 50 × 0.8 = 40, 60 × 0.8 = 48. The one awkward case is 50 amps, because 62.5 is not a breaker size and the next one up is 70 — which is why two of the brands we track publish a 70-amp requirement for their 50-amp setting in plain text, and why 40 versus 48 amps is a more useful comparison than anything involving fifty.
That same rule is why every plug-in charger sold in North America stops at 40 amps, regardless of brand. A receptacle-based install puts the charger on the circuit behind the receptacle, a 14-50 sits on 50 amps, and 80% of 50 is 40. It is not a derating or a cost saving, and no manufacturer can engineer around it — which also means a plug-in listing advertising more than 40 amps is advertising a setting that circuit cannot support. Hardwired versus plug-in is the decision this creates.
Three ways to spend a 240-volt circuit
Once the circuit exists, there are genuinely three different products you can put on the end of it, and the right one is not always the obvious one.
A hardwired wall unitis the fastest and the tidiest: no receptacle, no plug to weather, and access to 48 amps. It is also wired into the building, which means an electrician both times — installing it and removing it. Our hardwired roundup ranks that field, and the under-$500 version covers it on a budget.
A receptacle plus a wall-mounted plug-in unit caps at 40 amps and buys you portability: the charger is personal property, it comes off the wall when you move, and a failed unit is a swap rather than a service call. It usually needs GFCI protection on the circuit, which is the hidden cost. The plug-in roundup is the field.
A receptacle plus a portable is the same 40 amps for considerably less money, with a bag instead of a wall bracket. The ELEGRP on this page publishes the same 40 amps and the same 25-foot cable as the wall units, and the Ampure Go adds a 120-volt cord so the same unit works at a hotel. What you give up is cable management, a holster, and in most cases a published enclosure rating on the whole assembly rather than on the station alone. The portable roundup ranks them, and portable versus wall-mounted is the head-to-head.
What 240 volts actually gets you over 120
The jump from a household outlet to a dedicated 240-volt circuit is the largest single improvement available in home charging, and it is worth quantifying rather than asserting.
A 120-volt outlet on a 15-amp circuit gives a charger 12 amps, which is about 1.4 kW and roughly 5 miles of range an hour by our arithmetic. The most modest 240-volt rung in the table above — 16 amps on a 20-amp circuit — is 3.8 kW and about 13 miles an hour. The common case, 40 amps on a 50-amp circuit, is 9.6 kW and about 34. That is a six-to-seven-fold improvement, and Hyundai, to pick one manufacturer that publishes a figure of its own, describes Level 2 as charging “up to 9 times faster than with a conventional 110-volt outlet”.
The practical effect is not really about speed, though. It is about never having to think about charging.At 5 miles an hour you plan; at 34 you plug in and the car is full in the morning whatever you did yesterday. That is the thing people actually buy, and it arrives at the 50-amp rung rather than at the top of the table — which is why we would spend a marginal budget on a longer cable or a better-sealed enclosure long before spending it on the last two amps. Is a Level 2 charger worth it works through the payback case, and Level 1 versus Level 2 is the honest comparison for anyone still deciding whether to run the circuit at all.
