In the market there are conventional alkaline electrolysers and advanced polymer membrane electrolysers, with higher performance, but they are both quite expensive. Indeed, the materials commonly utilized for water electrolysis in alkaline electrolysers are those based on Raney nickel and their alloys, but these materials are expensive. Taking into account those aspects, the following work aims, as other authors [Olivares-Ramíreza JM, Campos-Corneliob ML, Uribe Godínezb J, Borja-Arcob E, Castellanosb RH. Studies on the hydrogen evolution reaction on different stainless steels. Int J Hydrogen Energy 2007; 32: 3170-3. [1]; Henrique dos Santos Andrade M, Lima Aciolia M, Ginaldo da Silva Juniora J, Carlos Pereira Silvaa J, Oliveira Vilarc E, Tonholoa J, Preliminary investigation of some commercial alloys for hydrogen evolution in alkaline water electrolysis. Int J Hydrogen Energy 2004;29:235-41. [2]], to highlight how it is possible to produce hydrogen in economical ways using less advanced technologies. A conventional alkaline electrolytic cell, "lab-electrolyser", has been built using economical material. It is composed of electrodes of 5.0 cm×5.0 cm characterized by a current density of about 250 mA/cm2 and an efficiency of about 65% at 55 °C; the cell produces about 2.7 Nl/h of hydrogen. The overall cost of this devise has been compared with the cost of the electrolysers available on the market, hypothesizing a linear dependence cost with the productive capacity. The conclusion has been that there is a big margin for costs decreasing even taking into account all the auxiliary systems for an electrolysis process. © 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy.