Cheapest Electricity in Northern Ireland: Compare All Five Suppliers by How You Pay (22 September 2026)

I checked every tariff on this page against the Consumer Council’s electricity price table dated 22 September 2026, and the cheapest electricity in Northern Ireland on it is Power NI’s Monthly Direct Debit with online billing: 32.100p per kWh, no standing charge, £1,027 a year on 3,200 kWh, open to new and existing customers. The lowest unit rate is Budget Energy’s Billpay 25% Discount at 31.510p (£1,057 a year, new customers only). On a keypad, Power NI is cheapest at 33.290p, £1,065 a year. Share Energy’s 31.960p rises to 35.99p on 1 October.

That is the short answer. The longer one is that the cheapest supplier here is a different company depending on whether you pay by Direct Debit, top up a keypad, or pay on receipt of a bill, so a single ranked list is wrong for a large share of the people reading it.

I built this site and I run its generation tracker, and the 394 quote requests that came through it between 12 March and 22 September are what sent me back to the tariff tables. 262 of those households put their electricity spend at £100 to £250 a month, and another 54 above £250. Most are paying for well over the 3,200 kWh every published comparison is built on.

This page ranks all five NI suppliers on each payment method, shows the arithmetic so you can redo it with your own units, and sets out how a switch works here. The rates themselves, with every standing charge and the Economy 7 figures, live on our companion page, electricity prices in Northern Ireland. This page is about who to pick and how to move.

Checked on 23 September 2026 against the Consumer Council electricity price comparison table (prices for 22/09/2026, including VAT at 5%), the Utility Regulator, and Power NI’s electricity supply licence.

The Cheapest Tariff for Each Way of Paying, 22 September 2026

How you pay	Cheapest tariff	Unit rate	Annual cost, 3,200 kWh	Open to
Direct Debit	Power NI Monthly Direct Debit with online billing	32.100p	£1,027	New and existing
Direct Debit, lowest unit rate	Budget Energy Billpay 25% Discount	31.510p	£1,057	New customers only
Keypad	Power NI Keypad	33.290p	£1,065	New and existing
Pay on receipt of bill, to 30 September	Share Energy Share 24 Credit	31.960p	£1,071	New and existing
Pay on receipt of bill, from 1 October	Power NI Standard	34.150p	£1,093	New and existing

Two things have changed since I first published this page on 6 September. Budget Energy’s Bill Pay 29% Discount, which topped the Direct Debit table at £1,013, is no longer on the Consumer Council table, so Power NI now holds the cheapest annual bill outright. And Share Energy’s 12.6% rise on 1 October knocks it off the top of the pay-on-receipt table.

The Five Suppliers, and Why One Ranking Cannot Serve Everyone

The Consumer Council lists five household electricity suppliers in Northern Ireland: Budget Energy, Power NI, SSE Airtricity, Click Energy and Share Energy. That is the whole market. Great Britain has dozens of retail brands and a price cap; we have five companies, and only one of them, Power NI, has its tariff set through a regulated formula approved by the Utility Regulator.

Two of the five, Power NI and SSE Airtricity, charge no daily standing charge on 24-hour domestic tariffs. The other three do. That difference is why a headline pence-per-kWh comparison between suppliers is meaningless here, and why the winner changes with your payment method.

Every annual cost below is calculated the same way: units multiplied by the unit rate, plus the standing charge multiplied by 365 days, at 3,200 kWh.

Cheapest on Direct Debit

Rank	Supplier and tariff	Units, 3,200 kWh	Standing charge, 365 days	Annual cost
1	Power NI Monthly Direct Debit with online billing	£1,027.20	£0.00	£1,027
2	Budget Energy Billpay 25% Discount (new customers only)	£1,008.32	£48.25	£1,057
3	Share Energy Share 24 Credit (to 30 September)	£1,022.72	£48.65	£1,071
4	SSE Airtricity 1 Year Home Electricity 15% (new only, £40 exit fee)	£1,109.44	£0.00	£1,109
5	Click Energy Bill Pay 24h	£1,241.86	£37.30	£1,279

Look at rows 1 and 2. Budget Energy’s unit rate of 31.510p is 0.59p cheaper than Power NI’s 32.100p, and Budget’s bill is £30 dearer. The standing charge does all the work.

