Buying guide
What does it cost to heat a UK home with gas?
GuideDraft for owner review — wording and facts to be checked against sources before launch.
The numbers we use
- Gas unit rate: 7.97p per kWh — Ofgem’s price cap, GB average for Direct Debit customers, from 1 October to 31 December 2026.
- Gas standing charge: 29.68p a day under the same cap. You pay this whatever you use, so smart controls can’t reduce it.
- Typical gas use: 9,500 kWh a year — the medium “typical domestic consumption value” used from 1 July 2026.
Your own tariff and usage may be different. Your bill or supplier app shows your real figures.
A worked example
If a home uses 9,500 kWh of gas a year and three-quarters of it goes on space heating (our assumption — the rest is hot water and cooking):
| Step | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Gas used for heating | 9,500 × 75% | 7,125 kWh |
| Cost of that gas | 7,125 × 7.97p | about £568 a year |
| If heating gas fell by 10% | £568 × 10% | about £57 a year |
So at today’s price cap, each 10% cut in heating gas is worth roughly £57 a year for a typical home. A product costing £150 would take more than two and a half years to pay back at that rate — longer if you also pay a subscription.
Try it with your numbers
Our heating savings calculator does this sum for you, and lets you change every assumption.
Where savings come from
Smart controls save money mainly by not heating an empty home, by heating only the rooms you use, and — with OpenTherm or heat-pump controls — by helping the heating run more efficiently. If you already turn the heating down whenever you go out, the extra saving will be smaller.