Electricity prices in Europe in 2026: every country ranked

Household electricity in Europe costs between about €0.076 per kWh in Ukraine and €0.371 in Italy, with a median of €0.213 ($0.238) across the 38 European countries in our data. The most expensive are Italy, Belgium and Germany; the cheapest are Ukraine, Belarus and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prices come from GlobalPetrolPrices, retrieved 2026-10-13, and are converted to euros at €0.895 per US dollar. They include taxes and network charges, so they reflect what a household actually pays per unit.

Every European country, ranked by household price

Sorted from most to least expensive for households. The last column shows how the business rate compares: a negative figure means firms pay less per kWh than homes. Not covered by the dataset: Ireland, Monaco, Montenegro, San Marino and Sweden.

Why European homes pay some of the world’s highest rates

Europe dominates the top of the global table: 8 of the 10 most expensive countries for household power among the 134 we track are European, and 10 European countries charge €0.30 or more per kWh. The world median is $0.150, and the US average is $0.190.

Three things stack up. First, wholesale prices: Europe’s power markets are largely priced at the cost of the most expensive plant needed to meet demand, which is often a gas-fired one, so the price of natural gas sets the price of electricity for long stretches even when most of it comes from cheaper sources. Europe imports much of its gas, and the 2022 energy crisis, when Russian pipeline supplies were cut, pushed that cost up sharply. Second, network charges for building and running the grid, including connecting new wind and solar capacity. Third, taxes and levies: VAT on every bill plus, in many countries, energy taxes or surcharges that fund renewables or social programmes. In the most expensive countries those layers together can outweigh the cost of the energy itself.

The cheap end: hydro and regulated tariffs

Europe’s cheapest electricity comes from two quite different situations. One is abundant low-cost generation: Norway and Iceland run almost entirely on hydropower (plus geothermal in Iceland), which is why Iceland, Finland and Norway sit below the European median, while Denmark, more tied into continental markets and taxes, does not.

The other is policy. Much of the Balkans and eastern Europe keeps household tariffs regulated well below market levels, often supported by state-owned utilities and domestic coal or hydro. The giveaway is the business rate. In Hungary, North Macedonia, Ukraine and Poland, companies pay more per kWh than households, by 231% in Hungary, the reverse of the normal pattern. That is what a protected household tariff looks like in the data: firms carry more of the true cost.

Households versus businesses

Across Europe the median business price is €0.169 per kWh, against €0.213 for homes. Businesses pay less in 25 of 38 countries. That is the normal pattern: commercial users buy in bulk, often connect at higher voltages that carry lower network charges, and VAT-registered firms can generally recover the VAT they pay. The discount is largest in Iceland, Spain and Estonia; in Iceland, firms pay 51% less than households. Among the big economies, household prices rank Germany #3, France #15, Italy #1, Spain #17 and the United Kingdom #4 of 38.

Prices have been fairly stable recently: the European median was $0.237 per kWh in our first electricity snapshot (2026-08-09) and is $0.238 now, a change of 0.2% in dollar terms, most of which reflects exchange rates.

What this means for an electric car

Power prices decide whether an EV is cheap to run. At 17 kWh per 100 km, home charging costs about €6.32 per 100 km in Italy but only €1.29 in Ukraine. Compared with a petrol car using 7 L/100 km, home charging is cheaper per kilometre in every one of the 38 European countries where we have both prices, because European fuel tends to be taxed even harder than European electricity. We run the numbers for every country in the cost to charge an electric car, and compare fuel separately in petrol prices in Europe.

For the global picture, see electricity prices in every country, the most expensive electricity in the world, or the cheapest countries in Europe across all everyday prices.