Why do quotes for the same business rarely match?

Business energy has no public price grid. There’s no tariff page you can check the way you would for your home supply. Every quote is assembled for your specific meter, and five inputs move the number. The consumption figure the quote was built on. The contract length. Your business credit profile. The day’s wholesale price. And any commission added to the unit rate by whoever arranged it.

That last one surprises people. Two brokers quoting the same supplier, same day, same meter can return different rates purely because one has added more margin than the other. The supplier pays the intermediary out of the uplift, and it’s baked into the pence per kWh you see.

One more thing worth knowing before you start collecting numbers. Gas and electricity are priced separately in the business market, one contract per meter, so there’s no real equivalent of a domestic dual fuel deal. Expect a quote for each supply and weigh each on its own terms. The gas side has a few quirks of its own, which we’ve covered in our business gas quotes guide.

None of this makes quotes useless. It means a quote only tells you something when you know what it was built from.

What you need before anyone can quote you

Dig out a recent bill before you start. Nearly everything a quote needs is on it. Your supply number (the MPAN for electricity, MPRN for gas), your current unit rate and standing charge, and usually your annual consumption. If you can’t find your way around the bill itself, our business energy bill guide walks through every line.

The consumption figure matters most. A quote built on your real annual kWh is a price. Built on a guess, it’s closer to a rough sketch that gets corrected later, and rarely downwards. If you’ve been in the property less than a year, say so, and expect the figure to be an estimate on both sides.

Larger sites with a half-hourly meter are a slightly different exercise. Suppliers price those from your actual consumption data rather than one annual figure, which makes the letter of authority genuinely useful and the resulting quotes a good deal more accurate.

You’ll also want your contract end date and notice period. Both are on the bill or the original contract paperwork.

Reading a quote line by line

A proper business energy quote shows a unit rate in pence per kWh, a standing charge in pence per day, the contract length, the supply start date, and the consumption figure it was built on. If that last item is missing, ask for it. A quote that won’t show its consumption basis can’t be checked against anything.

Watch for what’s excluded. Quotes are normally shown before VAT, and the Climate Change Levy is sometimes listed separately too. Larger half-hourly supplies may carry capacity and other third-party charges that never appear on an SME quote. The only number that lets you compare fairly is the estimated annual cost with everything included, so calculate it yourself if the quote doesn’t do it for you.

Credit checks happen quietly in the background too. A supplier that doesn’t like what it finds may price higher, ask for a security deposit or decline to quote at all, which is one of the more common reasons two similar businesses on the same street end up paying different rates for the same usage.

Unit rate versus standing charge

A low unit rate makes a good headline and hides a lot. The standing charge runs every day of the year whether you use anything or not, so the split between the two changes which quote actually costs less for your consumption pattern.

An illustrative example. An office using 20,000 kWh a year gets two electricity quotes. Quote A offers 25p per kWh with a £1.10 daily standing charge. Quote B offers 26.5p per kWh with a 30p daily charge. A looks 1.5p better on the headline. Work it through and A comes to roughly £5,400 a year while B comes to about £5,410. The headline gap turns out to be worth about a tenner.

If your consumption is low, the standing charge deserves most of your attention, and heavy users should look hardest at the unit rate. Either way, the annual total is the only number that settles it.

Fully fixed or pass-through

A fully fixed contract rolls the non-commodity costs, things like network charges and levies, into your unit rate. The price you sign is the price you pay for the duration. A pass-through contract fixes only the wholesale element and passes the rest through at cost as those charges change, which produces a lower headline rate and a variable bill.

For most SMEs the certainty of fully fixed is worth more than the discount on pass-through. Larger consumers with half-hourly meters and someone watching the numbers can take a different view. If you’re weighing that decision at portfolio scale, our energy procurement strategy guide covers it properly.

Comparison sites, brokers, or going direct

Going direct to a supplier gets you exactly one answer, and renewal offers to existing customers are rarely the sharpest price that supplier can do. It’s worth having as a benchmark and treating as exactly that.

Online comparison services quote from a panel quickly, and the good ones are upfront that speed is the product. Brokers work from a panel too, but add negotiation, contract admin and someone to phone when a bill looks wrong. Whether that’s worth it depends on how much of your own time the alternative eats. We’ve written an honest assessment in are energy brokers worth it.

Whoever you use, ask two questions. How much of the market do you actually quote from, and how are you paid on this contract. Any decent intermediary answers both in writing. We publish ours on how we make our money.

Once you’ve picked a quote, the switch itself is mostly paperwork and a short wait. Our guide to switching business electricity covers what happens after you sign.

Making quotes like-for-like

Before you compare anything, line the quotes up on the same footing. Same annual consumption figure on each. Same contract length. Same start date. Estimated annual cost calculated with standing charge, CCL and VAT treated the same way. Fixed compared with fixed, not with pass-through. Commission disclosed on each.

If a quote fails on any of those, send it back and ask for it on matching terms. This takes one email, and it’s the single most useful step in the whole process. Most bad energy decisions trace back to two numbers that were never measuring the same thing.

When to compare, and how long a price holds

Business energy prices move with the wholesale market, so a quote typically holds for the day it was issued, sometimes a few days. That’s not the supplier being difficult. It does mean gathering quotes over a fortnight and comparing them against each other tells you very little. Collect them together and decide while they all still hold, rather than letting them drift out of date one by one.

You don’t need to wait for your contract to end. Most suppliers will price a renewal months in advance, and locking ahead removes the risk of your decision landing in a bad market week. Our guide on when to renew a business energy contract covers the timing in detail.

The expensive outcome is doing nothing. Let the end date pass and you’ll roll onto out-of-contract rates, or land on deemed rates if you’ve moved premises without arranging supply. Both cost well above a negotiated contract.

Red flags worth walking away from

Pressure to sign the same day is the most common one. Prices do expire quickly, and it’s easy to let that urgency make the decision for you. A fair offer survives you taking an hour to check it.

Be wary of a quote with no consumption basis shown, a refusal to put commission in writing, prices that only ever exist on the phone, or an LOA that quietly grants signing authority. One of these on its own is a reason to slow down, and if you spot a couple together it’s usually worth walking away. We’ve covered the checks in how to check an energy broker is legitimate.