Octopus Energy Gas: The Unit Rate, The Standing Charge and Who Sets Them

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Octopus Energy sells gas against the Ofgem price cap, and from 1 October 2026 that cap sets a direct debit unit rate of 7.97p per kWh and a standing charge of 29.68p a day. Octopus states that its own gas standing charge sits below the capped figure. Both numbers were taken on 16 September 2026 from Ofgem's published cap tables and from Octopus's own pages.

The company charging them is now the biggest energy supplier in the country. On 6 August 2026 Octopus reported 14.74 million domestic meter points — close to 15 million — and about 26% of Britain's home energy market, after more than 500,000 households switched to it in the first seven months of the year. Greg Jackson's company is the first to hold the top spot since the market opened to competition in the 1990s, and Which? has named it a Recommended Provider seven years running. The legal entity behind the bill is Octopus Energy Limited, company 09263424, registered at UK House, 5th Floor, 164-182 Oxford Street, London W1D 1NN.

Three of its tariffs carry gas: Flexible Octopus, the cap-protected standard variable rate; Octopus Fixed, which holds a unit rate and standing charge for 12 months; and Octopus Tracker, which re-prices every day off a published wholesale index. Agile Octopus, Octopus Go and Cosy Octopus are electricity products. Gas rates vary by region and by payment method, and Octopus publishes no single national figure, so the exact price for your address comes out of a postcode lookup rather than a rate card.

Three tariffs carry gas, and only one of them is capped

Flexible Octopus is the standard variable tariff and the only one of the three sitting under Ofgem's cap. It is the default: Octopus's own fixed-tariff wording says that at the end of a fix, "if you don't let us know your preference, we'll move you onto a flexible tariff".

Octopus Fixed holds both halves of the price for 12 months — "your unit rates and standing charge won't change for the duration of your contract". One thing it does not fix is what leaves your bank: the monthly direct debit is an estimate that Octopus reviews periodically, so a fixed rate and a fixed payment are not the same promise. On 27 May 2026 the company quoted its 12-month fixed at £1,780 a year for a typical dual fuel home, roughly £82 below the cap then in force.

Octopus Tracker is the interesting one, and the most exposed. Gas is re-priced daily from a formula Octopus publishes in full. For East England, on contracts joined or renewed on or after 1 April 2026, the gas unit charge is (W × 0.0361) + 2.0936p per kWh, where W is the day-ahead or weekend price in pence per therm taken from Marex Spectron on the previous working day. The rest of the price covers "environmental and social obligations, distribution, transmission, balancing and trading fees". Both the formula and the coefficients differ by region.

Tracker carries its own ceiling rather than Ofgem's. Price Cap Protect stops the daily price at 30p per kWh for gas and 100p per kWh for electricity. Set 30p against the 7.97p the cap allows this quarter and the scale of that ceiling is clear — it is roughly 3.8 times the capped rate, and Octopus says as much itself, describing the protection as "a lot higher than Ofgem's energy price cap" and advising that anyone who could not absorb a high price is "probably better off sticking with a protected tariff such as Flexible Octopus". Tracker also needs a smart meter that reports remotely — a second-generation SMETS2 meter, or a SMETS1 made by Secure — and connecting to one takes Octopus around 14 days. There is no exit fee for leaving Tracker.

The standing charge is the part Octopus actually competes on

A gas standing charge of 29.68p a day is £108.33 across a year, payable whether the boiler runs or not. Put it beside the gas itself and the proportion is larger than most people assume: at Ofgem's assumed 9,500 kWh a year, 7.97p per kWh comes to £757.15 of gas, so the standing charge is about 12.5% of the whole gas bill. For a flat that barely uses the boiler, the share is higher still.

This is the number Octopus has chosen to fight on, and it has a long record of doing so. Its value page states that "our Flexible Octopus standing charges are 6.6% lower for gas and 3.4% lower for electricity than the price cap". On this quarter's capped figure a 6.6% discount would be about 27.72p a day, worth roughly £7.15 over a year — real, if modest. The important caveat is that the page dates that comparison to June 2025, so the current percentage needs confirming with Octopus rather than assuming. The precedent goes back further: in a £40 million package announced on 17 September 2022, Octopus cut standing charges 4% below the cap for every Flexible customer, charging 26.84p a day for gas against the cap's 28.49p from 1 October 2022, worth about £12 a year to a dual fuel household, and offered standing charge holidays of one, three or six months to up to 100,000 eligible homes.

Regulation has since caught up with the argument. Ofgem confirmed that every large supplier must offer at least one lower standing charge tariff, covering gas as well as electricity, across every region of Great Britain, by the end of January 2026. Tim Jarvis, a Director General at Ofgem, framed the limits of it plainly: "The costs covered by the standing charge ultimately must be paid." Ofgem's own assessment is that the change is "unlikely to reduce bills", because a lower standing charge is bought with a higher unit rate — it moves the money rather than removing it, which helps a low user and penalises a heavy one.