Two of the top four are closed to existing customers. If you already hold an account with the supplier, the honest Direct Debit ranking is Power NI at £1,027, Share Energy at £1,071 (about £1,200 from 1 October), Budget Energy’s £100 Loyalty and 18% Discount at £1,161, SSE Airtricity’s SmartSaver Std 6% at £1,227, and Click Energy at £1,279.

Cheapest on a Keypad

Power NI Keypad, at £1,065 a year. Share Energy is second at £1,084 until 30 September, then drops to fifth. Every keypad tariff, and how the £63 discount lands on a meter, is in the keypad section below.

Cheapest on Pay on Receipt of Bill

Rank	Supplier and tariff	Units, 3,200 kWh	Standing charge, 365 days	Annual cost
1	Share Energy Share 24 Credit (to 30 September)	£1,022.72	£48.65	£1,071
2	Power NI Standard	£1,092.80	£0.00	£1,093
3	SSE Airtricity 1 Year Home Electricity 9% (new only, £40 exit fee)	£1,187.84	£0.00	£1,188
4	Click Energy Bill Pay 24h	£1,241.86	£37.30	£1,279
5	Budget Energy Bill Pay Standard 24hr	£1,344.32	£58.18	£1,403

Share Energy charges the identical 31.960p whether you pay by Direct Debit or on receipt of a bill. Nobody else in the market does that, which is why it tops this table until the end of September.

What Changes on 1 October

Share Energy’s unit rate goes from 31.960p to 35.99p on every payment method on 1 October, with the standing charges unchanged. The Consumer Council’s table still shows the old rate with a note that the tariff changes on 1 October, because it only updates on the day a price takes effect. Here is what the rankings look like once it does.

Payment method	Share Energy, 3,200 kWh	Where Share sits	Cheapest from 1 October
Direct Debit	£1,071, then £1,200	3rd, then 4th (behind SSE’s new-customer 15% deal)	Power NI, £1,027
Keypad	£1,084, then £1,213	2nd, then 5th	Power NI, £1,065
Pay on receipt of bill	£1,071, then £1,200	1st, then 3rd	Power NI Standard, £1,093

A Share Energy customer paying by Direct Debit who moves to Power NI’s monthly Direct Debit with online billing saves about £173 a year on 3,200 kWh from 1 October. On keypad the gap to Power NI is about £148. The detail behind the rise is in our note on the October 2026 NI energy price rises.

No other NI supplier had announced a domestic electricity change for October when I checked the Consumer Council, Power NI, SSE Airtricity and Click Energy news pages on 23 September 2026.

Cheapest Keypad Electricity in Northern Ireland

Keypad is where a lot of the searches that reach this page start, so it gets its own section.

The cheapest keypad tariff is Power NI Keypad: 33.290p per kWh, no standing charge, £1,065 a year on 3,200 kWh, open to new and existing customers (Consumer Council table, 22 September 2026). Power NI also adds £1 to £4 of free electricity on top-ups of £50 to £175 made online or through its app.

Every keypad tariff in the market, before and after Share Energy’s rise:

Supplier and tariff	Unit rate	Standing charge	Annual cost to 30 Sep	Annual cost from 1 Oct
Power NI Keypad	33.290p	0.000p	£1,065	£1,065
Budget Energy Keypad Loyalty 20% Discount	32.940p	10.920p	£1,094	£1,094
SSE Airtricity 1 Year Home Keypad 10.5% plus £30 credit (new only)	36.510p	0.000p	£1,168	£1,168
Budget Energy Keypad £60 Loyalty and 16% Discount	34.580p	19.970p	£1,179	£1,179
Share Energy Share 24 Keypad	31.960p, then 35.99p	16.670p	£1,084	£1,213
SSE Airtricity Keypad Standard 24hr 2.5%	39.770p	0.000p	£1,273	£1,273
Click Energy Keypad 24h	38.808p	12.795p	£1,289	£1,289
SSE Airtricity Keypad Standard Rate 24hr	40.790p	0.000p	£1,305	£1,305
Budget Energy Keypad Standard 24hr	41.175p	19.970p	£1,390	£1,390

