Why "the cheapest retailer" is the wrong question
It is the most searched energy question in Australia, and it has no fixed answer. There is no single cheapest electricity retailer, because "cheapest" is not a property of a retailer. It is a property of a plan matched to a particular household in a particular network. The same retailer can be the best deal for your neighbour and a poor one for you, purely because your usage patterns differ. Any article that names one retailer as "the cheapest" is either guessing or is being paid to say so.
This matters because chasing a supposedly cheapest brand can lead you onto a plan that is wrong for your usage, while the genuinely cheapest option for you (perhaps from a retailer you have never heard of) goes unnoticed. The useful question is not "who is cheapest?" but "who is cheapest for my usage, in my state, on my tariff?" That question does have an answer, and it is findable.
What actually decides the cheapest plan for you
Three things dominate. First, your usage level and shape: a low-usage apartment is punished most by high daily supply charges, while a high-usage home feels the usage rate most, and a household with heavy evening use is affected differently by time-of-use tariffs than one that uses most power midday. Second, your state and network: electricity is priced by distribution zone, so the cheapest retailer in South Australia may not even operate the same way in regional Queensland, and network charges baked into every plan vary widely by location.
Third, your tariff type and situation: whether you are on a flat, time-of-use or demand tariff, whether you have solar (making feed-in tariffs matter), whether you have controlled-load hot water, and whether a plan’s discount is guaranteed or conditional. Layer on benefit periods that expire and revert to higher rates, and you can see why a single national "cheapest" ranking is meaningless. The cheapest plan is the one that wins once all of these are applied to your real numbers.
Why comparison sites disagree, and how to cut through it
Different tools give different "cheapest" answers because they use different inputs and different business models. A tool using an estimated, model-household usage figure will crown a different winner than one using your real bill. A tool that only compares a panel of partnered retailers cannot see a cheaper plan from a retailer outside its panel. And a tool paid a commission by retailers has at least some incentive not purely aligned with finding you the lowest price.
To cut through it, insist on three things: whole-of-market coverage (every AER-listed retailer, not a panel), costing on your real usage (from an actual bill, not an estimate), and independence from retailer commissions (so the ranking answers to you). Get those three right and "the cheapest retailer" stops being a marketing slogan and becomes a specific, provable answer for your household. Our <a href="/resources/best-electricity-retailer-australia">best electricity retailer</a> guide goes deeper on judging a comparison.
How to find your actual cheapest retailer
EnergySorted is built exactly around those three principles. Upload a recent bill and it reads your real peak, off-peak and shoulder usage, your solar export and your gas steps, then costs every plan from every AER-listed retailer against those real numbers, ranks them cheapest-first, and proves the winner against what you are paying now, in dollars, for your household, not an average one.
It takes no retailer commissions (funded by a small subscription, around $39 a year), so no brand can buy its way to the top of your list, and it re-checks nightly so the moment a benefit period expires or a cheaper plan launches, you find out. That is how you replace the unanswerable question "who is the cheapest retailer?" with the answerable one: "who is cheapest for me, today?" Browse <a href="/retailers">all retailers</a>, <a href="/electricity">compare electricity plans</a>, then read <a href="/resources/how-to-switch">how to switch</a> when you have your answer.