Snug Octopus: The Storage Heater Tariff

Storage heaters have been on Economy 7 for decades: cheap electricity overnight charges the bricks inside them, and they release that heat through the day. The problem is that the charging is dumb. It runs on a fixed timer, the heat often runs out by late afternoon, and you end up boosting at the expensive day rate just as the family gets home.

Snug Octopus, launched in November 2024 and billed by Octopus as the UK's first smart tariff for traditional storage heaters, fixes both problems. Octopus takes over the scheduling through your smart meter, charges the heaters during the cheapest, greenest periods overnight, and adds a one-hour afternoon boost at the cheap rate so there's heat left for the evening.

Octopus's published price data on 28 October 2026 put the cheap rate at 9.5p/kWh in every region, with the rest of the day averaging about 27.7p/kWh and a standing charge averaging about 54.3p a day. Those figures include VAT, which is 0% on household electricity until 1 July 2027.

Snug has two prices: a cheap rate and a standard rate. Unlike Cosy Octopus, there's no extra-expensive peak. Which price you pay depends on when the electricity is used:

• 00:30 to 06:30 every night: 9.5p/kWh for your whole home, not just the heaters. Octopus's price data shows this window moving with the clocks, so it's 00:30 to 06:30 UK time in both summer and winter.
• Smart-scheduled charging: Octopus says any time your heaters charge on its schedule is billed at the cheap rate, even if it falls outside the overnight window.
• The afternoon boost: one hour a day, scheduled by Octopus, also at the off-peak rate. Octopus doesn't publish a fixed hour, because it's timed around the grid.
• Everything else: the standard rate, which averaged about 27.7p/kWh on 28 October 2026.

You tell Octopus how long you want each night's heat stored, and it works out when to charge. If you override the schedule and set the heaters to charge manually during the day, Octopus says that's billed at the day rate.

Two practical notes from Octopus's own FAQs. First, the heaters can take up to about 15 minutes to respond to a schedule change, and a delay can push a little usage into the day rate. Second, the cheap-rate adjustments for smart-scheduled charging can appear on your statement later than the usage itself, so the app may briefly show more day-rate use than you're actually billed for. The statement is the reliable record.

The cheap rate is the same everywhere; the standard rate and standing charge vary by region, as they do on every tariff. London has the lowest standing charge (42.29p a day) and Merseyside & North Wales the highest (66.74p), which alone is a difference of about £89 a year.

Snug is a variable tariff, so these prices change. In London, for example, the cheap rate was 9.00p/kWh including 5% VAT in July 2026 and is 9.5p at 0% VAT now, and the standing charge last changed on 19 October 2026. Enter your postcode on Octopus's Snug page for today's figures. From 1 July 2027, when VAT on electricity is due to return to 5%, every rate in this table rises by 5% unless Octopus changes its prices first.

Snug beats Octopus's own Economy 7 tariff on both unit rates: the cheap rate is about 4.7p lower and the day rate about 5p lower. The standing charges are almost identical. On our illustration, a storage-heater home using 3,900 kWh a year with 70% of it overnight would pay roughly £180 a year less on Snug.

Octopus's own published comparison is more conservative: it estimates a typical medium Economy 7 home would pay about £964 a year on Snug versus £1,092 on Flexible Octopus Economy 7, a saving of about £128, based on prices from earlier in 2026. At launch it quoted £139. Treat any single figure as a guide; the real saving depends on how much of your heating the cheap periods can cover.

The one thing Economy 7 has that Snug doesn't is a seventh cheap hour. If you run a lot of other appliances at night (a washing machine, a dishwasher, an EV charger), that extra hour has some value. For most storage-heater homes, though, a cheaper rate plus an afternoon boost outweighs it. Economy 7 is explained in full in our Economy 7 guide.

Economy 7 tariffs from other suppliers vary, and the price cap sets limits on standard Economy 7 rates too. If you're on another supplier's Economy 7 tariff, compare your night and day rates against the Snug table above. Snug isn't a fix, so there's no exit fee if it doesn't work out.

Cosy Octopus is the tariff for heat pumps, not storage heaters, and it's built differently. Cosy has three price levels: cheap windows at 04:00–07:00, 13:00–16:00 and 22:00–00:00, a standard rate the rest of the time, and an expensive peak from 16:00 to 19:00. On 28 October 2026 in London, Cosy's cheap rate was 14.12p, its standard rate 28.80p and its peak 43.19p.

That design suits a heat pump, which runs a little at a time all day and can pre-heat the house before the evening peak. Storage heaters work the other way: they need a long block of cheap power to charge, which is what Snug's six-hour overnight window delivers, at a lower cheap rate than Cosy's. Snug also has no peak rate, so an evening cup of tea costs the standard rate rather than a premium.

In short: storage heaters, choose Snug; heat pump, choose Cosy. If you have an EV as well, compare with Intelligent Octopus Go, whose cheap window covers the whole home overnight, and look at our heat pumps guide if you're thinking of replacing storage heaters altogether.

You don't have to work all this out yourself. Octopus runs the eligibility checks during sign-up and tells you if your setup won't work. If your immersion heater is on the same circuit as your storage heaters, it charges at the same time; if not, set its timer for the overnight window.

Two restrictions to know about. Octopus says you can't join other flexibility schemes while you're on Snug, because it's already managing your heaters, so don't count on extra Saving Sessions income. And if you switch the heaters off at the isolation switch, they won't follow the schedule. Snug does work with Outgoing Octopus if you have solar panels.

Storage heaters are common in flats and rented homes. If you rent, Ofgem says you can usually switch supplier and tariff if you pay the bills; check our renters guide for the clauses that sometimes get in the way.

Because Snug is joined from inside an Octopus account, the realistic route for anyone with another supplier is switch first, then change tariff. The switch itself takes about five minutes and usually completes within a few working days; our how to switch to Octopus guide covers what to have ready, and how it works explains the £50 referral credit. Full disclosure: we receive £50 too if you join through our link.

If you're on another supplier's fixed Economy 7 deal, check its exit fee first. There's no fee in the last 49 days of a fix. Octopus's own fixed tariffs are an alternative if you'd rather lock in, but they're not designed for storage heaters.