Best energy supplier 2023: How to get the best energy deal | Expert Reviews (2024)

Until summer 2021, if you were on an out-of-contract energy tariff you could have saved money by switching supplier, especially if you’d never switched or you hadn’t switched for a while.

But after wholesale gas prices increased to record levels in September 2021 and wholesale electricity prices followed, largely because of the amount of electricity produced by gas-fired power stations, everything changed. The war in Ukraine then made the situation a whole lot worse.

With prices rising even further from 1 October, the government was forced to step in. On 8 September it announced that the price cap will be set at £2,500 for a typical household for the next two years under its energy price guarantee. This equates to an average unit price for dual fuel customers paying by direct debit of 34p/kWh for electricity and 10.3p/kWh for gas, inclusive of VAT, from 1 October. This means there are no longer any new fixed tariffs available and you can’t save by switching supplier.

The price cap had been due to go up from the current £1,971 a year for a typical household (a dual fuel customer paying by direct debit with ‘medium’ energy usage) to an astronomical £3,549 – an increase of 80%. What’s more, it had been forecast to peak at a shocking £6,616 in the second quarter of 2023 by energy consultancy Cornwall Insight.

Despite this, as our survey below reveals, there are still huge differences between the best and worst when it comes to customer satisfaction.

In July 2022, we teamed up with YouGov to survey 2,051 people across Great Britain and find out what they thought of their providers. We asked them whether they would recommend them to a friend and how happy they were with their customer service, value for money and bills. We also asked them about the service they got when they contacted their suppliers.

Octopus Energy, Utility Warehouse and Ovo were the top providers in Great Britain overall according to our survey. Bulb Energy and E.ON were also highly rated for how easy their bills are to understand and SSE and E.ON did well for the speed at which they answered calls from their customers.

We’ve also included their complaints data from the energy regulator Ofgem so you can see how they compare for the number of complaints they receive and how good they are at dealing with them.

Below, you’ll find our guide to the best energy suppliers and reviews of all the award-winning suppliers in our survey.

READ NEXT:See the results of our annual energy awards

Best energy supplier: At a glance

• Best overall service | Octopus Energy
• Best at resolving complaints quickly | Utility Warehouse
• The largest supplier | British Gas

What to do if you’re struggling with your energy bills

Although the energy price guarantee will stop bills rising to the sky-high levels they would have done otherwise, energy is still significantly more expensive than it was a year ago so, if you’re struggling to pay, it’s important to get help.

You should contact your supplier as soon as possible. It has an obligation to offer you an affordable payment plan and you can also ask for emergency credit if you have a prepayment meter and can’t afford to top it up.

If you’re on benefits, you should also check whether you’re eligible to receive extra help through the government’s cost of living payment.

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What you need to know about renewable energy

Many of us are keen to do our bit for the planet by using “green” energy generated from renewable sources such as the wind or sun. Many suppliers now offer 100% renewable electricity and some also sell “green” gas made from organic waste or carbon-offset gas.

It’s worth bearing in mind that this doesn’t apply to the energy that ends up in your home since all generated electricity goes into the National Grid, no matter how it was generated.

Instead, energy providers who promise to supply renewable energy back up their claims in a number of different ways. Some generate their own renewable electricity, invest in generating it or buy it from generators, while others simply buy certificates to show that the same amount has been generated that is used by their customers. Check which applies to your supplier if this is important to you.

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The best energy suppliers in 2023

1. Octopus Energy: The ultimate for customer service, value and more

Octopus was launched in 2016 and is now one of Britain’s largest energy suppliers. All of its electricity is 100% renewable and it invests in renewable generation. It also offers carbon-offset gas on some of its tariffs and, clearly, it’s a winner as far as its customers are concerned.

With some 72% saying they would recommend it to a friend, it claims the title of Best Energy Supplier overall, and sweeps into top position in every other category in our survey as well.

It was top for Best Customer Service, with 69% saying they were either very or fairly satisfied with it and 53% of customers satisfied with its value for money. A total of 86% said their last bill was easy to understand.

Octopus was also rated as the quickest at picking up the phone of any supplier, with 53% of customers saying they answered calls in five minutes or less and winning our Most Responsive Call Centre award.

To be the overall winner, a supplier must have received fewer complaints per 100,000 customer accounts than the industry average according to the latest Ofgem data, and have resolved at least 50% of them by the end of the next working day and at least 80% within eight weeks.

Octopus consistently achieves this, receiving less than half of the number of complaints than the average across all suppliers in the second quarter of 2022 – the lowest number of all the suppliers in our survey.

Find out more about Octopus Energy

NB: Data is for the second quarter of 2022.

2. Utility Warehouse: A great service with good complaint numbers and handling

Utility Warehouse has been around since 2002 and now has 700,000 customers, making it one of Great Britain’s medium-sized suppliers. It bundles together a range of home services, including energy, into one bill.

It was highly commended in three of our award categories and, in our survey, it came second only to Octopus Energy for the proportion of customers who said they would recommend it to others at 62%. It was still ten percentage points behind, however.

Its performance on customer service and value for money were also the second best, although only around half its customers (52%) said they were very or fairly satisfied with its customer service compared with 69% for Octopus. Some 40% of its customers were satisfied overall with value for money, and 24% of these people said they were very satisfied — the highest percentage for this across our survey.

Utility Warehouse customers gave it the lowest rating for how easy their last bill was to understand with only 59% saying it was very or fairly easy. Alas, we weren’t able to rate it for the speed at which it answered calls from customers as there wasn’t a big enough sample size for this in our survey.

