NSW has three distribution networks and a fully contestable retail market, which is exactly why a headline price quoted for Sydney can be wrong for a home two hours up the road.
New South Wales is the most-contested electricity market in the country: dozens of retailers compete for the same household, and the regulated Default Market Offer gives you a common yardstick to judge them against. What that competition does not do is make any single retailer cheapest for everyone. NSW splits into three network zones with their own regulated charges, so the same plan genuinely costs different amounts in Ausgrid territory than in Essential Energy territory.
Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy each set their own regulated network charges, and network costs are a large slice of the bill. Your zone is fixed by your address — you cannot switch it, and no retailer can discount it away.
This is the single biggest reason a "cheapest NSW plan" list is misleading. A ranking that is not run for your zone is a ranking of somebody else's bill.
Ausgrid's network time-of-use peak runs 3pm–9pm, but only in November through March and June through August. April, May, September and October have no peak window at all — those months are entirely off-peak.
That is a real, published quirk of the Ausgrid tariff schedule and it changes whether a time-of-use plan suits you. Endeavour runs a tighter 4pm–8pm weekday peak with a 10am–2pm solar-sponge window; Essential Energy runs two peaks a day, 7am–10am and 3pm–10pm, every day of the week.
Your distributor is set by your address and cannot be switched. Its charges are regulated, so no retailer can discount them away — which is why a comparison has to be run for your actual network, not a state average.
The DMO caps what a retailer can charge a household that has never shopped around, and every market offer must be advertised against it. It is a ceiling and a yardstick, not a good deal — the AER itself notes it caps rates, not bills, and that fewer than 10% of households are on it.
Source: AER — Default Market Offer
No peak in Apr, May, Sep or Oct — those months are all off-peak.
These are the network windows published by each distributor, not your retailer’s billing windows — a retail plan can bill different times. We use your own plan’s rates when we cost a comparison.
$285 a year ($313.50 for embedded-network customers)
up to $180 a year
Drops to $20 if you already receive the Low Income Household Rebate. Applications are currently closed and reopen in August 2026.
$285 a year ($313.50 for embedded-network customers)
Concession names, amounts and eligibility are set by government and change — most reset on 1 July. We publish only figures we could verify against an official source, and we link every one so you can check it yourself. There is currently no federal energy bill rebate: the Energy Bill Relief Fund ended on 31 December 2025 and was not renewed in the 2026-27 Budget.
618 g CO2-e per kWh
This is an emissions figure and never a price signal. Your rate is fixed by your plan and does not move with the grid, so nobody should tell you power is "cheaper right now" because the grid happens to be cleaner. Where it does matter: it sets how much carbon each kilowatt-hour of solar you self-consume actually displaces.
Upload a bill and we reproduce your current cost first, then cost all 5,923 residential electricity plans the AER publishes for NSW, from the 30 retailers we track on the same usage and rank them by real annual dollars. Because we take no commissions, the ranking is not for sale.
Every retailer publishing a residential electricity plan to the AER for NSW, straight from the data we compare. We rank all of them the same way.
Yes. New South Wales is part of the National Electricity Market, so you can switch to any retailer that services your network. Switching is free, does not touch your physical supply, and most plans have no exit fee.
We compare all 5,923 residential electricity plans the AER publishes for NSW, from the 30 retailers we track. We re-check them nightly. We exclude wholesale spot-price pass-through plans, because the AER reference rates for those are not what a customer actually pays — we would rather leave a plan out than rank it on a number we know is wrong.
Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy, Essential Energy — which one serves you is fixed by your address. The distributor runs the poles and wires and its charges are set by the regulator, not your retailer. It is not something you can shop for.
Default Market Offer (DMO 8), set by the Australian Energy Regulator for 1 July 2026 – 30 June 2027. The DMO caps what a retailer can charge a household that has never shopped around, and every market offer must be advertised against it. It is a ceiling and a yardstick, not a good deal — the AER itself notes it caps rates, not bills, and that fewer than 10% of households are on it.
The main one is the Low Income Household Rebate, $285 a year ($313.50 for embedded-network customers). Eligibility and amounts are set by government and change — always confirm with the official source before relying on a figure.
Ausgrid (network TOU): 3pm–9pm, every day. Endeavour Energy: 4pm–8pm, weekdays. Essential Energy: 7am–10am and 3pm–10pm, every day. These are the network windows published by each distributor, not your retailer’s billing windows — a retail plan can bill different times. We use your own plan’s rates when we cost a comparison.
Over the last 85 days of AEMO's carbon-intensity index, the NSW1 region averaged about 618 grams of CO2-e per kilowatt-hour, which ranks 4 of 5 NEM regions we track (1 = cleanest). This is an emissions figure, not a price signal: your rate is set by your plan and does not move with the grid.
No. We take no commission from any retailer, which is why we can tell you to stay put when staying put is right. You pay a small yearly subscription (around $39), so the ranking answers to you.
Every figure on this page was checked against a government primary source. Where we could not verify a number, we left it out rather than estimate it — that is the whole reason to pay us instead of trusting a page funded by retailer commissions.
Upload one bill. We reproduce it, cost the market against it, and prove the saving in dollars — or tell you to stay exactly where you are.
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