Best Heat Pump Tariffs in the UK: Every Open Tariff Compared

Every heat pump tariff below, and Agile, needs a smart meter that sends half-hourly readings; Economy 7 also works with an older two rate meter. Rates vary by region and, on the variable tariffs, change with the price cap, so check your own postcode before you switch.

For most heat pump owners, Cosy Octopus is still the tariff to beat. Eight cheap hours a day in three windows, no tie to any heat pump brand, no exit fee, and a 1pm to 4pm window that lets you heat the cylinder and warm the house in the mildest part of the day, when the heat pump is at its most efficient. The catch is the 4pm to 7pm peak, 50 per cent above the day rate. A home that cannot coast through those three hours on stored warmth loses part of the saving.

If you would rather have no peak penalty at all, EDF Heat Pump Tracker is the simplest option on the market: two three-hour windows at 10p below your regional standard rate, the standard rate the rest of the time, no exit fee and the same standing charge as EDF's standard tariff. It saves less than Cosy on paper but it cannot punish you.

E.ON Next Pumped suits homes that heat mostly overnight and have a large hot water cylinder, because its cheapest band runs from 10pm to 6am. British Gas Heat Power has the longest cheap windows, ten hours a day at half price, but British Gas only shows the rate it halves when you ask for a quote. Intelligent Octopus Go has the lowest off-peak rate of all at 7.6p, but you need a compatible electric car or charger to join, so it is an EV tariff that happens to suit a heat pump. Our EV cost calculator shows what it does for a car. Octopus Agile can do well when a smart controller shifts the heating around the price, and costs about the same as the standard rate when nothing does.

The table shows what a 3-bed semi with 9,900 kWh of annual heat demand pays for heating on each tariff, with the heat pump running at 2.78, the median measured in the Electrification of Heat trial for DESNZ. That is 3,561 kWh of electricity a year. We assume the share of heating that moves into the cheap windows scales with how many cheap hours the tariff offers: 60 per cent with eight hours, 55 per cent with seven, 50 per cent with six and 45 per cent with five. Where a tariff has a 4pm to 7pm peak, 10 per cent of heating lands in it. Standing charges are left out. Our calculators use this Cosy Octopus costing for a heat pump tariff. The average of the 14 regions from 1 October 2026 is 12.33p in the cheap hours, 25.13p in the day and 37.70p in the peak, which comes to 18.7p per kWh with 60 per cent, 30 per cent and 10 per cent of heating in each, so they give the same £666 a year for this semi. By region it runs from about 18.0p in the East Midlands to 19.9p in North Wales and Merseyside. A home that kept all its heating out of the 4pm to 7pm peak would pay about 17.5p per kWh instead. British Gas Heat Power and Intelligent Octopus Go are not costed, because their unit rates are only shown in a quote.

The savings scale with the house. A 4-bed detached home with 13,140 kWh of annual heat demand pays £1,244 a year for heating on the standard rate and about £884 on Cosy Octopus, a saving of about £360. Over 15 years at today's prices, the gap between Cosy Octopus and the standard rate is about £4,100 for the 3-bed semi and £5,400 for the 4-bed house. Compare the result with gas using the boiler vs heat pump calculator, and see the full picture by property type in the running costs guide. To price your own home on any tariff, use the heat pump running cost calculator.

OVO Heat Pump Plus closed. OVO stopped taking new customers on Heat Pump Plus in late November 2025, and its staff confirmed on the OVO Forum that the tariff has not been available since 1 February 2026. OVO lists no replacement heat pump tariff, so OVO customers with a heat pump need to switch supplier for a heat pump rate.

Cosy Octopus has a new 12 month fix. Its three windows still total eight hours a day, and a 12 month fixed version sits alongside the variable one; the current fix went on sale on 26 September 2026 and, unlike the one it replaced, has a £50 exit fee. On 5 October its rates worked out about 19 per cent above the variable tariff's on our costing, so compare both on the day you switch.

Octopus is not the only choice. EDF, E.ON Next, British Gas and ScottishPower all run a heat pump tariff, and none of them requires a particular heat pump brand. Good Energy still has a heat pump tariff page, but on 25 September 2026 its tariff list showed every heat pump tariff as closed, including the August 2026 fix (15p off-peak from 5am to 9am and 1pm to 4pm, £75 exit fee). Ask Good Energy before relying on it.

