Flexible Octopus Tariff

Flexible Octopus is the standard variable tariff — the one you land on by default when you join Octopus, and the one you roll onto automatically when a fixed deal comes to an end. It is, by a distance, the tariff most Octopus customers are actually on, and the great majority of them never chose it. They simply never chose anything else.

Structurally it's the simplest product Octopus sells. Every unit costs the same whatever time of day you use it. There's a daily standing charge for each fuel that you pay whether you use energy or not. There's no contract length, no end date and no exit fee. The only moving part is the price itself, which is reset up to four times a year in step with the Ofgem price cap.

That simplicity is genuinely worth something — it needs no smart meter, no behaviour change and no attention. But it's also why Flexible is almost never the cheapest tariff Octopus offers. Every other tariff in the range asks something of you (a smart meter, a shiftable load, a twelve-month decision) and pays you for it. Flexible asks nothing and pays accordingly.

Run those rates against Ofgem's typical household and you get £1,663 a year. That figure needs one important caveat, because it changed for reasons that had nothing to do with prices: from 1 July 2026 Ofgem cut its assumed typical consumption — electricity from 2,700 to 2,500 kWh a year, gas from 11,500 to 9,500 kWh — to reflect how much less energy households now use. The identical cap was announced as £1,862 on the old basis and reads as £1,663 on the new one. Nothing about your unit rates moved. If you see two cap figures compared and the gap looks dramatic, check they're on the same basis first.

The standing charges deserve more attention than they usually get. At 57.19p and 29.04p a day, you're paying roughly £315 a year before using a single unit of anything. For a low-usage household that's a large share of the bill, and it's the reason cutting consumption often saves less than people expect — the arithmetic is covered in our guide to standing charges, including Ofgem's low-standing-charge trial that Octopus is part of.

Flexible is a default tariff in Ofgem's terms, which means it falls under the price cap. Two things about the cap are widely misunderstood, and both matter if this is your tariff.

First, the cap limits rates, not bills. It sets a maximum unit rate and standing charge for each fuel. It does not cap what you spend. Use more, pay more — there is no ceiling on the total. Headlines describing “the £1,663 cap” are describing what Ofgem's illustrative typical household would pay, not a limit that applies to you.

Second, the cap is set from a backward-looking window. Ofgem assesses wholesale prices over roughly a three-month period and applies the result to the following quarter. The October 2026 cap, for instance, was calculated from market data between 19 May and 18 August. That lag is precisely why a fixed tariff can look cheap against the cap when the market has softened since the window closed — and expensive when it has firmed up.

Octopus has committed to keeping Flexible at or below the cap rather than pricing to the maximum, so in practice Flexible customers pay the cap level or a little under it. That is a genuine difference from suppliers who treat the cap as a target — but it is a small difference, measured in pounds a year rather than tens of pounds. It is not a substitute for being on the right tariff.

If you're on Flexible, both changes reach you automatically — there is nothing to do and nothing to claim. Your rates simply change on 1 October.

The cap. Ofgem announces the October to December level by 26 August 2026. Cornwall Insight, whose pre-announcement forecasts have historically landed close to the confirmed figure, currently expects around £1,709 a year — roughly 2% above July's £1,663. That is a forecast and not the confirmed number; we'll update our October price cap page with the actual figures the day they land.

The VAT cut. VAT on domestic electricity falls from 5% to 0% from 1 October 2026 until 31 March 2027. Because VAT is a tax on the supply rather than part of your tariff, it reaches everyone — Flexible, fixed and smart tariff customers alike. Gas keeps its 5%. The government has put the saving at around £45 a year; netted against a cap rise landing the same day, Martin Lewis's netted-off figure was nearer £20 — and MoneySavingExpert has since said later forecasts largely swallow even that. Treat it as a wash rather than a windfall. Our VAT cut guide works through what it means in practice, including what happens when it reverts in April 2027.

Because leaving is free in both directions, the usual risk of fixing largely disappears. What's left is a straightforward price comparison: if the fixed rates on offer for your postcode beat the current cap rates, fixing locks in that gap, and if the market falls far enough afterwards you can move back without penalty. The full arithmetic, including how to compare all four numbers properly, is in should you fix your energy tariff.

This is where staying on Flexible gets genuinely expensive, and it's worth being direct about it. If you have an EV, a heat pump, solar panels or a home battery and you're still on Flexible, you are very likely leaving hundreds of pounds a year on the table.

Intelligent Octopus Go gives EV owners a six-hour overnight window at a fraction of the day rate, and Octopus schedules the charging for you. For a typical EV that difference alone dwarfs anything you'd gain by switching supplier. Cosy Octopus does the equivalent for heat pumps with cheap heating windows through the day, and Octopus Flux pays solar and battery owners a premium for exporting at peak.

Even without any of that hardware, Octopus Tracker reprices daily against the wholesale market and has spent long stretches below the cap — though it carries real risk, since it also rises when the market does. The one thing every smart tariff requires is a working smart meter, which is usually the actual obstacle rather than the tariff choice itself. If you don't have one, our smart meter guide covers getting one installed.

You don't really need to do anything to get onto Flexible — it's where new customers start. Switch to Octopus through our referral link and you'll join on Flexible Octopus with £50 free credit on your account, then move to a different tariff later if and when one suits you better. Because there are no exit fees on anything Octopus sells, that later move costs nothing.

Switching takes about five minutes and needs your address, a rough idea of your usage and your bank details. Octopus contacts your old supplier for you, your supply never gets interrupted, and there's a 14-day cooling-off period. The full sequence is in how switching works.

If you're already an Octopus customer sitting on Flexible, changing tariff is done from the app or your online account and doesn't involve a supply switch at all — it usually takes effect within a couple of weeks.