Export rate comparisons are built the way phone tariff comparisons are built. One number per supplier, sorted descending, highest at the top. The trouble is that an export rate is not one number, and the supplier at the top of the list is frequently a worse outcome than one four rows down.
Four things sit between the rate on the page and the money in your account.
1. Most of the best rates require you to move your import account
This is the big one, and it is the condition most often reduced to a footnote. A supplier paying well above the market for export is usually not being generous. It is buying an import customer, and the export rate is the acquisition cost.
That makes the comparison a two-sided one. If moving your import account to that supplier raises what you pay for the electricity you buy, the higher export rate has to cover the difference before it is worth anything. A household importing 2,700 kWh a year and exporting 1,400 kWh is buying roughly twice as much as it sells, so a penny on the import price outweighs a penny on the export price by about two to one.
Those two answers are different numbers, and collapsing them into one headline is what every comparison table does.
2. A half-hourly rate has no single value
Some export tariffs pay a flat rate for every unit, whenever it leaves the house. Others track the wholesale market in half-hour blocks. The second kind cannot be put in a league table honestly, because it does not have a number to put there.
When a half-hourly tariff is advertised with a peak figure, that figure belongs to the settlement periods when wholesale power is expensive. On the grid those are winter evenings, roughly between four and seven in the afternoon. A south-facing solar roof exports almost nothing then. Its exports happen between ten and three, in the months when irradiance is highest, which is precisely when wholesale prices are lowest because every other solar roof in the country is exporting at the same time.
A half-hourly export tariff can still be the right choice. It is the right choice for a household with a battery that can hold generation back and release it into the evening, which is a different proposition from a roof exporting in real time. Without storage, the peak number in the advert is not reachable.
3. You are paid on metered export, not on what you generate
Under the Feed-in Tariff, export was often deemed: the scheme assumed a fixed share of generation went to the grid and paid on that assumption, whether it did or not. The Smart Export Guarantee removed the assumption. Payment is made on export meter readings, which is why the scheme requires a meter capable of half-hourly export readings, in practice a working smart meter.
Two consequences follow, and both cost real money.
- If your smart meter stops communicating, which happens routinely after a supplier switch, nobody is reading your export figure. Generation continues. Payment does not.
- Every unit you consume in the house is a unit you are not paid for under the export tariff. That is the correct outcome, because a unit you use is worth the retail price you avoided, which is several times the export rate. It is covered in why a unit you use is worth more than a unit you export.
Eligibility also needs MCS certification, or a scheme accredited as equivalent such as Flexi-Orb, covering the installation and the equipment. Installations up to 5MW qualify, which every domestic rooftop clears by an enormous margin.
4. The scheme guarantees an offer, not a price
The Smart Export Guarantee obliges larger suppliers to offer an export tariff and requires that tariff to be above zero. It does not set a level, it does not index it, and it does not fix it for a term. A rate can be withdrawn or changed, and a tariff that was competitive when you signed up is not necessarily competitive now.
That is the argument for checking, and the argument against treating any comparison as durable. The scheme rules are administered by Ofgem and apply in Great Britain. Northern Ireland is outside the scheme.
What the comparison should actually be
The figure that decides the outcome is not the rate. It is annual export volume multiplied by the rate you will really be paid, minus any increase in your import bill from moving accounts.
| Condition | What it changes | Where to check |
|---|---|---|
| Requires import account | The gain is net of any rise in your import price, on roughly twice the volume | Tariff terms, then your current import unit rate |
| Half-hourly pricing | No single rate exists; value depends on when you export, which for solar is the cheapest part of the day | Whether the tariff quotes one rate or a schedule |
| Export meter working | No half-hourly export readings means no payment, however good the rate | Your supplier account, under export or generation |
| Fixed term or variable | A variable rate can move after you switch | Contract length in the tariff terms |
| Payment method | Credit against your import bill is worth less than cash if you export more than you import | How the supplier settles export |
None of these are disclosed on a typical comparison page, and the first one is the one that usually decides it.
Finding your current rate
Most households cannot answer this from memory, and the number rarely appears on a normal bill in an obvious way. Export credits are often on a separate statement, sometimes aggregated once a year, which is how a household goes twelve months without ever seeing the rate.
- 1Look in your supplier's online account for a section headed export or generation, separate from your import charges.
- 2Find the export tariff name on your annual statement, then search that name plus the supplier for the current rate.
- 3If neither produces a number, that is informative in itself: an account with no export tariff attached is not being paid for exports at all.
The rates we hold are below, each with the date it was checked.
| Supplier | Tariff | Rate | Import account required? | Checked |
|---|
Doing the arithmetic
Once you have your current rate and a candidate rate, the calculation is your annual export volume times the difference. Export volume is the figure households are furthest out on, because it depends on how much of your generation you use at home rather than on the size of your array. Our calculator works it out from your consumption and your roof, and reports the result as a range with a stated lower bound rather than a single figure.
Smart Export Guarantee scheme rules, eligibility and metering requirements are administered by Ofgem. Scheme rules and the requirement for half-hourly export metering Checked 2026. Source