Keypad also costs less than people assume. The cheapest keypad tariff is £1,065, against £1,027 for the cheapest Direct Debit tariff. That is £38 a year for paying as you go. The real gap on keypad is between the cheapest and the dearest meter tariffs: £1,065 against £1,390, or £325 a year.

How the £63 discount lands on a keypad. Every eligible household gets a £63 Household Electricity Discount from 6 October 2026, automatically, whichever supplier it uses. On a keypad it arrives as credit at the meter when you top up. nidirect sets out two details worth knowing (checked on 23 September 2026):

• The maximum single top-up is £175. To receive the full £63 in one go, top up no more than £112 at a time. A bigger top-up splits the discount, and you get the rest on later top-ups.
• If you are switching supplier or moving home and have not yet received the credit, top up before the switch completes where you can.
• Eligibility for 2026 is set from NIE Networks records as of 4 October 2026, and no one will ever ask you to apply or give bank details for it. A message asking for either is a scam.

The discount does not change which keypad tariff is cheapest, because everyone gets the same amount. What each scheme is worth, and the separate £100 oil card you do have to apply for, is in our NI energy bill support guide for winter 2026.

The Power NI Discount Cap That Changes Its Real Position

Here is something the tables do not make obvious, and it is written in the Consumer Council’s own note under the Power NI section: the Monthly Direct Debit with online billing tariff carries a “Maximum of £60 savings per year”. The keypad discount of 2.5% is flat and has no cap.

That has a direct effect on the £1,027 figure. Work it through.

Power NI’s standard rate is 34.150p. At 3,200 kWh that is £1,092.80 of standard-rate spend. The 6% discount would save £65.60 if it applied to everything, giving the £1,027 in the table. With the £60 cap it cannot.

Step	Calculation	Amount
Standard-rate spend at 3,200 kWh	3,200 × 34.150p	£1,092.80
Maximum discount	capped	minus £60.00
Annual cost with the cap applied		£1,033

So the realistic Power NI Direct Debit figure at 3,200 kWh is £1,033 rather than £1,027. It is still the cheapest bill on the table.

Six pounds is not the point. The point is what the cap does at higher usage, because the keypad discount has no cap. Set the two Power NI tariffs against each other and they cross over:

• Monthly Direct Debit with online billing, once the cap is reached: annual cost = units × 34.150p, minus £60
• Keypad: annual cost = units × 33.290p, with no cap

Those are equal at 6,977 kWh, which is roughly £193 a month at the standard rate. Above about 7,000 kWh a year, Power NI’s keypad tariff is cheaper than its own monthly Direct Debit tariff. Every comparison table in the market shows the opposite, because every comparison table is built at 3,200 kWh.

Of the 394 quote requests, 54 reported spending more than £250 a month on electricity. A household at that level is well clear of 3,200 kWh, and the published ranking is not describing their bill.

What the Consumer Council Comparison Tool Does and Does Not Show

The Consumer Council tool is free, independent and covers all five suppliers. It walks through five steps: current supplier, payment method, tariff, billing method, new payment method. Use it. Two things it will not do for you.

It excludes welcome credit. The Consumer Council says so on the table itself: its comparisons “do not factor in the various supplier incentives such as welcome credit”. Several tariffs on the 22 September table carry one, and it changes the order in year one.

