The manufacturing industry has been focusing on calculating energy consumption because of increased sustainability and environmental consciousness, resulting in a large number of calculation models. However, evaluation on these existing models is missing, so that practitioners often have trouble selecting the right energy models. To identify the most appropriate, cost-effective, and easy-to-implement energy models, three tasks were conducted in this paper. First, various experimental or empirical energy consumption models of spindle acceleration, spindle rotation, feed and material removal, and those of machine tool during material removal processes are reviewed. Then, five evaluation criteria, applicability, accuracy, computational efforts, complexity of fitting coefficients, and ease of data collection, are proposed. These criteria are identified based on the general steps to run the calculation models. Finally, the evaluation criteria are applied with the supporting experimental data of external turning to rank the models. This work is expected to assist practitioners in selecting models to calculate energy consumption in metal cutting processes for a particular situation and purpose.