How WattIndex Works: Methodology

Periods, refresh and retrieval

Price periods

Eurostat electricity prices are half-yearly: S1 covers January to June and S2 covers July to December. The latest period on this site is H1 2026.

Refresh cadence

The dataset is refreshed when Eurostat publishes a new half-year, twice a year: in spring for the second half of the previous year and in autumn for the first half of the current year. Between refreshes the figures do not change, and every page carries the retrieval note below.

Retrieval

The H1 2026 figures on this site were retrieved from Eurostat on 5 November 2026. If Eurostat revises a published value, the figure here is updated at the next refresh.

Retail and wholesale prices are never mixed

Retail prices (this site)

Everything published on WattIndex today is a retail price: what households and businesses actually pay per kilowatt hour, from the Eurostat nrg_pc_204 and nrg_pc_205 statistical series. Each figure is labelled with its dataset, band and tax basis.

Wholesale prices

Wholesale day-ahead prices are a different measure: the price of electricity traded between generators and suppliers before network charges, taxes and supplier costs. They are not published on this site yet. If they are added, they will appear on clearly separate pages, labelled as wholesale, and never inside the retail rankings or the retail calculator defaults.

Which consumption band is used?

Band DC is the household size Eurostat uses for its headline comparison: a home using between 2,500 and 4,999 kWh of electricity per year. Every household price on WattIndex is quoted for band DC, so countries are compared on the same usage. Households that use much more or much less can face a different average unit price, because fixed charges are spread over a different number of kilowatt hours.

What is included in the price?

The household price is the full amount paid per kilowatt hour: the energy itself, network charges for transporting it, supplier costs and margin, and all taxes and levies. The tax share column shows taxes and levies as a percentage of that total, from 46.9 percent in Poland down to a negative figure in the Netherlands (minus 9.9 percent), where the published tax component is negative. Business prices are shown excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes, because businesses reclaim them.

How the calculators estimate a bill

Use the calculators on this site. The annual bill calculator multiplies your yearly usage in kWh by your country’s H1 2026 average unit price and can add a standing charge if your tariff has one: at the German average of 0.3618 EUR per kWh, 3,500 kWh costs EUR 1,266.30 a year before any standing charge. The EV calculator prices a charge or 100 km of driving, and the appliance calculator prices any device from its wattage and running time. Because the inputs are national averages, treat the results as estimates, not quotes.