🔒What Octopus Fixed Actually Is
Octopus 12M Fixed is the simplest product Octopus sells. Your electricity and gas unit rates and your daily standing charges are set on the day you join and don't move for twelve months. Ofgem's quarterly price cap announcements stop applying to you the moment it starts.
It sits at the opposite end of the range from the tariffs Octopus is better known for. Agile reprices every half hour and Tracker reprices daily; Fixed doesn't reprice at all. There's no cleverness to engage with, no window to shift your washing into, and nothing to check in the app. For a lot of households that's the point.
Existing Octopus customers see the same product under a different name — Loyal Octopus — which you can move onto from your online account without going through a supply switch.
Fixed rates, not a fixed bill
Worth being blunt about, because it causes more complaints than anything else in energy: a fixed tariff fixes the price per unit, not the total. Your January bill will still be far bigger than your July one, because you'll use far more energy. What you've bought is protection from the price changing — not from winter.
💷The Rates — and How They Compare to the Cap
Fixed rates are repriced by Octopus regularly off the forward wholesale market and vary by region, so there is no single national figure that stays true for long. The table below is an illustration using rates seen in August 2026 — treat it as a way of understanding the shape of the deal, and get a live quote for your own postcode before deciding.
Run those example rates against Ofgem's typical household — 2,500 kWh of electricity and 9,500 kWh of gas a year — and you land near £1,490 a year against the cap's £1,663. That's a meaningful gap, and it's worth understanding why it exists rather than assuming it's generosity: the cap is calculated from a wholesale assessment window that closed months ago, while a fix is priced off today's forward curve. When the market has softened since the window closed, fixes look cheap against the cap. When it firms up, they don't.
Notice too where the saving comes from in the example: the electricity standing charge is well below the cap's 57.19p while the gas standing charge is slightly above it. That distribution matters — a low standing charge favours light users, a low unit rate favours heavy ones. Check both against your own annual kWh rather than trusting the headline.
One accounting note: Ofgem changed its typical-household assumption on 1 July 2026, so the cap that would once have been quoted as £1,862 is now quoted as £1,663. If you see an older comparison using the higher figure, it isn't describing a price rise — it's using a different yardstick.
🚪The No Exit Fees Difference
This is the part that separates Octopus Fixed from every other fixed deal, and it deserves more attention than the rates do.
The risk in fixing has never really been paying slightly over the odds. It's being stuck paying over the odds for a year while the market moves without you. Exit fees are the mechanism that turns a small pricing error into a twelve-month one — typically £25 to £150 per fuel, so up to around £300 to leave a dual-fuel fix early. That's usually more than the difference you'd be escaping, which is exactly what the charge is designed to achieve.
Octopus charges nothing to leave, on any tariff. Three practical consequences:
- The fix becomes a ceiling, not a cage. If rates fall below what you locked, you leave. If they rise, you stay protected. The asymmetry runs in your favour, which is not how fixed energy usually works.
- You can act on a change in circumstances. An EV, a heat pump or a battery arriving mid-year should move you onto a smart tariff — and nothing charges you for doing the sensible thing.
- You can decide in stages. Switch now, take the £50 credit, and choose your tariff properly once Ofgem publishes the October cap on 26 August. Nothing about that sequence costs you anything.
Compare the exit fee before the unit rate
A fix half a penny cheaper per kWh with £150-per-fuel exit fees is a worse product than a slightly dearer one you can leave for free — unless you are certain you won't want to move for a year, and almost nobody is. On 2,500 kWh of electricity, half a penny is about £12.50 a year. The exit fee is £300.
⚖️Fixed vs Flexible Octopus
Flexible Octopus is the standard variable tariff — the one you land on by default and the one you roll back onto when a fix ends. It tracks the Ofgem price cap and Octopus prices it slightly below the cap rather than at it, which is worth knowing if you've been told that all variable tariffs are the same.