The only Octopus tariff with no standing charge at all that we could find is not a household product. It is sold to Octopus Energy for Business customers in bands 2, 3 or 4 on a 12-month fixed contract, and the announcement introducing it, dated 30 October 2023, concerns electricity and says nothing about gas or about domestic customers. Whether a domestic low standing charge option now exists in response to the January 2026 requirement is a question for Octopus; we could not establish it from a primary source.

Ofgem decided the typical home burns 17% less gas, and the bill went up anyway

On 26 August 2026 Ofgem set the cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026 at £1,723 a year for a typical dual fuel direct debit household, up £60 — about £5 a month, or 4% — from £1,663. Around 22 million households sit on default tariffs inside the cap, roughly 20 million of them on standard variable rates: about 12 million paying by direct debit, 3 million on standard credit and 5 million on prepayment meters. The other 35% of the market, some 11 million households, are on fixed deals the rise does not touch. Neil Kenward, Ofgem's Director General for Markets, gave the reason as bluntly as a regulator does: "High international gas prices are continuing to drive energy costs in the UK." Prices remain about 52% below the 2022 crisis peak of £2,500.

The same review quietly changed what "typical" means. Ofgem updated its Typical Domestic Consumption Values to reflect a household using 7% less electricity and 17% less gas than the previous assumption, landing on 9,500 kWh of gas and 2,500 kWh of electricity a year. That matters more than it sounds, because every headline annual figure quoted anywhere is that consumption multiplied by the capped rates. Lower the assumed usage and the advertised annual number falls even if nothing about the price improves.

Set the new assumption against measured behaviour and a gap appears. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's National Energy Efficiency Data Framework report, published 11 June 2026, puts median household gas consumption in 2024 at 10,000 kWh in England and Wales and 10,600 kWh in Scotland. Ofgem's typical household is therefore 500 kWh under the England and Wales median and 1,100 kWh under Scotland's — about £40 and £88 of extra gas at this quarter's rate. The £1,723 figure is a real calculation, but a median home in Scotland should expect to pay more than it, before anything else is added.

One line in the October change is worth reading twice if gas is what you are buying. VAT was removed from electricity from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027. Gas still carries 5% VAT. The relief lands entirely on the other fuel, so a gas-only customer sees none of it.

Octopus publishes its own forward view, and it is not comfortable reading. Its predictions page, last updated August 2026, has £1,959 for January to March 2027 — marked low confidence — then £1,916 for April to June 2027 and £1,708 for July to September, both marked very low confidence. That first number is the one that decides whether a 12-month fix looks expensive today.

Who is selling you the gas

Octopus Energy Limited is a private limited company, number 09263424, incorporated on 14 October 2014 under the name Mercury Energy Supply Limited and renamed on 21 August 2015. Its registered activities at Companies House are SIC 35140, trade of electricity, and SIC 35230, trade of gas through mains. Accounts made up to 30 April 2025 are filed and the next set, to 30 April 2026, is due by 31 January 2027. It holds separate electricity and gas supply licences from Ofgem, and gas supply is the licensed activity that puts the boiler in this page's scope.

Its scale arrived quickly and partly by rescue. Ofgem has appointed Octopus as supplier of last resort for both the gas and electricity customers of failed suppliers, including Avro Energy and UK Energy Incubator Hub, and the business absorbed 1.3 million households from Shell Energy Retail as well as ENGIE's UK residential supply book. Organic growth followed: on 6 August 2026 the company reported more than 500,000 households switching to it in the first seven months of 2026 and 14.74 million domestic meter points, around 26% of the market. "Half a million homes have chosen Octopus already this year because they want an energy company that works harder for them," said Greg Jackson, its founder and chief executive.

Above the supply business sits a much larger group: more than 10 million homes served in Britain and abroad, operations in the UK, Germany, the USA, Japan, Spain, Italy, France and New Zealand, 3,000+ staff, 400+ green generators under management and more than 260 large-scale generation projects spanning 19 countries and 17 technologies. Octopus says it absorbed more than £150 million during the energy crisis to hold the cheapest variable tariff in the country, and puts the total saved by pricing below the cap since then at £166 million as at May 2026.

One number that travels with the brand deserves a caveat on a gas page. The 85% renewable, 15% nuclear and 0% fossil fuel mix recorded against Octopus is an electricity fuel mix disclosure. The gas in the pipe is gas, from the same national grid as everyone else's, and no supplier's tariff changes that.

What the independent scorecard says, line by line

Domestic energy has one genuinely independent league table: the Citizens Advice star rating, which covers every supplier with more than 25,000 customer accounts and scores four things on published weightings. Complaints carry 35% of the total, ease of contact 30% (average call waiting time 18%, email response 6%, other channels such as webchat, WhatsApp, SMS and in-app messaging 6%), billing and metering 25% (billing accuracy 15%, smart meter operation 10%) and customer commitments the remaining 10%.

