Energy tariff monitoring: public electricity and gas prices by region and postcode

How retail energy tariffs vary by region

A retail electricity or gas tariff has two parts: a price per kWh and a fixed charge per day. Both depend on the network region the meter is in, the meter type and often the payment method, because network costs and settlement differ by area.

Great Britain makes the structure explicit. Ofgem sets the default tariff price cap every three months; it is the maximum a supplier can charge for a unit of energy and the standing charge together, it does not limit the total bill, and both cap and standing charge vary with where you live and how you pay. Customers on fixed deals are not covered by the cap. Other markets have different regulation but the same principle: a tariff is a regional price.

So the proxy's job here is narrow: put the request in the right country, keep each multi-step quote on one IP, and spread a panel of quotes across addresses. The geo-targeting entry explains the country token.

Public pages only: what not to collect

Tariff monitoring works entirely on public quote pages with sample inputs. A representative postcode for a region is not a household; a standard consumption profile is not anyone's usage.

The line is crossed the moment a flow asks for something about a real person. Stop there, and do not work around it.

• Do use region-representative postcodes and published standard consumption values.
• Do stop at the first results page that shows tariffs.
• Do not enter real names, full addresses, meter numbers, email addresses or phone numbers.
• Do not create accounts or start a switch to reach prices; if prices sit behind that, they are out of scope. See the acceptable use policy.

Comparison tools and dynamic tariffs in EU law

The EU Electricity Directive (EU) 2019/944 gives household customers, and microenterprises below 100,000 kWh a year, the right to access free of charge at least one tool comparing suppliers' offers. Its Article 14 lists requirements for such tools, including independence from market participants, disclosure of who runs and funds them, clear comparison criteria, accurate and up-to-date information with the time of the last update, and asking only for the personal data strictly necessary for the comparison.

Article 11 of the same directive requires that a final customer with a smart meter can conclude a dynamic electricity price contract with at least one supplier and with every supplier that has more than 200,000 final customers. Dynamic tariffs publish prices per hour or shorter period, which is a different collection shape: a small daily price file per tariff, rather than a quote flow.

For a comparison site or a researcher, these provisions describe what the market is supposed to make visible. Whether a given tool meets them is a regulatory question, not something this page answers.

Turning quotes into a tariff time series

Store one row per postcode, profile, supplier, tariff and run, with unit rates, standing charge, term and exit fees. From that, the useful series follow: the cheapest fixed deal per region, the spread between default and fixed tariffs, how quickly suppliers re-price after a cap change, and how standing charges differ between regions.

Keep the estimated annual cost the calculator shows, but recompute your own from rates and profile. A mismatch between the two usually means an assumption you have not captured, such as a discount, a time-of-use split or a different consumption default. The guide on storing price time series covers the table design.