Following on the pioneering analysis by Pickart and Jencks of the energetics of the calcium pump, the present mini review attempts a similar analysis of the somewhat more complicated sodium--and potassium--activated ATPase pump-enzyme. The analysis is based on the measurements of the rate-constants of the individual steps in the enzymic reaction which brings about pumping and uses data assembled by Stürmer et al., in the laboratory of Peter Läuger in Konstanz. The aim of such an analysis is to calculate the overall free energy released on ATP hydrolysis and to apportion this energy among the successive steps of the pump-enzyme reaction. We calculate the so-called basic free energy changes that take into account the prevailing ligand and ion concentrations, rather than the standard-state free energies that refer to 1 M concentrations of these ions and ligands. Using appropriate values of the ion and ligand concentrations in cardiac muscle, the available free energy which can be released from the hydrolysis of ATP (at 20 degrees C) comes out at 575 mV. Following a complete cycle of pumping, 371 mV of this free energy are found stored in the sodium and potassium ion gradients. The remaining 204 mV from the free energy of hydrolysis of ATP are lost to the ATP system. This part of the energy, that had been transduced into the concentration gradient of sodium, has presumably been used in the living cell to drive the co- and counter-transport (symport and antiport) of ions and metabolites in secondary transports. The free energy changes are pretty evenly apportioned along the various steps in the pumping cycle. The steps that one might naively have thought to be "powered", such as the step in which covalently bound phosphate is transformed from a high-energy to a low-energy state, or the step in which sodium is released into the phase containing a high concentration of sodium, show some of the lowest drops of free energy, 61 mV and 27 mV, respectively. The most surprising step in the overall reaction of ATP hydrolysis and synthesis is the phosphorylation of the protein from inorganic phosphate with formation of the acylphosphate bond. The stabilization of the acylphosphate bond presumably arises from ionic interactions between the covalently bound phosphate itself and appropriate groupings on the enzyme. ATP formation on the F0F1 ATPase (the F-type ATPase) is in an analogous way stabilized in the first place by phospho-ligand/enzyme interactions.