Two fundamentally different ways to be charged
Most Australian energy plans are, in effect, fixed-rate: the retailer sets your usage rate and supply charge, and while they can change those rates with notice, you know today what you will pay per kWh. <a href="/retailers/amber-electric">Amber Electric</a> works differently. Instead of selling you a retail rate, Amber charges you a monthly membership fee and passes through the wholesale (spot) price of electricity, the price that moves in the National Electricity Market every five minutes. Your cost of power rises and falls with that live market price.
This is not simply "a cheaper plan" versus "a dearer plan". It is a different risk model. A conventional fixed-rate plan hands the price risk to the retailer; a wholesale plan like Amber’s hands it to you, in exchange for access to the real market price, which can be very low, occasionally even negative, but can also spike sharply during heatwaves or supply crunches. Choosing between them is really choosing how much price variability you are willing to take on.
How each model actually charges you
On a fixed-rate plan, you pay the same daily supply charge and the same usage rate (or the same time-of-use rates) regardless of what is happening in the wholesale market. Your bill varies only with how much you use, which makes budgeting predictable. The retailer builds a margin and a risk buffer into those rates. You pay a little more on average for the certainty.
On Amber, you pay the membership fee plus whatever the wholesale price is at the moment you use power, network charges included. If you can move heavy usage (running the dishwasher, charging an EV, pre-cooling the house) into cheap or negative-price periods, and cut back when prices spike, you can do well. Solar and especially home batteries amplify this: exporting or drawing at the right moments can materially change the outcome. But it requires engagement, and a stretch of high wholesale prices flows straight through to your bill.
Who each genuinely suits
A wholesale model like Amber suits engaged households that can shift their usage, ideally with solar, a battery or an EV, and who are comfortable with a bill that varies with the market. For these households the potential savings (and the ability to soak up cheap or negative-price power) can be real. It rewards attention and automation, and it appeals to people who want to be active participants in the energy market rather than passive customers.
Fixed-rate plans suit households that value certainty and simplicity: people who want to know their rates in advance, who cannot easily shift usage away from expensive periods, or who simply do not want to think about the spot price. Retirees on a tight budget, families with fixed routines, and anyone who would find a spike-driven bill stressful are usually better served by a conventional plan. Neither model is "smarter". They suit different lives.
Work out which is cheaper for your real usage
Because the two models charge so differently, comparing them by hand is genuinely hard. A wholesale plan’s cost depends on when you use power, not just how much. EnergySorted costs fixed-rate plans from every AER-listed retailer against your actual peak, off-peak and shoulder usage and your solar export, ranks them cheapest-first, and proves the result against your current bill, so you can see exactly what the best conventional plan would cost you.
That gives you a solid, commission-free benchmark (EnergySorted is funded by a roughly $39-a-year subscription and re-checks nightly) to weigh against a wholesale model like Amber: if the best fixed plan is already close to what you pay and you would rather not manage price risk, a conventional plan may be the smarter call; if there is a big gap and you can shift usage, a wholesale model might reward the effort. Explore <a href="/retailers">all retailers</a> or <a href="/electricity">compare electricity plans</a> to set your benchmark.