Electricity price today: what a kilowatt-hour costs this hour and tomorrow

From the exchange price to the price on your bill

What apps and news sites call “the electricity price today” is nearly always the day-ahead exchange price: the wholesale price at which generators and suppliers trade power for each quarter hour of the next day. It is quoted in euros per megawatt-hour; divide by ten and you have cents per kilowatt-hour. No household pays it on its own. The table splits the daily average of 25 October 2026 into the parts set by law and by grid operators in Germany and the Netherlands.

The German electricity tax is set in Electricity Tax Act (StromStG), section 3, VAT in German VAT Act (UStG), section 12, the concession fee caps in Concession Fee Ordinance (KAV), section 2; the 2026 levies were published by the transmission operators in October 2025 (summary: IHK Lippe zu Detmold: 2026 electricity levies set by the transmission operators). The Dutch energy tax comes from Environmental Taxes Act (Wbm), articles 59 and 63 (1 January 2026) and VAT from Dutch VAT Act 1968, article 9 (21% VAT). Germany’s grid fee depends on the local operator, so the calculator starts from the average per federal state in the Federal Network Agency and Federal Cartel Office: Monitoring Report 2025, table 25. In the Netherlands the network operator charges a fixed amount per connection, which does not change with the hour, so it is left out of the hourly price.

Why the price changes every fifteen minutes

Since 1 October 2025 the European day-ahead auction trades quarter hours rather than hours. A day therefore has 96 prices, or 92 and 100 on the days the clocks change. How far apart they are depends on the weather: on sunny days solar power often drives midday prices below zero, while on calm winter evenings gas plants set the price. Over the last 30 days in Germany (26 September 2026 to 25 October 2026), the dearest quarter hour reached 40.6 ct/kWh and the cheapest -0.3 ct/kWh. On 3 of those days there were 24 quarter hours with a negative price in all. More on negative electricity prices.

What the spread means for your own use

On a fixed price it does not matter when the washing machine runs. On a dynamic tariff you pay the exchange price of each quarter hour plus fixed parts, so moving flexible use into cheap hours pays: charging an electric car, a heat pump with a buffer tank, the dishwasher. Cheapest hour finds the best start for an appliance with a given running time, EV charging cost prices a charge overnight or at midday, and Dynamic electricity tariff checks a dynamic contract against your current unit rate over the last thirty days. In Germany every supplier has had to offer such a tariff since 1 January 2025 to customers with a smart metering system (Energy Industry Act (EnWG), section 41a: dynamic tariffs).

What German households actually pay

According to the Federal Network Agency and Federal Cartel Office: Monitoring Report 2025, table 25, households using 2,500 to 5,000 kWh a year paid an average of 40.05 ct/kWh including VAT on 1 April 2025, 44.93 ct/kWh on the default supply tariff and 38.20 ct/kWh with another supplier. For dynamic tariffs the same report gives a 2025 model price of 36.30 ct/kWh. These figures include standing charges and are averages; your own contract may be higher or lower.

The exchange price over the years

In Germany a megawatt-hour on the day-ahead market averaged €89.56 in 2025 and €78.45 in 2024, or 8.96 ct/kWh against 7.85 ct/kWh. In September 2026 the monthly average was 14.48 ct/kWh. The full series since 2018, day by day and month by month, is on day-ahead price history. Tomorrow alone has its own page, electricity price tomorrow, and today’s hours are on hourly electricity prices.

Five bidding zones

Germany and Luxembourg share one bidding zone; Austria has had its own since October 2018, and the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland each have one. All are coupled into one European market, so prices often sit close together, yet on windy days they can drift far apart. The calculator above switches between zones. Country pages explain what is added in Austria, Belgium and Poland, where we show the exchange price and let you add the rest from your bill, since we have not checked those countries’ taxes line by line.

Four euro zones over 30 days

The average daily spread is the gap between the cheapest and the dearest quarter hour of a day, averaged over the period. The wider it is, the more there is to gain from shifting use, and the more a dynamic tariff differs from a fixed price for households that use a lot of power at expensive times.

Three kinds of household

On a fixed contract every kilowatt-hour costs the same, so the curve shows when the grid is full of wind and solar power rather than what you pay. On a dynamic tariff without large loads, only the washing machine, dryer and dishwasher can move, and use peaks in the evening just when prices often do. On a dynamic tariff with an electric car or a heat pump with storage, 50 to 100 kWh a week can go into the cheapest hours, and that is where the daily spread pays off most, provided a wallbox timer or an energy manager does the shifting.

When each day’s prices are fixed

The routine is the same every day. Until noon, generators, traders and suppliers submit bids for every quarter hour of the next day. The auction clears all coupled European bidding zones together, taking into account how much power the lines between countries can carry. The results come out in the early afternoon, SMARD makes them available, and we load them several times in the afternoon and evening. From then on the next day’s prices are fixed, and a household tariff tied to the day-ahead price bills on exactly these values; what happens in intraday trading on the delivery day does not change that.

How to read the calculator

At the top you pick the bidding zone and the day. For Germany, choose your federal state and the calculator fills in that state’s average grid fee; if your bill shows a different amount, overwrite it. Your supplier’s markup is in the terms of a dynamic contract, usually a fixed amount per kWh above the exchange price, and the municipality size sets the concession fee. For the Netherlands you enter the purchase fee, and the energy tax and VAT are added for you. The result shows the all-in price now or as a daily average, the cheapest and dearest hours, the bare exchange value and the number of negative quarter hours, followed by the curve and an hour-by-hour table.

What is not included

Standing charges, metering fees and Dutch network charges are paid per year or per connection, whatever you use, so they are not part of a price per kWh. Reduced grid fees for controllable loads such as heat pumps or wallboxes depend on the grid operator and can be entered as a lower grid fee. For Austria, Belgium and Poland we add no taxes of our own. And the calculator only knows published prices: we show no forecasts for the day after tomorrow or next month.

Where the figures come from

All exchange prices come from Bundesnetzagentur | SMARD.de: wholesale electricity prices (CC BY 4.0), the electricity market platform of the Federal Network Agency, which publishes the day-ahead results under the CC BY 4.0 licence. We reload them five times a day and do not alter them. Dutch consumer averages come from CBS StatLine 85592NED: average energy rates for consumers (CC BY 4.0), the złoty rate from the European Central Bank: euro reference rate for the złoty. The calculation, its assumptions and its tests are described in the method; who publishes the site is on the about page.