Gas is the cheaper fuel for heating almost every home that has it, and the margin is large. At the current Ofgem price cap a unit of electricity costs about three and a third times as much as a unit of gas, so a plain electric heater costs far more to produce the same warmth than a gas boiler does. There is one important exception, the heat pump, which uses electricity so efficiently that it lands at gas prices or below. The rest of this page works through the numbers so you can see why direct electric heating loses on cost, and where it still earns its place.
The short answer. For direct heat, gas wins comfortably. At the Ofgem cap for October to December 2026, gas costs 7.97p per kWh and electricity 26.32p per kWh. Once you allow for a gas boiler losing about a tenth of its fuel up the flue, a unit of useful heat from gas costs roughly 9p, while the same heat from an electric heater costs about 26p, over three times more. The exception is a heat pump, which turns each unit of electricity into three or more units of heat, dragging its cost per unit of warmth down to gas levels or under.
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The two prices the whole thing turns on
Start with the raw unit rates, because everything else follows from them. Under the Ofgem price cap for October to December 2026, electricity is capped at 26.32p per kWh and gas at 7.97p per kWh. Divide one by the other and electricity costs about 3.6 times as much as gas for the same kilowatt hour of energy bought at the meter. Both fuels also carry a daily standing charge, but if you already have both supplies connected those are sunk costs that do not change with how you heat, so the fair comparison is unit rate against unit rate. On that basis alone, gas starts miles ahead. The interesting part is what happens when you turn each fuel into actual warmth, because the appliance in between changes the picture.
Efficiency is where it gets interesting
A unit rate is what you pay for the fuel, not what you pay for the heat that reaches the room, and the two differ because no appliance is a perfect converter. A modern condensing gas boiler runs at around 90 per cent efficiency when it is set up well, so roughly a tenth of the gas goes up the flue as waste and you get about 0.9 kWh of heat for every kWh of gas you buy. A direct electric heater, whether a panel, a fan heater, an oil-filled radiator or a storage heater, is close to 100 per cent efficient at the point of use, because nearly all the electricity turns into heat in the room. That sounds like it should help electricity, and it does a little, but not nearly enough to close a three-and-a-half-times gap in the fuel price.
Work it through and the cost of a unit of useful heat looks like this.
| How you heat | Efficiency | Cost per kWh of heat |
|---|---|---|
| Gas boiler (condensing) | ~90% | ~8.9p |
| Direct electric heater or panel | ~100% | ~26.3p |
| Air source heat pump | ~350% | ~7.5p |
At the Ofgem cap for October to December 2026, gas 7.97p/kWh and electricity 26.32p/kWh. Heat-pump figure assumes a seasonal efficiency (SCOP) of about 3.5, which a well-installed system reaches. Illustrative; your own efficiency will vary.
So a gas boiler delivers heat at about 9p a unit, a direct electric heater at about 26p, and a heat pump at roughly 7.5p because it moves heat rather than making it from scratch. That single row is the reason gas central heating dominates: for straightforward heating, gas costs a third of what direct electric costs, and the heat pump is the only electric option that competes.
A worked example over one cold evening
Numbers on a page are one thing; a real evening makes it concrete. Say your living room loses heat at a rate that needs about 10 kWh of warmth pumped in over an evening to stay comfortable, a fair figure for an average room on a cold night. Heat it from the gas boiler and that costs around 81p. Heat the same room with a 2kW electric panel or fan heater doing the same 10 kWh of work costs about £2.61. Heat it with a heat pump and you are back down to roughly 75p. Do that every cold evening through a winter and the gap between the gas boiler and the electric heater runs to well over a hundred pounds for a single room. You can run your own version of this against any appliance rating and unit rate with the appliance running cost calculator.
Why electricity costs so much more per unit
It is worth understanding why the fuels are priced so differently, because it explains why the gap is stable rather than a quirk of one quarter. Electricity is a more expensive product to deliver: it has to be generated, much of it from gas in the first place, then carried across the grid and into your home, and the retail price carries most of the policy and network costs that the system loads onto power rather than gas. Gas, by contrast, is piped to the boiler and burned on the spot with far less in the way of conversion and delivery. The result is a price ratio that has sat somewhere between three and four to one for years. It shifts with the cap, but the direction does not change, so any plan that swaps gas heating for direct electric heating is betting against a very settled piece of arithmetic.
Where electric heating still makes sense
None of this means electric heating is a mistake. It means direct electric heat costs more per unit, which is a different thing. Plenty of situations still point to it.
