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Octopus Energy supplier profile

What Octopus Energy is as a supplier, its scale and financial backing and the range of import and export tariffs it runs for homes with EVs, solar, batteries and heat pumps.

Company status, customer and market figures, and tariff terms in this profile were checked on 22 July 2026. Historical figures retain the date stated with them.

Octopus Energy is a British electricity and gas supplier founded in 2015. In January 2025 it became the largest household energy supplier in Great Britain, the first time the top position had changed since the retail market opened to competition in the 1990s. It runs a wide range of smart tariffs built around homes with EVs, solar panels, home batteries and heat pumps. This entry covers the supplier and its tariff range at a profile level; the individual tariffs have their own detailed entries.

Growth, acquisitions and market share

When Octopus took the top spot in January 2025 it held 23.7% of household energy accounts, according to Cornwall Insight. Later figures from the price-comparison service Uswitch put it at roughly a quarter of both markets by mid-2026, around 25.7% of electricity customers and 25.9% of gas customers. Six suppliers now hold more than 90% of the household market between them.

A large part of that scale came from taking on the customers of suppliers that failed during the 2018 to 2022 energy crisis. Ofgem appointed Octopus as Supplier of Last Resort (SOLR) several times: Iresa (around 100,000 customers, 2018), Avro Energy (around 580,000 customers, 2021) and Bulb Energy (around 1.5 million customers, 2022, the largest supplier failure in UK history). The Bulb transfer went through a government-brokered deal. Octopus also bought Shell’s UK household energy business in December 2023. Whether you count accounts, individual customers or whole homes changes the headline, so figures vary; for UK households it is around 14 million accounts across roughly 8 million homes.

Ownership, finances and the Kraken platform

Octopus Energy Group is privately held with no stock-market listing. Octopus Group, a British asset manager, is the majority shareholder, alongside investors including Origin Energy, Tokyo Gas, Generation IM and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). Reported group revenue was £13.7 billion for 2025, up from £4.2 billion in 2022, with operating income of £195 million for 2024 and a net loss of £255 million for 2025. Total assets were around £1.5 billion and the group employed about 11,000 people. A 2023 valuation put the group at roughly $7.8 billion. The UK supply company is registered at Companies House under number 09263424, with accounts last made up to 30 April 2025.

Much of the group’s value sits in Kraken Technologies, the cloud software platform that runs Octopus’s own billing and customer accounts and is licensed to other utilities. Kraken supports more than 50 million accounts worldwide through deals with suppliers including EDF Energy, E.ON, Good Energy and Origin Energy, and the group has set a target of 100 million accounts by 2027. Octopus announced plans to demerge Kraken in September 2025, and in December 2025 sold a minority stake for $1 billion, valuing the platform at $8.65 billion. For a customer, Kraken is the system behind the app, the half-hourly tariff logic and the smart-charging control.

Service record and independent ratings

Octopus has been a Which? Recommended Provider for eight consecutive years, through 2026. In the Which? energy survey it scored 74% overall, with a customer score of 79%. In the Ofgem and Citizens Advice satisfaction survey run over July and August 2025 it recorded around 90% overall satisfaction, reported as its highest since that survey began in 2018, with a customer service score of 84% against a national average of 76%. Octopus also recorded the fewest complaints of any large supplier over three consecutive quarters to mid-2025, and holds a Trustpilot rating of 4.8 out of 5 from more than 700,000 reviews.

Standard tariffs: Flexible and Fixed

Flexible Octopus is the standard variable tariff (SVT), which Octopus keeps priced below the Ofgem energy price cap. Octopus Fixed locks unit rates and standing charges for a fixed term. Unit rates and standing charges vary by distribution region and changed again when the July 2026 cap took effect, so a postcode quote is the only reliable current price. The electricity supply is described as 100% renewable, backed by Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) certificates.

Tariffs for EV charging

Two import tariffs cover home EV charging. Octopus Go is the simpler one: a cheap five-hour overnight window, roughly 00:30 to 05:30, that works with any EV and any charger. Intelligent Octopus Go (IOG) hands overnight charging control to Octopus, which schedules the car within a wider six-hour window (around 23:30 to 05:30) and applies the off-peak rate to that smart-charged energy. Octopus cites IOG as the most popular EV tariff in the market, with Ofgem counting 653,000 domestic customers on smart time-of-use EV tariffs in July 2025, more than half of them with Octopus. It lists compatibility with over 280 vehicle and charger combinations, including chargers such as Ohme, Zappi, Hypervolt, Indra, Andersen and Wallbox.

At this review Octopus advertised the Intelligent Go smart-charging rate at 8p/kWh, with the day rate and standing charge varying by DNO region. It was offering fixed versions only during the current period of volatile pricing. Octopus put typical Intelligent Go savings at around £771 a year against Flexible Octopus over the year to April 2026. An optional add-on, the Intelligent Drive Pack, offers unlimited smart charging for £40 a month on top of a home tariff.

Octopus Power Pack is described as the UK’s first V2G (vehicle-to-grid) tariff, an add-on that gives free home EV charging in return for letting the car export to the grid. It needs a specific car and charger pairing, a G99 export connection agreement, a compatible smart meter and the car plugged in for much of the month, and Octopus quotes a saving of around £620 a year against Flexible Octopus. Octopus Electroverse is a free public-charging service with an app and charge card that gives Octopus customers an 8% discount on public charging. Octoplus is a separate rewards scheme for smart-meter customers.

