Octopus vs OVO Energy (November 2026): Which Is Better?

Octopus or OVO: which is better? On official service scores they are almost level. Citizens Advice scored Octopus Energy 3.67 out of 5 for April to June 2026, fifth in that table, and OVO Energy 3.65, sixth. On price, Energy Review’s comparison, updated 9 November 2026, puts Flexible Octopus at about £1,664 a year for a representative East Midlands home paying by monthly Direct Debit, £8 less than OVO’s Simpler Energy at about £1,672. Neither has an exit fee. The gap is wider on fixes: Octopus’s 18-month fix, at about £1,848 a year, is £179 cheaper than OVO’s cheapest 12-month fix at about £2,027. None of those fixes comes in below the £1,723 typical price cap figure from Ofgem for 1 October to 31 December 2026, and both cost more than the same-home variable figures, so compare the whole market before you choose.

Last updated: 11 November 2026. Service scores from Citizens Advice (April to June 2026). Tariff prices are from Energy Review’s Octopus vs OVO Energy comparison, updated 9 November 2026, for a representative East Midlands home paying by monthly Direct Debit, with prices dated 1 November 2026. The typical cap figure is from Ofgem, for 1 October to 31 December 2026. Your own price depends on your region, meter and usage.

SwitchSquid may earn a commission if you use the deal buttons on this page, which open MoneySuperMarket’s home energy comparison. It does not change the price you pay. Confirm the tariff, term and exit fee for your postcode before you switch.

Octopus vs OVO at a glance

Those cash figures are for Energy Review’s representative East Midlands home, not a promise for every postcode. The £1,723 cap is Ofgem’s typical-household figure for the current quarter. The two are useful benchmarks, not the same calculation, which is why a quote for your own usage still has to win.

Who are Octopus Energy and OVO Energy?

Octopus Energy is the household brand of Octopus Energy Group, founded by Greg Jackson. A large part of its growth sits on Kraken, the technology platform it built to run the business and now licenses to other suppliers. Energy Review’s November 2026 coverage says customers rate it highly, and that it has been a Which? Recommended Provider for energy for nine years in a row, named again in February 2026. The same sources also note the trade-offs: published phone hours cover weekdays only, and some reviewers report estimated bills or slow fixes for complex meter faults.

OVO Energy Limited is based in Bristol and sits in a wider OVO Group of brands, including Boost. OVO’s own site now says it has joined E.ON, and that nothing is currently changing for customers. According to Which?, as summarised by Energy Review, it became one of the large household suppliers when it took over from SSE Energy Services. It has held Which? Recommended Provider status in the past, but it is not among the energy companies named for 2026. OVO says it stopped using REGO certificates as standard in 2023 and prefers to buy electricity directly from renewable generators. Alongside supply it offers boiler cover and servicing, Charge Anytime for compatible electric cars, and app extras such as Beyond rewards and Power Move, each with its own eligibility rules.

Which? groups both firms as relative newcomers that have joined the long-established big suppliers. They are not the same company. If you want time-of-use tariffs, heat pumps, export payments or a wider smart-tariff range, Octopus still has more of those products. If you want quicker phone and email replies, or boiler cover from the same brand as your supply, OVO is the closer fit on the evidence below.

Price: how Octopus and OVO compare in November 2026

The price cap, and why it matters

From 1 October to 31 December 2026, Ofgem’s energy price cap for a typical household paying by Direct Debit is £1,723 a year, 4% higher than the previous quarter. The cap limits the unit rates and standing charges on standard variable tariffs. It is not a maximum bill, because your bill still moves with how much you use, and it does not cap every fixed deal.

A fix can still cost more than the cap. In this comparison, the priced Octopus and OVO fixes all do. That is not an argument against every fix — a fix buys certainty if the cap rises in January — but it is a reason not to assume “fixed” means “cheaper”.

Variable tariffs

Flexible Octopus is a variable tariff with no end date and no exit fee. Energy Review puts it at about £1,664 a year in its East Midlands example, and says its prices move with the Ofgem cap. OVO’s Simpler Energy, in the same example, is about £1,672 a year, also with no fixed term and no fee to leave. That makes Flexible Octopus £8 a year cheaper, or about £1 a month. It is a real gap, but a small one, and a different postcode can close or reverse it.

Because both tariffs have a £0 exit fee, you can leave either of them when a better deal appears. The rates on both can still go up or down while you are on them, including when the cap changes in January.

Octopus also sells wholesale-linked tariffs such as Agile Octopus, which sets a different electricity price every half hour, and Octopus Tracker, which changes once a day. Energy Review notes that both can rise well above the cap in a market spike, up to a ceiling Octopus calls Price Cap Protect, and that Octopus itself points people who could not afford those peaks towards Flexible Octopus. Those tariffs only make sense if you can shift demand, and this guide does not treat them as a like-for-like alternative to Simpler Energy.

