To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
Energy bills are nowhere near as high as they were at their peak in 2023 but they’re still higher than they were before the energy crisis. The good news is that suppliers are offering cheaper fixed deals again so it’s possible to save money by switching.
So how do you know which provider you should switch to? Price is of course the most important factor but there’s so much more that determines how satisfied you are with your energy suppliers.
That’s where we come in. We’ve asked more than 2,000 energy customers to rate their suppliers on a range of factors, including value, how well they handle complaints, the clarity of their bills and how easy their website and app are to use. We’ve also asked how likely people are to recommend their suppliers to others and to what extent they trust them to act in their best interests.
The result is eight awards that highlight the best in these categories and overall to help you decide between suppliers based on more than just price. Plus, if two or more providers will cost you the same, these awards can help you choose between them.
Below you’ll discover which suppliers are the best of the bunch and which are the ones to avoid.
READ NEXT: Best energy suppliers
Expert Reviews Home Energy Awards 2025
Best Overall: Octopus Energy
Highly commended: Utility Warehouse
For the fourth time in a row, Octopus Energy has won the award for the best energy supplier overall. It’s also won four of our other seven awards.
We calculated which provider was the overall winner using a combination of their scores for value, how likely they are to be recommended and how well they handle complaints. Octopus performed brilliantly in these areas, coming second for value and top in the other two.
It particularly excelled in the recommendation category, where an impressive 53% of its customers said they were extremely likely to recommend it. This was five percentage points higher than for our highly commended supplier Utility Warehouse. Both of them were streets ahead of the other suppliers in our survey for this.
Octopus was founded in 2015 and is now the largest supplier in terms of market share for electricity, overtaking British Gas in 2023, and the second largest for gas, although if it continues on its current trajectory it could overtake British Gas soon. It now powers over 7.3 million British homes.
It only supplies electricity from renewable sources and is a major investor in green energy generation across Europe. It generates renewable electricity from wind turbines it owns and buys it from more than 700 renewable generators in the UK.
Octopus had the lowest number of complaints of all large and medium suppliers according to the latest complaints data from the energy regulator Ofgem. It received just 561 complaints per 100,000 customer accounts in the second quarter of 2025 – well below the industry average of 1,052. It resolved 51% of them by the end of the next working day.
Best Value: Utility Warehouse
Highly commended: Octopus Energy
Whatever the cost of the energy you use, you want to feel like you’re getting good value in return. We asked energy customers how satisfied they are with the value their providers offer, taking into account the price they pay and the service they get.
Utility Warehouse was the clear winner here with an impressive 40% of customers saying they were very satisfied. This was far more than even our highly commended supplier, Octopus, where 28% of customers said this.
In contrast, the worst supplier in this category, EDF Energy – taking into account those who were very satisfied and those who were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied – had just 16% of customers giving the top rating. While only 12% of Utility Warehouse customers said they were dissatisfied in some way, 22% of EDF Energy customers said they were.
Utility Warehouse provides broadband, mobile and insurance services as well as energy and says customers can save money by bundling two or more services together. It also has an unusual business model in that you can earn money by becoming a UW Partner and encouraging others to sign up with the provider.
Best for Handling Complaints: Octopus Energy
Highly commended: British Gas, Utility Warehouse
The only time you need to contact your provider might be when you want to make a complaint, so how well it handles this plays an important part of how satisfied you are with it. Providers should resolve complaints as quickly as possible and give you an outcome you’re happy with.
Octopus Energy was the best at this according to our survey, with 31% of its customers saying they were very satisfied with its complaint handling. British Gas and Utility Warehouse were joint second with 28% very satisfied so they’re both our highly commended suppliers in this category.
The vast majority (85%) of Octopus customers said they were either very satisfied or satisfied while 74% and 69% of British Gas and Utility Warehouse customers were respectively.
At the bottom of the heap was Ovo Energy, where only 13% of customers were very satisfied and 17% were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. EDF Energy wasn’t much better with 16% very satisfied and the same proportion as Ovo dissatisfied overall.
Best for Clear Billing: Utility Warehouse
Highly commended: Octopus Energy
If you can’t understand your bills, it’s difficult to make sense of how much you’re paying for your energy use and compare costs to switch to a better deal, so clear bills are essential.
This is another category where Utility Warehouse outshone its rivals. In our survey, two fifths (40%) of its customers said they strongly agree that their bills are clear and easy to understand.