For January to March 2026, Octopus scored 3.67 out of 5 and placed fourth on the table. The components were 3.5 for fewer complaints, 3.6 for contact waiting time, 3.4 for billing and metering and a full 5 for customer commitments. Underneath those stars sit the raw measurements: 21.3 complaints per 10,000 customers, an average call centre wait of 1 minute 17 seconds, and bills accurate for 96.44% of smart meter customers and 94.19% of those on traditional meters. For context on the waiting time, Citizens Advice awards five stars only for answering in under 30 seconds, so 1 minute 17 is good rather than exceptional. The full marks come from membership of both the Energy Switch Guarantee and the Vulnerability Commitment.

A fourth place and a 3.67 are a long way from the marketing, and they are also the most useful thing on this page, because they are measured the same way for every supplier. Alongside them sit two industry awards worth having: Which? Recommended Provider seven years in a row, and Uswitch Supplier of the Year.

The sector-wide picture is deteriorating, which is the context any single supplier's score belongs in. The Energy Ombudsman reported on 24 August 2026 that it accepted 46,532 cases in the first half of 2026, up 16% on the 40,068 a year earlier. Billing accounted for 58% of them — 27,006 cases, up 15% — with smart meters at 4,817 (up 6%), customer service at 3,500 (down 5%) and standard meters at 1,095. Only 53% of suppliers signposted consumers to their rights properly, although that was up from 48% the year before.

The escalation route is the same for Octopus as for anyone: complain to the supplier first, and after 8 weeks, or as soon as a deadlock letter arrives, take it to the Energy Ombudsman on 0330 440 1624 or enquiry@energyombudsman.org. The service is free to the consumer.

The firm selling the gas also sells the machine that replaces the boiler

There are 18.9 million gas properties in England and Wales and 1.7 million in Scotland, on 2024 data — more than 20 million homes buying the product this page is about. The same dataset shows the market shrinking under its own suppliers' feet: median household gas consumption in England and Wales in 2024 was 13% below 2021 and 43% below 2005, with a small 3% rebound between 2022 and 2024 after the crisis-era collapse. Newer housing uses less again — a home built in 2023 burned about 8% less gas than one built in 2010.

Octopus is on both sides of that trend, and unusually open about it. It is a heat pump installer as well as a gas supplier, and it publishes its prices. The government's Boiler Upgrade Scheme pays £7,500 towards an air source heat pump for homeowners in England and Wales, £9,000 for off-gas-grid homes running on oil or LPG until March 2027, and £5,000 for a biomass boiler; the scheme currently runs to March 2028, excludes new builds and social housing, applies no income test, and requires the installation to be commissioned within 120 days of the grant application. Against that grant, Octopus puts its typical heat pump price at £4,459 — the median of what it charged between September 2025 and February 2026. Households that make the switch move onto Cosy Octopus, its tariff for heat pumps and electric boilers.

For somebody choosing a gas supplier today that is worth noticing rather than worrying about. The company quoting for your gas has a commercial interest in selling you the appliance that ends the gas supply, and it will quote for both from the same account. On this one point the incentive and the customer's interest point the same way, and the published £4,459 median is a harder number than most of this trade offers.

Where the numbers on Octopus's own pages have gone stale

The gap between how well this supplier performs and how carefully it evidences it is the real criticism here, and it is easy to check.

The value page carries the 6.6% gas standing charge discount and dates it to June 2025. It quotes a typical dual fuel annual fixed price of £1,731 dated 4 March 2025. It says a household that switched in 2016 and stayed on Flexible Octopus "would've saved £1,456 by now". A second page making the same argument says £1,451, and measures Flexible Octopus at £1,913 a year against a price cap of £1,928 — the cap for January 2024, which is more than two and a half years out of date, and a standing charge "4% lower" rather than 6.6%. Two pages, two versions of one saving, two different discounts and a benchmark from a different regulatory era. The claim that Octopus "has the cheapest default tariff of any large supplier" is attributed to Ofgem's Retail Market Indicators without naming the quarter.

None of that means the underlying claim is false — Ofgem's own October announcement noted fixed tariffs available at £100 or more below the cap, and Octopus's fixed price in May 2026 was £82 under the cap of the day. It does mean a reader cannot verify the saving from the pages making it, which for a comparison is the whole job.

Two practical gaps sit alongside. First, there is no published national gas unit rate or standing charge anywhere on the site; every figure is behind a postcode, which is defensible given regional variation and still makes a like-for-like comparison impossible without opening quotes with several suppliers. Second, the Warm Home Discount — £150, applied by your supplier rather than paid to you, with the scheme closed and reopening in October 2026 for winter 2026 to 2027 — comes off the electricity bill. A customer who takes only gas from Octopus gets nothing from it, and nothing from the electricity VAT holiday either.

The support that does exist is real and worth asking about: the £40 million Octo Assist fund, which Octopus says has helped more than 110,000 customers, along with free electric blankets it costs at a £300 winter saving for a typical home.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 16 September 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.