- No gas connection. Many flats, park homes and rural properties have no mains gas at all, so the comparison is not gas versus electric but which electric option is cheapest to run and buy. There the choice is between direct heaters, storage heaters on a night rate, and a heat pump.
- Heating one room, briefly. If the alternative is firing the whole boiler to warm the entire house for the sake of one person in one room, a single electric heater in that room can work out cheaper for that hour, despite the higher unit cost, because you are not heating five empty rooms. The cheapest way to heat a room guide weighs this up, and portable heaters running cost covers what the different types actually cost.
- Low upfront cost and no maintenance. A plug-in heater costs a few tens of pounds, needs no annual service, no flue and no gas safety check, and lasts for years. For an occasional-use room that can outweigh a higher running cost you rarely incur.
- A cheap night rate. On an Economy 7 or time-of-use tariff, storage heaters charging on a cheap overnight unit rate narrow the gap with gas, though they rarely beat it outright. More on that below.
If you are choosing between electric heater types for one of these cases, electric heater types compared lays out which suits which room.
The heat pump changes everything
The one electric technology that beats gas on running cost is the heat pump, and it does so by cheating the efficiency question entirely. Rather than turning electricity into heat, it uses electricity to move heat from the outside air into your home, so a good air source unit delivers around three and a half units of heat for every unit of electricity it draws. That is what pulls its cost per unit of warmth down to roughly 7.5p in the table above, level with gas or a shade under. The catch is that a heat pump only reaches that efficiency when it is set up to run at a low flow temperature into generously sized radiators or underfloor pipes, in a reasonably insulated home. Run it hard into small radiators in a leaky house and the efficiency, and the saving, fall away. For the full running-cost comparison against a gas boiler, see heat pump running cost versus a gas boiler.
Off-peak electricity and the fine print
A cheap overnight rate is the other thing that shifts the sums, so it is worth being precise about how far. Suppose your night unit rate is an example 12p per kWh rather than the 26.32p daytime cap. A storage heater charging on that rate produces heat at about 12p per useful kWh, which is still above the gas boiler's 8p but far closer than the daytime figure. A heat pump running on the same 12p rate delivers heat at roughly 3.4p per unit, comfortably below gas. So off-peak electricity does not rescue a plain electric heater used in the evening, because you would be paying the peak rate exactly when you want the heat, but it can make storage heaters competitive and a heat pump genuinely cheap. The trade-off with a night rate is usually a higher daytime unit rate, so it only pays if you can shift most of your heating and other heavy use into the cheap window. The time-of-use tariffs guide covers how those tariffs are structured.
What I would actually do
If you have mains gas and a working boiler, keep heating with gas and spend your effort making the boiler burn less rather than replacing it with electric heaters. Turning the flow temperature down so it condenses properly, as the boiler flow temperature guide describes, is a free saving that direct electric heating can never match on cost. Do not rip out gas central heating for panel heaters in the belief that it saves money; on the arithmetic above it will roughly triple the cost of your heat. Use electric heating tactically, for a single room you occupy while the rest of the house sits cool, or where there is no gas to begin with. And if you are replacing your heating outright and can get the insulation and radiators right, a heat pump is the electric option that competes with gas on running cost and beats it on a good tariff. To put your own two options side by side with your actual rates, the gas versus electric heating calculator does the comparison for you.
Common questions
Is electric heating cheaper than gas?
For direct electric heating, no. At the Ofgem cap for October to December 2026 a unit of useful heat costs about 8p from a gas boiler and about 26p from an electric heater, so direct electric heat costs over three times as much. The exception is a heat pump, which uses electricity efficiently enough to match gas or come in below it.
How much more does electric heating cost than gas?
Roughly three times as much for direct electric heat, once boiler efficiency is taken into account. Electricity is capped at 26.32p per kWh against 7.97p for gas, and a condensing boiler delivers heat at around 9p a unit versus about 26p from an electric heater.
Is it cheaper to heat one room with an electric heater?
Sometimes. If the alternative is running the whole boiler to warm the entire house for one person in one room, a single electric heater in that room can cost less for that period, despite the higher unit price, because you are not paying to heat empty rooms. Across a whole house, gas is cheaper.
Are storage heaters on Economy 7 cheaper than gas?
They get close but usually stay a little dearer per unit of heat. At an example night rate of 12p per kWh a storage heater makes heat at about 12p a unit, against roughly 8p for a gas boiler. A heat pump on the same night rate would undercut gas, because it produces several units of heat per unit of electricity.