Tariff	Table annual cost	Welcome credit	Year one cost
Budget Energy Billpay 25% Discount (new only)	£1,057	none	£1,057
Budget Energy £100 Loyalty and 18% Discount	£1,161	£100	£1,061
SSE Airtricity 1 Year Home Electricity 10% plus £60 credit (Direct Debit e-bill, new only)	£1,175	£60	£1,115
SSE Airtricity 1 Year Home Keypad 10.5% plus £30 credit (new only)	£1,168	£30	£1,138
Budget Energy Keypad £60 Loyalty and 16% Discount	£1,179	£60	£1,119

Budget’s £100 Loyalty deal looks £104 dearer than its 25% deal on the table and is £4 dearer in year one. The credit is a one-year effect, so year two reverts to the table figures. Count it, then check your tariff again next autumn.

It does not handle Economy 7. The tool says so: “Unfortunately the price comparison tool does not work with Economy 7 at the moment.” With a night-rate meter you need the separate Economy 7 table instead, which we reproduce on the electricity prices page.

How to Switch Electricity Supplier in Northern Ireland, Step by Step

1. Get your bill out and find four things. Your annual units, your unit rate, your standing charge, and your meter reference. Power NI asks for an MPRN if you are on a bill, or a KPRN if you are on a keypad. Both are printed on your bill or top-up receipt.
2. Work out your own annual cost on your current tariff. Units times unit rate, plus standing charge times 365. Not the 3,200 kWh figure unless that is genuinely close to your usage.
3. Compare on that number, not on pence per kWh. Run the Consumer Council tool, then check the answer against the published table yourself, adding any welcome credit the tool leaves out.
4. Apply to the new supplier only. The Utility Regulator’s rule is that your new supplier tells your old supplier. You do not contact the company you are leaving.
5. Give a meter reading on the day you apply, and bank details if you are going onto Direct Debit.
6. The cooling-off period runs for up to 10 working days. That is the Utility Regulator’s figure, and Power NI describes the same window as 14 days. You can cancel inside it for any reason.
7. The switch completes within 15 working days after the cooling-off period ends. So around five weeks end to end. Power NI puts its own process at about four weeks. Your supply is never interrupted and no engineer visits, because nothing physical changes.
8. On a keypad, expect one extra step. Your new supplier will ring to move any credit sitting on the meter across, and you type a code into the keypad. Power NI requires at least £2 of credit on the meter for that to work, and does it after the cooling-off period has ended.
9. Check the final bill. Your old supplier must issue it within 6 weeks of the switch, and must refund any credit left in your account or on your prepayment meter within the same 6 weeks.

Exit Fees: Which NI Tariffs Actually Have One

The Utility Regulator’s position is that “there is no charge for switching supplier but some contracts have a cancellation charge”. In practice almost nothing in the NI domestic market carries one.

Supplier	Exit fee on domestic tariffs (22 September 2026 table)
Power NI	None on any tariff, and no fixed-term contract on any tariff
Budget Energy	None on any tariff, including the variable 25% discount deal
Click Energy	None, no contract
Share Energy	None, no fixed term
SSE Airtricity	£40 early exit fee on the 1 Year fixed-term bill pay deals; the no-contract SmartSaver tariffs have none

So the exit fee question here comes down to one supplier and one type of deal. On an SSE Airtricity fixed-term bill pay tariff, check the £40 against the saving before you move.

Who Cannot Switch, or Cannot Switch Easily

If you owe your current supplier money. Power NI’s electricity supply licence, Condition 27, says the new supply starts within 15 working days unless “the Registered Supplier for the premises objects to the Supplier Transfer”. An objection is a formal step your current supplier is entitled to take, and it stops the clock. Clear or agree the balance first, then apply.

If you will not pay a security deposit. Condition 26 of the same licence lets a supplier decline to supply where it “requires the Domestic Customer to pay a reasonable Security Deposit and he does not do so”. Deposits are usually asked for on a credit meter with no Direct Debit. Ask before you apply, because a deposit can wipe out the first year’s saving.