The next best, Octopus, fell well short of Utility Warehouse for those who said they strongly agree at 30% but had roughly the same proportion of customers saying they either strongly agree or agree at 81%.
At the bottom of the heap were EDF Energy and Ovo Energy. Only a fifth (20%) of their customers strongly agreed that their bills are clear and easy to understand. They also had the same proportion of people saying they either disagree or strongly disagree at 13%.
Most Recommended: Octopus Energy
Highly commended: Utility Warehouse
Octopus Energy was by far the most recommended supplier in our survey. More than half (53%) of its customers said they were extremely likely to recommend it to others and another 37% said they were likely to.
Only 2% said they were either unlikely or not at all likely to recommend them – the lowest of all the suppliers in our survey.
Second-placed Utility Warehouse had just under half (48%) of customers saying they were extremely likely to recommend it to others, while another 33% said they were likely to. A slightly higher proportion to Octopus said they were unlikely or not at all likely to recommend it.
There was a stark difference between the best and worst in this category. EDF Energy was the least likely to be recommended. Just 16% of its customers said they were extremely likely to do so while 11% said they were unlikely or not at all likely to.
Best for Customer Trust: Octopus Energy
Highly commended: British Gas
How much you trust your energy providers to act in your best interests is likely to be a big factor in whether you decide to stay with them. Unsurprisingly, the most recommended supplier Octopus was also the winner of our Best for Customer Trust award. While 30% said they completely trust it another half (49%) said they moderately trust it.
Highly commended supplier British Gas had the same proportion of customers saying they completely trust it but because it had more people saying they trust it only slightly or not at all than Octopus (13% versus 7%) it lost out to the younger supplier.
The least trusted was E.ON Next. A poor 17% of its customers said they completely trust the supplier to act in their best interests. A bigger proportion (22%) said they trust it only slightly or not at all.
Ovo Energy was the supplier with the largest share of its customers saying they trust it only slightly or not at all at 27%.
Best Website: Utility Warehouse
Highly commended: Octopus
Most of us go online to monitor our energy bills and switch providers now so we need our suppliers’ websites to be easy to use. Customers across the board generally found this to be the case and there were less dramatic differences between the best and worst.
However, there were two suppliers that clearly outperformed the rest in this category. Utility Warehouse was the winner of our Best Website award while Octopus was highly commended.
Almost half of Utility Warehouse customers (49%) said its website was very easy to use while a slightly smaller percentage (45%) of Octopus customers said this. Hardly anyone said they found either of these companies’ websites difficult to use.
Ovo Energy was the supplier with the lowest score for its website – only 28% of customers said they found it very easy to use. Scottish Power had the second lowest, where 30% of people said its website was easy to use.
Best App: Octopus Energy, Utility Warehouse
Your energy supplier’s smartphone app can be useful for checking your bills, making payments and more on the go, especially if it’s easy to use.
Octopus Energy and Utility Warehouse were both the winners of our Best App award so there’s no highly commended supplier here. They had by far the highest proportion of customers saying their apps were easy to use at around half for each. The next best, EDF Energy, had just 35% saying its app was easy to use.
Around a quarter (24%) of survey respondents said they didn’t use their provider’s app compared with 9% who didn’t use their provider’s website. This applied to a much lower proportion of Utility Warehouse and British Gas customers, where just 14% and 17% said they didn’t use them respectively, making them the suppliers in our survey with the most used apps.
The poorest performer for its app overall was Ovo Energy as while a third (33%) said its app was very easy to use, 7% said it was either difficult or very difficult to use.
Methodology
We carried out a survey of 2,008 energy customers to find out how satisfied they were with aspects of the service they received from their suppliers.
Only suppliers where the number of respondents was more than 50 people were included in our results. This means we haven’t been able to report on Co-op Energy, So Energy, 100Green and a number of other smaller suppliers.
To determine our winners in each category, for each question we looked at the percentage of ‘promoters’ – those who said they were very satisfied or the equivalent. We then subtracted the ‘detractors’ – those who were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied, or the equivalent. This methodology penalises brands with a lot of detractors and rewards those with truly satisfied customers.
Total percentages mentioned in the article may differ slightly compared to the figures in the tables due to rounding.
We also looked at complaints data published by the energy regulator Ofgem. To be the overall winner, a supplier must have received fewer complaints than the average across all suppliers according to the most recent figures, which were for the second quarter of 2025, and resolved at least 50% of them by the end of the next working day.
