In force 1 July to 30 September 2026
It does not cap your bill. It caps the price of a unit and the daily standing charge, separately, in each of fourteen regions and for each way of paying. Here are all of them, so you can find the one that applies to you instead of the average of everybody.
You will have read that the cap is £1,663 a year. That is not a limit on anybody’s bill. It is what one imaginary household would pay: one using exactly 2,500 units of electricity and 9,500 of gas a year, paying by monthly direct debit, in the average of fourteen regions that are not the same as each other.
What is actually capped is the price of one unit and the charge for one day. Use twice as much energy and you pay twice as much, and there is no ceiling on that anywhere. So the only useful question is not “what is the cap” but “what is the capped rate where I live, for the way I pay” — and that is the table below.
Between the cheapest and dearest region there is £138 a year on identical usage: East Midlands at £1,611 against Merseyside and North Wales at £1,748. Nothing you do changes which of those you are in.
A year in Eastern England at typical use, cheapest first.
Prepayment is no longer the dearest way to buy energy. Paying when the bill arrives is, by a distance, and it is the one people drift into rather than choose.
VAT on household electricity in England, Scotland and Wales is 5% today and gas is 5%. Electricity drops to zero on 1 October 2026 and stays there until 31 March 2027, worth roughly £45 over the six months, then returns to 5%. Northern Ireland keeps 5% on both throughout. Every rate on this page already has the right VAT on it for today.
Cheapest first, at Ofgem’s typical use for a home with mains gas, including VAT. Your own bill will differ by however much your usage differs.
| Area | Electricity | Standing | Gas | Standing | A year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| East MidlandsLincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire | 25.10p | 53.60p | 7.19p | 28.78p | £1,611 |
| North West EnglandGreater Manchester, Lancashire and Cumbria | 26.13p | 47.61p | 7.24p | 29.17p | £1,621 |
| LondonGreater London | 26.35p | 44.78p | 7.50p | 29.52p | £1,642 |
| West MidlandsBirmingham, the Black Country, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire | 25.33p | 59.71p | 7.27p | 29.06p | £1,648 |
| Eastern EnglandNorfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire | 26.38p | 53.94p | 7.26p | 28.70p | £1,651 |
| Southern EnglandHampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and the Isle of Wight | 26.42p | 49.70p | 7.53p | 28.53p | £1,661 |
| North East EnglandNorthumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham and Teesside | 25.22p | 64.29p | 7.28p | 29.15p | £1,663 |
| North ScotlandAberdeen, Dundee, Perth, the Highlands and the islands | 26.42p | 57.55p | 7.23p | 29.22p | £1,664 |
| YorkshireWest, South and East Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire | 25.30p | 64.38p | 7.27p | 29.12p | £1,664 |
| South East EnglandKent, Surrey and Sussex | 26.67p | 54.45p | 7.39p | 28.63p | £1,672 |
| South ScotlandGlasgow, Edinburgh and southern Scotland | 25.85p | 64.17p | 7.23p | 29.24p | £1,674 |
| South WalesSouth and mid Wales | 26.33p | 57.84p | 7.42p | 29.30p | £1,682 |
| South West EnglandDevon, Cornwall, Somerset, Bristol and Gloucestershire | 26.39p | 57.89p | 7.48p | 28.68p | £1,686 |
| Merseyside and North WalesMerseyside, Cheshire and North Wales | 27.66p | 70.76p | 7.28p | 29.42p | £1,748 |
Electricity and standing charges are per kWh and per day. Worked out from Ofgem’s published benchmark charges for 1 July to 30 September 2026: the cost at nil consumption gives the standing charge, and the difference up to typical consumption gives the unit rate.
It is not a limit on your bill at all. It limits the price of a unit and the daily standing charge. Use twice as much and you pay twice as much, with no ceiling anywhere. The figure in the news is what one particular average home would pay, not a cap on yours.
Fourteen regions, three ways of paying, two kinds of meter, and every combination has its own capped rate — so the rate you are capped at depends on your postcode and your payment method, not on the figure in the news. Move your household from London to Merseyside and the same energy costs around £100 a year more before you switch anything on.
In July 2026 the typical-use figures Ofgem prices the cap against were cut, so the headline bill fell further than any real bill did. Your own unit rate is the number to watch, and it went up.
Only if it stays below the cap for the whole fix. The cap changes every three months and a fix does not. Compare the yearly cost at your own usage, check the exit fee, and remember that a fix protects you from a rise and costs you a fall.
It is around a fifth of a typical bill and you pay it for an empty house. It is the reason using less can never take your bill below a certain floor, and the reason a second home or a barely-used flat can cost hundreds a year with the lights off.
Ofgem cut the usage it prices the cap against: electricity from 2,700 units a year to 2,500, and gas from 11,500 to 9,500, because homes genuinely use less than they did. It then raised the unit rates a little to make up the fixed costs that were being recovered through them.
So the headline bill fell further than any real bill did, and a comparison between this year’s headline and last year’s is a comparison between two different households. Your unit rate is the honest number to watch.
Ofgem: review of typical domestic consumption values, decisionOfgem builds every capped rate out of the same parts: the energy itself bought on the wholesale market, the cost of the wires and pipes that bring it to you, the social and environmental schemes governments have put on bills, what it costs a supplier to run, an allowance for supplier profit, a margin for costs nobody can predict, an adjustment that levels prepayment and direct debit standing charges, and VAT. Wholesale is the biggest single part and the one that moves; the rest is why a bill never falls as far or as fast as gas prices do.
The next cap covers 1 October to 31 December 2026 and is already published, so nothing about it is a surprise.
Most likely because you are looking at the national average and living in one of the fourteen regions, or because you are on a fixed deal, which the cap does not apply to at all. Find your region in the table above and compare your bill with that row.
Not on a standard variable tariff, which is what almost everybody who has never switched is on. A fixed deal you agreed to can be above it, and often is by the end of a two-year fix. The low standing charge trial tariffs also sit outside the cap by design.
Every three months, on 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October. Ofgem publishes each one about five weeks beforehand, so you can always see the next quarter coming while there is still time to do something about it.
It carries the cost of the local network, and some networks are far more expensive to run than others: long rural lines and few customers to spread the cost across. It also carries the cost of suppliers that collapsed, spread over everybody.
No. Northern Ireland has its own market and its own regulator, the Utility Regulator, and its own price controls. VAT there also stays at 5% on electricity rather than dropping to zero.
Not any more. Ofgem levelled the standing charges, and prepayment now has the cheapest capped rates of the three ways of paying. It is still harder to live with — you can run out — but it is no longer a penalty on the price.
Sources: Ofgem: energy price cap levels, 1 July to 30 September 2026, Ofgem: energy price cap default tariff levels and Ofgem: changes to the energy price cap, 1 October to 31 December 2026. Work out what yours costs a day.