Export tariffs for solar and battery

Octopus runs five export tariffs, all under the SEG, the scheme that pays households for electricity sent to the grid. Ofgem figures record 191,631 households registering with Octopus export tariffs between April 2024 and March 2025, around 71% of all SEG registrations that year.

Export tariff How it pays Indicative rate
Octopus SEG Flat rate, unbundled so open to any supplier or installer 4.1p/kWh, unchanged since February 2022
Outgoing Octopus (Fixed) Flat rate 12p/kWh
Outgoing Agile Half-hourly wholesale export rate, uncapped around 9.4p/kWh average over the year to April 2026
Octopus Flux Time-of-use import and export for solar plus battery rates vary by region and product version
Intelligent Octopus Flux Automated battery control temporarily unavailable to new customers at this review

Octopus Flux pairs a time-of-use import price with an export price, with a 16:00 to 19:00 peak and a 02:00 to 05:00 cheap window. Intelligent Octopus Flux hands battery charging and discharging to Octopus and lists compatibility with installed GivEnergy systems, Tesla Powerwall, SolarEdge and Enphase. Intelligent Flux was temporarily unavailable to new customers at this review. A further Outgoing variant, Prime Outgoing, pays 16p/kWh in a 16:00 to 19:00 peak and 9p/kWh across the rest of the day. Export rates and availability can change, so check the current terms before committing.

Separately, Octopus runs Zero Bills, which guarantees no energy bills for up to ten years in homes fitted with solar panels, a heat pump, battery storage and smart controls. It is a package for a fully equipped home rather than a tariff an existing customer switches onto.

Heat pump and storage heater tariffs

Cosy Octopus is a three-rate tariff aimed at heat pumps, electric radiators and electric boilers. It gives three cheap windows a day, roughly 04:00 to 07:00, 13:00 to 16:00 and 22:00 to 00:00, with a peak between 16:00 and 19:00. The cheap periods run about 51% below the day rate and the peak about 50% above it. Octopus quotes a saving of around £82 a year against Octopus Fixed for a typical heat pump home using 5,877 kWh, and offers the tariff in fixed or variable form with no exit fees.

Snug Octopus is built for storage heaters. It applies a 9p/kWh off-peak rate across a six-hour overnight window plus an afternoon boost, and Octopus quotes a saving of around £128 a year against Flexible Octopus on an Economy 7 basis. It needs a SMETS2 meter (Smart Metering Equipment Technical Specification, second generation) with an auxiliary load control switch (ALCS), the component that switches the storage heaters onto the cheap rate.

Wholesale-tracking tariffs: Agile and Tracker

Agile Octopus prices each half-hour against the wholesale market, with the next day’s 48 prices published around 4pm. It carries a Price Cap Protect ceiling of 100p/kWh, and when wholesale prices go negative it pays customers to use electricity, which Octopus calls plunge pricing. Prices in 2024 ranged from about -8.40p/kWh to 99.99p/kWh, and there were 284 half-hour periods of negative pricing over the year to June 2024. Agile customers saved an average of around £440 in 2023. A peak uplift of about 12p/kWh applies between 16:00 and 19:00. Agile connects to the IFTTT (“if this then that”) automation service for smart-home control.

Octopus Tracker updates its electricity and gas prices once a day against a published wholesale index, with a Price Cap Protect ceiling of 100p/kWh for electricity and 30p/kWh for gas. Octopus markets it as its most transparent tariff.

Getting onto a smart tariff

Every Octopus smart tariff needs a smart meter that Octopus can read and control remotely, which means a SMETS2 meter or a Secure-brand SMETS1 meter. A customer normally has to be on Octopus supply first and then switch to the smart tariff, with a typical connection time of about 14 days. None of the smart tariffs carry exit fees.

Octopus publishes its own guidance on which tariff suits which setup, summarised below.

Home setup Octopus’s suggested tariff
Heat pump Cosy Octopus
EV Intelligent Octopus Go
EV plus solar or heat pump Intelligent Octopus Go
Solar only an Outgoing export tariff
Solar plus battery Octopus Flux
Battery only Agile paired with Outgoing
None of the above Agile or Tracker

The pairings are constrained. An export tariff such as Outgoing Octopus can only sit alongside certain import tariffs, and the Power Pack V2G add-on cannot be combined with Tracker, Agile or the Intelligent Octopus tariffs.

What changed in April 2026

In April 2026 the government moved around £150 of green-levy costs off household bills: the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme was scrapped and about 75% of Renewables Obligation costs were shifted to general taxation. Ofgem’s price cap fell by roughly £117, about 7%, for a typical dual-fuel home. Octopus applied a reduction of about 3.5p/kWh across its tariffs and passed the levy saving on to all customers, including those on fixed rates. Several of the rates in this entry sit either side of that change, and tariff pricing moves with each cap reset, so confirm the current rate before deciding.

Applies to

Solar, Battery, EV charging, Heat

Last reviewed

22 Jul 2026