Fixed deals, and why none of them beat the cap

On Energy Review’s comparison, Octopus 18M Fixed October 2026 v7 costs about £1,848 a year for an 18-month term, with a £150 exit fee. Octopus 12M Fixed October 2026 v8 costs about £1,899 a year for 12 months, with a £100 exit fee — about £51 a year more than the 18-month deal, in return for six fewer months and a lower fee to leave.

OVO’s cheapest fixed deal in that comparison is 1 Year Fixed + Complete Cover 29 October 2026, at about £2,027 a year, also on a 12-month term with a £100 exit fee. It is bundled with OVO’s Complete Cover home cover, so it is mainly relevant if you want that cover too. The plain 1 Year Fixed 29 October 2026 costs about £2,031 a year, on the same term and fee. Octopus’s 18-month fix is £179 a year, or about £15 a month, cheaper than OVO’s bundled 12-month fix, and the Octopus 12-month fix is £128 a year cheaper. All of those fixes sit above the £1,723 typical cap, and all of them cost more than Flexible Octopus and Simpler Energy in the same Energy Review example.

The wider market had cheaper fixes than either of these two on Energy Review’s 9 November cheapest-fixed list. The lowest public fix on that list was Utility Warehouse’s UW Fixed Saver 101, at about £1,803 a year, still above the cap, on an 11-month term with a £150 exit fee, and it needs energy plus at least two other UW services. Outfox’s next two public fixes on the same list were about £1,810 a year. That is why a whole-market quote is worth running before you settle on Octopus or OVO alone.

Customer service: a near tie on the official score, then a split

Citizens Advice’s April to June 2026 table is the cleanest official comparison, because both suppliers are scored in the same period. Octopus Energy scored 3.67 out of 5 and ranked 5th. OVO Energy scored 3.65 and ranked 6th. That is as near a tie as the table gets, so the useful differences sit in how each supplier actually answers and how often customers complain.

Energy Review’s 9 November comparison summarises review sites and apps. Octopus scored 4.8 on Trustpilot from 911,202 reviews. OVO scored 4.7 from 309,371 reviews. Which?’s 2026 table, as reported by Energy Review, gives Octopus a 74% total score against 61% for OVO. On apps, Octopus led on both stores: 4.8 on the App Store from 268,000 ratings against 4.6 from 18,000 for OVO, and 4.3 on Google Play from 47,585 ratings against 3.0 from 11,178. The Android gap is the wide one. Energy Review puts Octopus’s Google Play net-positive score at 69.2%, against 2.8% for OVO, where positive and negative ratings are almost evenly split.

OVO is quicker to reach on the measured channels. In April to June 2026 it answered calls in 47 seconds on average, against 1 minute 9 seconds for Octopus, and it replied to 98.7% of emails within two days, against 86.4%. Its webchat average over the same period was 1 minute 7 seconds; Octopus did not have a matching webchat figure in that comparison. Customers in the Which? survey still rated Octopus easier to contact, so speed and customer views do not point the same way. Octopus lists routine phone lines as open Monday to Thursday 9am to 5pm and Friday 9am to 4pm, with email seven days a week.

Complaints split in two directions as well. For Q2 2026, Energy Review reports 476 complaints per 100,000 customer accounts at Octopus and 1,775 at OVO. Citizens Advice’s external complaints, per 10,000 customers, for April to June 2026 were 21.4 for Octopus and 37.5 for OVO. Once a complaint is in, OVO resolved a larger share the same or next day, 64% against 43%, and a larger share within eight weeks, 91% against 80%. On meters, 95.08% of OVO’s smart meters were working in April to June 2026, against 91% for Octopus. Bills based on actual readings were 98.44% for OVO’s smart meters and 96.33% for Octopus’s, while Octopus was ahead on traditional meters, 93.99% against 90.24%.

Extras: electric cars, boilers and smart tariffs

Octopus has the broader electricity-tariff range for low-carbon kit. Go and Intelligent Octopus Go cut overnight charging costs for electric cars. Cosy Octopus is aimed at heat pumps, with cheaper periods through the day and a higher 16:00 to 19:00 peak. Homes with solar panels or a battery can use export tariffs such as Outgoing Octopus. Those products have eligibility rules — often a smart meter Octopus can read, and sometimes a supported car, charger or heating system — so they are a fit question, not a default reason to switch.

OVO’s Charge Anytime is an add-on for customers with a compatible electric car or charger, a smart meter and an OVO account, with pay-as-you-go or monthly options. OVO also sells boiler cover and servicing to its energy customers, and some plans renew automatically after 12 months unless you cancel. Beyond rewards and Power Move sit in the app and have their own rules, including a working smart meter for Beyond. Confirm hours, prices and eligibility on OVO’s own site rather than treating a summary as the current offer.