Utility Warehouse did perform well for complaints, however, according to Ofgem data. It received 743 per 100,000 customers in the second quarter of 2022, which is slightly more than Octopus’s 662. It resolved 82% of those complaints by the end of the next working day and 100% within eight weeks — the best performance of all the suppliers we reported on.

Find out more about Utility Warehouse

NB: Data is for the second quarter of 2022.

3. Ovo Energy: One of the best but gets lots of complaints

Ovo Energy was launched in 2009 and is now one of Great Britain’s largest suppliers with over a million customers. It grew significantly after taking on Spark Energy’s customers when Spark went into administration in 2018, and buying the retail arm of energy giant SSE in January 2020. All its customers get 100% renewable electricity.

Like Utility Warehouse, it was highly commended in three of our award categories, coming third in each one. It was still way behind Octopus Energy and Utility Warehouse, though, with only 44% saying they would recommend it to a friend. This figure was 72% for Octopus and 62% for Utility Warehouse.

Just over two-fifths (42%) of Ovo customers said they were very or fairly satisfied with its customer service, although its acquisition, SSE, came bottom in this category with a miserable 26%. Ovo wasn’t far behind second-place Utility Warehouse for value for money at 38% satisfied but it’s interesting to note that only 9% said they were very satisfied.

When it comes to how easy its bills were to understand, it wasn’t among the best, however, a respectable 72% of customers still said their last bill was very or fairly easy to comprehend. We weren’t able to report on how quickly Ovo answered the phone, unfortunately, since our sample size wasn’t large enough for us to be able to judge this reliably.

On complaints, Ovo had the second highest number among the providers included in our survey at 1,644 per 100,000 customers according to Ofgem data. Only British Gas had more at 1,894. It did pretty well at resolving them, though. Some 64% were resolved by the end of the next working day, while 91% were resolved within eight weeks. These percentages were higher than for the overall award winner Octopus.

Find out more about Ovo Energy

Notes: Data is for the second quarter of 2022.

4. Bulb Energy: Not as good as it once was but bills are clear

Bulb came third in almost all our award categories in last year’s awards but it claimed only one highly commended award this year. A troubled year that saw the company going into special administration in November is likely to be the main reason for the decline in the satisfaction of its customers.

A mere 39% of customers said they would recommend it to a friend and only slightly more said they were very or fairly satisfied with its customer service at 42%. Only a third of people said they were satisfied with its value for money. It was far from the worst in these categories, however.

Where Bulb did receive plaudits, however, was for the clarity of its bills. It was highly commended in this category, with 76% of respondents saying their last bill was very or fairly easy to understand. It had the second highest proportion of people who said it was very easy to understand at 41%, only beaten by Octopus’s percentage of 52%. We weren’t able to rate it for how quickly it answered the phone due to a lack of data.

Customer complaints were, surprisingly given its problems, very low. According to Ofgem data, it fielded only 971 per 100,000 customers – that’s lower than all the other companies apart from Utility Warehouse and Octopus Energy. It wasn’t the best at resolving them, with 67% sorted by the end of the next working day. However, an impressive 97% were resolved within eight weeks.

All of Bulb’s electricity is 100% renewable, which it buys from generators, and all of its gas is carbon offset.

Find out more about Bulb Energy

Notes: Data is for the second quarter of 2022.

5. SSE: A mostly poor performer but its call centre is efficient

SSE, originally Scottish and Southern Energy, was founded in 1998 and one of the traditional ‘big six’ energy companies until recently. It is now part of Ovo due to a recent acquisition and, combined, the two companies supply energy to almost five million households.

It was highly commended in our awards for the speed at which it answers phone calls but performed poorly in our other categories. Only 32% of customers said they would recommend it to a friend, which was the second lowest percentage in our survey after Shell Energy’s dismal 23%.

It had the highest percentage of customers saying they were dissatisfied at 22% (along with Scottish Power). And only 26% of its customers said they were very or fairly satisfied with its customer service, which is lower than any other supplier.

Customers were also unimpressed with its value for money. Only 16% said they were satisfied, which was the lowest percentage in our survey, but it had a respectable score for the clarity of its bills as 72% said they found their last bill very or fairly easy to understand.

Some 33% of customers said its phone calls were answered in five minutes or less. This was second only to the 53% answered by Octopus within this time period. It answered the highest percentage of calls in under a minute according to customers but, peculiarly, also had the highest percentage that took longer than 20 minutes to be answered at 49%.

As SSE is now owned by Ovo, it shares the same Ofgem complaints data.

Find out more about SSE

Notes: Data is for the second quarter of 2022.

6. E.ON: Green electricity with clear bills and short call waiting times

E.ON was already a large supplier when it took over fellow energy giant Npower in November 2019, boosting its size further and, in 2020, it launched E.ON Next, a brand for homes and small businesses offering 100% renewable electricity.

Its customers aren’t impressed. A mere 34% of its customers said they would recommend the provider to a friend in our survey — the same as for Scottish Power — and only 40% said they were very or fairly satisfied with its customer service, although there were four suppliers with worse scores than this.

It had the third smallest proportion of customers who were satisfied with its value for money, along with British Gas, with 23% saying they were either very or fairly satisfied.

E.ON did well for the clarity of its bills, however, and was highly commended in this category with 74% of customers saying their last bill was very or fairly easy to understand.

Its call centre rated highly in our survey, however. Some 31% of its customers said it picked up the phone in five minutes or less, the third highest percentage for this. It also answered 60% of all calls in less than 10 minutes, which was the third highest behind Octopus and Bulb Energy.

For complaints, E.ON took fourth place behind Octopus, Utility Warehouse and Bulb with 1,284 per 100,000 customers. It resolved 77% of them by the end of the next working day and 93% within eight weeks.

Find out more about E.ON

Notes: Data is for the second quarter of 2022.