Residential electricity and gas prices vary significantly across European capitals, with rankings shifting notably when adjusted for purchasing power standards (PPS).
Throughout 2024, the annual inflation rate for energy prices remained slightly negative in most months. Energy costs are a key component of household budgets, making up 5.5% of total household spending in the EU in 2023. Low-income households are particularly affected, as they must allocate a larger portion of their budget to energy expenses.
The latest data from the Household Energy Price Index (HEPI), compiled by Energie-Control Austria, MEKH, and VaasaETT, offers insight into electricity and gas prices across 33 European capitals as of January 3, 2025.
Residential electricity prices varied widely, from 9.1 c€/kWh in Budapest to 40.4 c€/kWh in Berlin, with the EU average at 25.5 c€/kWh. Other expensive capitals included Brussels (38.5 c€/kWh), Copenhagen (37.5 c€/kWh), London (36.8 c€/kWh), and Bern (36.4 c€/kWh). The lowest prices were recorded in Budapest, followed by Kyiv (9.8 c€/kWh), Belgrade (10.5 c€/kWh), and Podgorica (11.1 c€/kWh).
Electricity costs in Central and Eastern European capitals were generally below the EU average, except for Prague (35.3 c€/kWh), which exceeded it. Meanwhile, all capital cities of Europe’s five largest economies reported electricity prices above the EU average.
For residential gas, prices ranged from 2.5 c€/kWh in Budapest to 33.3 c€/kWh in Stockholm, where prices were over 13 times higher. “This can be explained by the nature of the Swedish gas market; the small size of only 77,000 household gas customers in the whole of Sweden of which 50,000 in the isolated gas network in Stockholm,” stated Rafaila Grigoriou and Iliana Papamarkou.
Following Stockholm, the most expensive gas prices were found in Amsterdam (18.3 c€/kWh), Bern (17.4 c€/kWh), and Rome (15 c€/kWh). Among the five largest European economies, London had the lowest gas price at 8.8 c€/kWh. Grigoriou and Papamarkou cited various factors behind the price disparities, including “different procurement and pricing strategies, the storage levels, temperature and weather conditions, the interconnection with other markets, cross-subsidisation, and the tariff mix.”