Who should choose Octopus, and who should choose OVO?

For British Gas against the same two, see our British Gas vs OVO guide and British Gas vs EDF guide. If you are weighing a cheaper challenger fix against the cap, our Fuse Energy review sets out how those quotes sit against the same £1,723 typical figure.

How to switch between Octopus and OVO

You do not need to contact your current supplier to leave, unless you are in a fixed term and want to ask about the exit fee first. A new supplier starts the switch, and it is usually free and finished within five working days once the new account is set up. There is normally a 14-day cooling-off period after you sign up. Keep paying your old supplier until the switch completes, take a meter reading on the switch date, and look out for a closing bill.

If you are on a fix, add any exit fee to the first-year saving before you decide. A £100 or £150 fee can erase a modest annual gap. The two variable tariffs in this comparison have no exit fee, so leaving Simpler Energy or Flexible Octopus is simpler than leaving a fix. Take your postcode, recent kWh and, if you have one, your current end date to a comparison, then confirm the tariff name, term and fee on the supplier’s journey before you accept.

Should you switch before January?

The current cap runs to 31 December 2026. Ofgem will set the next quarterly cap, for January to March 2027, later this month. A fix bought now will not move with that announcement, for better or worse. A variable tariff will. This guide does not forecast the January figure. MoneySavingExpert’s page on whether to fix or stay on the cap is updated by its own team, so read it directly for its current view, then run a quote with your own usage.

FAQ

Which is cheaper, Octopus or OVO?

On the tariffs Energy Review priced on 9 November 2026, for a representative East Midlands home, Flexible Octopus at about £1,664 a year was £8 cheaper than OVO’s Simpler Energy at about £1,672, and neither has an exit fee. The gap is larger on fixes: Octopus’s 18-month fix at about £1,848 was £179 a year cheaper than OVO’s cheapest 12-month fix at about £2,027. Your postcode and usage can change both gaps.

Does OVO have exit fees?

On the tariffs Energy Review priced on 9 November 2026, OVO’s Simpler Energy had no exit fee. Both the 1 Year Fixed + Complete Cover deal and the plain 1 Year Fixed had a £100 exit fee on a 12-month term. Always confirm the fee on the tariff you are actually offered, because names and versions change.

Does Octopus have exit fees?

Flexible Octopus had no exit fee in that same Energy Review comparison. The 18-month fix had a £150 exit fee, and the 12-month fix had a £100 exit fee. Wholesale-linked tariffs such as Agile and Tracker have their own rules, including limits on how soon you can return, so read the terms if you are joining one of those.

Is Octopus cheaper than the energy price cap?

Flexible Octopus came in below Ofgem’s £1,723 typical cap figure in Energy Review’s East Midlands example, at about £1,664 a year, as did OVO’s Simpler Energy at about £1,672. Octopus’s priced 12-month and 18-month fixes, and both OVO 12-month fixes, all sat above the cap. The cap and the Energy Review example use different typical homes, so treat both as guides and get a quote.

How long does it take to switch from OVO to Octopus?

A straightforward switch is usually free and finishes within five working days once the new supplier has your details. You should get a 14-day cooling-off period, and you keep paying OVO until the switch completes. If you are leaving an OVO fix early, build the exit fee into the decision before you apply.

Is Octopus better for customer service than OVO?

On the official April to June 2026 Citizens Advice scores, only just: Octopus ranked 5th on 3.67 out of 5, and OVO ranked 6th on 3.65. Energy Review’s 9 November summary shows higher Trustpilot, Which? and app ratings for Octopus, and fewer complaints per account in Q2 2026. OVO answered calls and emails faster in that period, and it closed a larger share of complaints quickly. The better fit depends on whether you care more about ratings or about measured speed.

Should I fix my energy or stay on a variable tariff in November 2026?

A variable tariff can be cheaper today, as Flexible Octopus and Simpler Energy were in Energy Review’s example, but it will move if the cap changes in January. A fix costs more than the current cap in the figures above, and it charges you an exit fee if you leave early, but it holds your unit rates for the term. The better choice depends on how much certainty you want, and on the quote for your home, not on a single national average.

Sources: Citizens Advice comparison of energy suppliers’ customer service (April to June 2026 scores); Ofgem’s price cap unit rates and standing charges; Ofgem’s October 2026 price cap announcement; Energy Review’s Octopus vs OVO Energy comparison (updated 9 November 2026, with tariff prices dated 1 November 2026); Energy Review’s cheapest fixed energy tariffs (updated 9 November 2026); MoneySavingExpert: is it time to fix or stay on the cap?; Octopus Energy tariffs; OVO Energy.