VAT on electricity is zero from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027. Gas keeps its 5 per cent rate. That is why the October cap rate of 26.32p is only 0.8 per cent above the summer rate of 26.11p, and why you should compare tariffs on their October prices rather than on figures published in the summer.

The saving from any of these tariffs depends on how much of your heating you can move into the cheap hours. These are the habits that make the difference.

Warm the house before the window closes. On Cosy Octopus and EDF Heat Pump Tracker, run the heating from 4am so the house is up to temperature by 7am. A well-insulated home then holds most of that warmth through the morning. The better your loft insulation and draught-proofing, the longer it lasts.

Heat the cylinder in the afternoon. The 1pm to 4pm window on Cosy, EDF and British Gas, and ScottishPower's 11am to 4pm window, fall in the warmest part of the day, when the heat pump gets the most heat from each unit of electricity. Set the hot water to heat then, and size the cylinder so it carries the household through to the next window.

Coast through the peak. On tariffs with a 4pm to 7pm peak, set the thermostat one or two degrees lower for those three hours. In a home with decent insulation the drop is barely noticeable, and it avoids paying about 38p to 49p a unit.

Let a controller do it. A smart thermostat that knows your tariff windows schedules all of this for you, and on Agile it is the only sensible way to run a heat pump.

Use thermal mass. Solid floors, brick walls, big radiators and a large cylinder all store heat. Homes with plenty of it can heat hard in the cheap hours and coast through the expensive ones. Homes with little of it should favour a tariff with no evening peak, such as EDF's.

Unit rates get the attention, but the daily standing charge is paid every day of the year regardless. From 1 October, EDF Heat Pump Tracker charges 42.92p a day in London up to 67.66p in North Wales and Merseyside, the same as EDF's standard tariff, and E.ON Next Pumped charges the same amounts. Cosy Octopus charged 40.4p a day in London and 48.6p in the East Midlands on 5 October, with no VAT to add. Cosy Octopus on its variable tariff, EDF Heat Pump Tracker and E.ON Next Pumped have no exit fee, the Cosy 12 month fix on sale since 26 September has a £50 exit fee, and ScottishPower lets you move between its own tariffs without one.

Octopus, EDF and ScottishPower ask new customers to join a standard tariff first and move to the heat pump tariff once the smart meter is connected; Octopus and EDF say connecting to the meter usually takes around 14 days. E.ON Next lets new and existing customers sign up to Next Pumped directly, but it needs monthly Direct Debit and an online account, and is not open to Smart Pay As You Go. British Gas Heat Power is a fixed tariff for British Gas electricity customers who pay by credit, on monthly or quarterly bills by Direct Debit, not by prepayment. If you are part way through a fixed deal with another supplier, check its exit fee before you move.

With solar panels, the heat pump can run partly on your own solar power on spring and summer days, and the tariff supplies cheaper power for the winter. The 1pm to 4pm windows on Cosy and EDF overlap the sunniest part of the day, so on a bright afternoon solar power and the cheap rate work together. Add a battery and you can charge it in the cheap window as well, then run the evening peak from stored power. The Energy Saving Trust reports that combining a heat pump with solar panels, a battery and a time of use tariff can cut bills substantially. The solar payback guide has the full figures, and your smart meter's in-home display shows what you are spending as you go.

Tariff rates, windows and conditions from the suppliers' own pages: Cosy Octopus, Intelligent Octopus Go, EDF Heat Pump Tracker, E.ON Next Pumped, British Gas Heat Power, ScottishPower Heat Pump Saver and Good Energy's tariff list, plus the public price feeds of Octopus Energy (Cosy, Agile, Economy 7) and E.ON Next (Next Pumped Fixed 12m V16), all checked on 25 September 2026. Cosy Octopus and its 12 month fix (products COSY-22-12-08 and COSY-FIX-12M-26-09-26) were read again from Octopus's price feed on 5 October 2026, at the rates in force from 1 October 2026. OVO Heat Pump Plus status from OVO staff posts on the OVO Forum. Standard rates from the Ofgem price cap for October to December 2026. Heat demand from our model fitted to DESNZ National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework data; heat pump efficiency from the Electrification of Heat trial. Smart meter installation charges from GOV.UK.