If you are on Economy 7. You can switch, but the Consumer Council’s comparison tool cannot price your tariff, so you have to work through the Economy 7 table by hand.

If your keypad has nothing on it. The credit transfer needs at least £2 on the meter in Power NI’s case. Top up before the transfer call.

If you rent and the account is not in your name. The account holder switches, not the occupier. The same applies to the £63 discount: if your landlord holds the electricity account, nidirect says the discount goes on that account.

Does Switching Beat Solar?

Worth putting a number on, because the two get sold as alternatives and they are not.

The biggest switch available in Northern Ireland on the 22 September table is from the dearest tariff to the cheapest one open to everybody: Budget Energy’s Bill Pay Standard 24hr at £1,403, down to Power NI’s Monthly Direct Debit with online billing at £1,033 once the discount cap is applied. That is £370 a year, and it is a one-time gain. You cannot do it twice.

Now the solar side, from my own tracker. I run a generation tracker across seven NI towns, which models output from the weather recorded each day. From 24 January to 5 September 2026, 225 days, it modelled 2,263 kWh for a 4kW system in Belfast. At the tracker’s stated tariff assumption of 33.5p per kWh, all of that generation is worth £758.

You will not use all of it in the house. Power NI pays 11.88p per kWh for export (tariff year 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2027; the rate resets each October, see solar export payments). At a realistic 50% self-consumption:

Line	Calculation	Amount
Self-consumed generation, 225 days	1,131 kWh × 33.5p	£379
Exported, at Power NI’s 11.88p	1,132 kWh × 11.88p	£134
Total value, 225 days		£513

Solar returned roughly as much in 225 days as the single best switch in the market returns in a year, and it will do it again next year. Switching is free and takes five weeks. A 4kW system costs £6,000 to £8,000, covered in solar panel costs in Northern Ireland.

The interaction is the bit people miss. Switching to a cheaper unit rate lowers what every solar unit saves you, and moving to a dearer supplier raises it. Both are levers on the same number, and doing the free one first costs you nothing on the other. Our guide on solar versus switching energy supplier works through the order. Export rates in NI are voluntary supplier payments rather than the Smart Export Guarantee, and the current ones are in solar export payments in NI.

Quotes for an identical 4kW specification routinely differ by more than £1,000 between NI installers, which is a bigger swing than three years of switching supplier. Compare quotes from MCS-certified installers across NI, free, no obligation.

What To Do This Week

1. Find your unit rate, standing charge and annual units on your latest bill.
2. Work out your annual cost, then find your payment method’s table above.
3. If you are with Share Energy, compare before 1 October. On Direct Debit the gap to Power NI goes to about £173 a year.
4. If you are on a default standard rate, you are the person with the most to gain. Budget Energy’s standard bill pay tariff is £376 a year above the cheapest bill on the 22 September table.
5. Check whether the deal you are eyeing is open to existing customers. Several of the cheapest are not.
6. On a keypad, top up no more than £112 at a time around 6 October so the £63 discount lands in one go.
7. If you use well over 3,200 kWh, redo the Power NI comparison with the £60 discount cap in it before you assume Direct Debit wins.

Sources

All tariffs checked on 23 September 2026 against the Consumer Council table dated 22 September 2026.

• Consumer Council for Northern Ireland, electricity price comparison table, prices for 22/09/2026 including VAT at 5%, annual cost at 3,200 kWh
• Consumer Council for Northern Ireland, switching electricity or gas supplier
• Consumer Council for Northern Ireland, electricity price comparison tool
• nidirect, help with your electricity bill (Household Electricity Discount Scheme, keypad top-up rules)
• Utility Regulator, switching energy suppliers
• Power NI electricity supply licence, Conditions 26 and 27
• Power NI, switch electricity supplier

Generation figures are from this site’s own tracker, modelled daily from recorded weather across seven NI towns since 24 January 2026. Quote request figures are from 394 requests submitted through this site between 12 March and 22 September 2026.