Heat pump running costs: what homeowners in 2026 are paying

Let’s clear something up straight away: if you’ve read that a heat pump will slash your heating bills in half, treat that claim with caution. It isn’t true for most people, and we’d rather give you the real framing than a shiny one.

Here’s the honest picture for 2026 — based on how heat pumps actually use electricity, not a single generic yearly bill for every home.

The bit nobody tells you: it’s often close to gas, not miles cheaper

Electricity costs roughly four times as much as gas, unit for unit. That sounds like bad news for a heat pump, since it runs on electricity — but a heat pump doesn’t burn electricity for heat the way a boiler burns gas. It moves heat from the outside air into your home.

Towsty’s estimate model currently assumes a space-heating seasonal performance factor (SPF) of around 3.4, and a heat-pump electricity assumption of around 22p/kWh. That rate is a blended figure (not a single retail standard-rate quote) — it already reflects typical heat-pump usage patterns, including some off-peak benefit. In plain English: for every unit of electricity the pump uses, it delivers roughly 3.4 units of heat when the system is designed and run well.

Do the maths on that, and the two fuels often end up close together under those assumptions. Some homes come out slightly ahead with the heat pump; some come out slightly behind. It genuinely depends on your insulation, design, controls, tariff, and what you’re replacing. If a website tells you a heat pump will always halve your bills, be sceptical. The realistic story is “roughly similar to gas, sometimes a bit less” — not “dramatically cheaper for everyone.”

Your actual yearly cost also moves with weather, hot-water use, flow temperature, and Ofgem price-cap changes. That’s why we estimate from your home’s heat demand rather than quoting one fixed £/year figure for every property.

The one thing that moves the needle

Here’s where further savings often hide — and the part most headline claims skip. A plain single-rate electricity tariff treats every hour the same. Several suppliers offer tariffs built for heat pump owners, with cheaper electricity overnight or in off-peak windows. Moving onto one of those (usually needing a smart meter) can beat even a blended heat-pump assumption if you can shift more of your heating into the cheap windows.

If you’re weighing a heat pump on cost alone, the tariff decision is one of the highest-leverage choices you make after a good install — it can tip a “similar to gas” outcome toward “meaningfully cheaper,” depending on your home and how you run the system.

Why your neighbour’s heat pump might cost more (or less) than yours

Two households can install similar equipment and end up with different bills:

• How warm your home stays. A well-insulated house asks the heat pump to work less hard. A draughty one asks more of it — see also how warm a heat pump keeps your house.
• How the system is set up. A heat pump sized and tuned properly runs more efficiently than one bolted on and left at a high flow temperature.
• How cold it gets outside. Heat pumps work a little harder in a proper cold snap — normal behaviour, not a fault.

None of this means a poorly insulated home can’t have a heat pump. It just means the running cost will sit a bit higher until fabric improvements catch up.

So, is it worth it?

On running costs alone in 2026, the honest answer is: often about the same as gas, and possibly a bit cheaper — especially on a heat-pump tariff. That’s not the eye-catching headline some websites promise, but it’s the true one for many homes.

Where a heat pump pulls ahead isn’t only the monthly bill. Systems typically last longer than a gas boiler, and government support can cut the upfront cost. In England and Wales that support is the Boiler Upgrade Scheme; Scotland uses Home Energy Scotland instead, and Northern Ireland has different local schemes. Running costs also tend to shift over time as electricity and gas prices move — none of that shows up in a single year’s comparison, but it adds up over the system’s life.