Capped rates for 1 July to 30 September 2026
Not the figure in the news, which is for a home that is not yours. Your own gas and electricity, at the rate capped where you live, broken down by the day, the week, the month and the year — and split so you can see the part you can do something about.
Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. Prices are capped separately in each of the fourteen areas.
Ofgem’s own figures for a low, medium and higher-use home, cut in July 2026 because homes now use less than they did.
Otherwise this uses the capped rates for Eastern England. Your own are on page two of the bill, under your tariff. Pence, as printed.
Worked out on your own phone or computer. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere.
At the capped rate, July to September 2026
£137.57
a month, for gas and electricity
£25.14 of that is standing charge — 18.3% of the bill, and you pay it whether you use anything or not. Over a year that is £302 before a single light goes on.
A direct debit is the same every month. What it pays for is not. This is the shape a flat payment hides, and it is why the annual review in the spring so often comes with an arrears figure nobody was expecting.
December costs about £211.82 and July about £85.64 — 2.5 times the difference. A flat direct debit of about £137.57 a month builds credit through the summer to pay for the winter, so a summer statement showing you in credit is usually the system working rather than money you should ask for back.
Priced at your own electricity rate rather than a national average, so these are your numbers. Wattages are the Centre for Sustainable Energy’s; the times are shown so you can check the sum or argue with it.
A fridge, a freezer or a fridge-freezer never really switches off, so there is no honest average for it. Look on the label stuck inside the door or on the back: it gives a figure in kWh a year, which is the only number that describes your machine rather than somebody else's. Multiply it by your unit rate and you have the answer exactly. Centre for Sustainable Energy: how much electricity am I using?.
Capped rates are Ofgem’s for 1 July to 30 September 2026, for Eastern England, including VAT. How the cap works and what it does not do. Typical use is Ofgem’s, revised July 2026.
Updated every half hour
On an ordinary tariff you pay the same price all day, so this is not your bill. It is the live wholesale-linked price, which is what a half-hourly tariff charges and what the shape of demand looks like. Between now and tomorrow night it runs from 22.19p to 50.49p a unit — the same kettle, 2.3 times the price.
The cheapest three hours are Thu 11:30 to 14:30, averaging 24.08p a unit against 34.02p across the whole stretch. If your tariff charges the same all day, moving a wash there saves you nothing — but it is still the hour when the grid is cleanest and least strained, and it is what a time-of-use tariff would reward.
It limits the price of a unit and the daily standing charge, and nothing else. Use more, pay more, with no ceiling. In Eastern England a typical home paying by direct debit comes to about £1,651 a year, and the gap between the cheapest and dearest of the fourteen areas is £138 a year for exactly the same energy.
Every region and every way of payingFrom 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, VAT on household electricity in England, Scotland and Wales is zero instead of 5%, worth roughly £45 a year. Gas stays at 5%, and Northern Ireland keeps 5% on both. It goes back to 5% on 1 April, so your electricity bill rises that month even if nothing else changes. Worth knowing before you judge a fix that runs past it.
What else changed, and whenSometimes, and not always. There are fixed deals a few per cent under the cap at the moment, and there are five situations where moving costs you money. Both lists are on the same page, at the same length.
How to switch, and when not toNo amount of comparing fixes a bill you cannot pay. A supplier cannot disconnect you if you are working with them, there are grants that clear energy debt outright, and there is money a lot of households are entitled to and never claim. None of those pages carry adverts.
A direct debit is not the cost of your energy. It is a level monthly payment your supplier picks so the year evens out, which is why you build credit in summer and use it in winter. If it is far above the yearly figure here at your usage, ask them to explain it; if it is far below, expect an adjustment.
On the bill, usually on the second page under a heading like 'your tariff' or 'about your plan', and always on your annual statement. There will be one of each per fuel, in pence per kWh and pence per day. Those four numbers are all you need to know exactly what a year costs you.
Not really. It pays for the wires, the pipes and the cost of suppliers who have gone under, and you pay it for an empty house. A handful of low standing charge tariffs move that money onto the unit rate instead, which only helps if you use very little.
On the units, yes, penny for penny — a tenth less energy is a tenth off that part of the bill. On the standing charge, no, not by a penny. That is why this page splits them: it tells you what being careful can and cannot fix.
Yes. Every rate on this page is what you actually pay, with VAT at the rate in force on the day you are reading it. Ofgem publishes its own tables without VAT, which is one reason the numbers in the news sometimes look lower than your bill.
No. No supplier is recommended on this page at all. Where suppliers are listed they are ordered by the Citizens Advice score for how they treat people, which Citizens Advice publishes and we only reprint, and no business anywhere on this site can pay for a better position. Our promise, in writing.
Capped rates for 1 July to 30 September 2026 are derived from Ofgem’s own published benchmark charges for each of the fourteen regions. Ofgem: energy price cap levels, 1 July to 30 September 2026 and Ofgem: changes to the energy price cap, 1 October to 31 December 2026.