How to compare, without an engineer, which heat source is cheapest for your house: gas, electricity, a heat pump, pellets or wood. A ranking by current running cost of heating.
What you'll learn
You're choosing what to heat your house with, and you hear different things everywhere: "gas is cheapest", "no, a heat pump", "go for pellets". In this article we show how to get an honest ranking — which heat source is cheaper for your specific house, at current fuel prices.
Important: we compare only the current running cost of heating — how much it will cost to heat the house at today's tariffs. The question of how long the equipment takes to pay for itself is not covered here.
Why a single "cheapest" number doesn't exist
The cost of heating depends on two things:
- How much heat your house needs — that's the heat loss in kW (a better-insulated house needs less).
- The price and efficiency of each source — a gas boiler, an electric boiler, a heat pump, pellets, wood or coal. Each has its own efficiency (and a heat pump has a COP coefficient, because it delivers more heat than the electricity it consumes).
The calculator takes your heat demand and compares all the sources by the same logic — so the ranking is fair.
First find out your heat demand. If you don't know how many kW the house needs, calculate it in the heat-loss calculator — the article what boiler power you need explains how.
What the calculator compares
The heating cost calculator covers the typical sources for Ukraine:
- a gas boiler (condensing and standard);
- an electric boiler;
- a heat pump (with a COP of about 4 — that is, 1 kW of electricity gives ~4 kW of heat);
- pellets, wood, coal.
It works out the current cost for each and ranks them — from cheapest to most expensive for your case.
How to do it
- Open the heating cost calculator.
- Enter the heat demand (or take it from the heat-loss calculator).
- Specify local prices for fuel and electricity.
- Look at the ranking of sources — the cheapest will be at the top.
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Why the result may surprise you
At current tariffs a heat pump often comes out cheaper than gas — because it delivers several times more heat per unit of electricity. But if you have cheap gas or expensive electricity, the ranking may be different. That's exactly why it's worth calculating with your own prices, rather than trusting general statements.
Frequently asked questions
Does the calculator account for the cost of the boiler itself? No. It's only the current running cost of heating — how much it costs to heat the house. How long the equipment takes to pay for itself is a separate question and isn't calculated here.
Where do I get the heat demand from? From the heat-loss calculator: it gives the kW based on the size and insulation of the house.
I'm comparing two flats — what's cheaper to heat? See the article which home is cheaper to heat.
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