The choice between them comes down to three questions:
- Would a winter surprise hurt? If a jump in the January cap would mean something else goes unpaid, Fixed buys real peace of mind and you don't need a view on wholesale gas to justify it.
- Do you want to benefit if prices fall? Flexible passes cap reductions on at the next quarterly review. Fixed doesn't pass anything on — that's the trade.
- Do you want to think about it again? Flexible needs no decisions and no end date. Fixed needs you to remember when it expires so you don't roll over without looking.
Because neither carries an exit fee, this isn't a decision you have to get right first time. The current forecast for October is a rise of around 2% — around £3 a month on a typical bill — so the gap between the two choices is currently small. Our guide to whether to fix works through the arithmetic in full.
🧠Fixed vs the Smart Tariffs
If you can move when you use energy, a fixed tariff is almost certainly not your cheapest option — and the gap is usually far larger than the fixed-versus-variable question is worth arguing about:
Against a cap electricity rate of 26.11p, charging an EV overnight on a fixed tariff instead of a smart one is one of the more expensive mistakes available in domestic energy. If you drive electric, this is the comparison to run before anything else.
Discounted rate windows sized to how heat pumps actually run, typically saving around £219/year versus a gas boiler. With electricity VAT at 0% from October while gas stays at 5%, the case for electrified heating improves further.
The direct opposite of fixing. Your rate moves with the market each day, so falls reach you immediately rather than a quarter later — with built-in ceilings of 100p/kWh electricity and 30p/kWh gas to stop the downside being unlimited.
If you have solar panels and a battery, a flat fixed rate ignores the thing that makes your setup valuable — the difference between cheap import windows and high-value export ones. Flux is built around exactly that.
The honest framing: Fixed is the right answer when you can't or don't want to shift usage, and certainty is what you're buying. It is the wrong answer if you have flexible load and simply haven't got round to using it.
👥Who Octopus Fixed Is For
Good fit if you:
- Need a predictable rate — a fixed income, a tight monthly budget, or no headroom for a winter surprise
- Have no smart meter, or one that stopped talking after a previous switch, which rules out Tracker, Agile and the Go tariffs
- Use energy at conventional times and can't realistically shift consumption overnight
- Are a landlord or letting agent budgeting for a property over a fixed period
- Want to stop thinking about energy — a legitimate goal, and one Fixed serves better than anything else Octopus sells
Look elsewhere if you:
- Drive an EV — Intelligent Octopus Go will beat a fix comfortably
- Have a heat pump — Cosy Octopus is shaped around how they run
- Have solar or a battery — a flat rate wastes the asset; see export tariffs
- Can genuinely shift usage and are willing to engage with a variable rate
- Believe prices are about to fall sharply — though if that were knowable, fixed deals would already be priced for it
🚀How to Get Octopus Fixed
One timing point: with Ofgem confirming the October cap by 26 August 2026 and electricity VAT dropping to 0% on 1 October, there is a reasonable case for switching now to bank the £50 and choosing your tariff once both numbers are known. The no-exit-fee policy is what makes that sequence free — see how switching works for the full process.
✅Verdict — A Fix You Can Leave Is a Different Product
Verdict: The rates are competitive; the absence of exit fees is what makes it worth having.
Octopus 12M Fixed locks your unit rates and standing charges for a year and is typically priced below the £1,663 price cap — though how far below moves with the wholesale market and varies by region, so check a live quote rather than any published example. What makes it genuinely unusual is that you can leave whenever you like at no cost, which turns a twelve-month commitment into a price ceiling. If you have an EV, a heat pump or solar, a smart tariff will still beat it. If you don't, and you want to stop thinking about energy, this is the straightforward answer.
Octopus Energy supplies 7.3 million UK households, has been Which? Recommended for 9 consecutive years and holds a 4.8/5 Trustpilot rating from 800,000+ reviews. Switch via our referral link and £50 free credit lands in your account regardless of which tariff you end up on. Still weighing it up? Read should you fix your energy tariff or compare every Octopus tariff.