Heat pumps are the main low-carbon replacement for gas, oil and LPG heating in UK homes, and they are also the most oversold home upgrade in the country. This section covers what they cost, whether they make sense for your property, how to choose someone to fit one, and the cases where the honest answer is that you should not bother.
We do not fit heat pumps and we do not sell them. That matters here more than in most sections, because almost everything written about heat pumps is written by someone who wants to install one.
The bottom line
There isn’t a single answer, and anyone giving you one is selling something. Whether a heat pump makes sense comes down to three things: what you are replacing, what your property is like, and what electricity tariff you are willing to move to.
Usually yes if you are off the gas grid on oil or LPG, or if your boiler has failed and the real comparison is a heat pump against a new boiler rather than against doing nothing.
Usually not yet if your gas boiler is a few years old and working. The grant runs to 2030 and will very likely still be there when it fails.
Probably not if your home is poorly insulated and you have no budget to address that first, or if there is nowhere sensible for a hot water cylinder.
Heat pump against gas boiler, at a glance
| Heat pump | New gas boiler | |
|---|---|---|
| Installed cost | £13,021 median for air source | £2,000 to £3,500 |
| Government grant | £7,500, or £9,000 off-grid on oil or LPG | None |
| Net cost after grant | £5,521 median, or £4,021 off-grid on oil or LPG | £2,000 to £3,500 |
| Cost per kWh of heat | 7.5p to 8.8p at seasonal efficiency 3.0 to 3.5 | 9.4p at 85% boiler efficiency |
| VAT on installation | 0% until 31 March 2027 | 20% |
Heat pump costs are DESNZ Boiler Upgrade Scheme Statistics medians for air source installations in 2025/26, England and Wales. Energy prices from the Ofgem cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026. Your own figures will vary with insulation, system design and tariff, and the running cost comparison turns entirely on that efficiency figure. We work through why.
Start here: does a heat pump fit your home?
Before thinking about cost, work out whether your property is a good candidate. The answer depends far more on insulation, radiator sizing and cylinder space than on which unit you buy.
Are heat pumps worth it?
The running cost question settled with arithmetic rather than assertion. A heat pump needs a real-world seasonal efficiency of about 2.8 to beat a gas boiler at current prices, and we show the working so you can redo it when prices change. Also covers the upfront cost comparison most articles avoid, and the property types where the answer is no.
Then: cost it for your property
Installed prices vary by thousands between two similar houses on the same street. The variable is almost never the equipment.
What a heat pump actually costs
Installed costs by property type, where the money actually goes, and what you are left paying after the grant. Radiator upgrades and pipework are the items that move a quote most, and they are determined by your building rather than your budget.
Then: claim the grant and find an installer
The grant is claimed by your installer, not by you, so the order matters: shortlist installers, get quotes showing the grant deducted, then they apply to Ofgem on your behalf.
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme
£7,500 towards an air source or ground source heat pump in England and Wales, with no income test and no EPC requirement since April 2026. Full eligibility rules, the disqualifiers that turn a signed quote into a rejected voucher, and the £9,000 uplift for off-grid oil and LPG homes until March 2027.
How to choose an MCS installer
The installer matters more than the equipment, because their design decisions determine what your system costs to run. How to verify MCS certification yourself, what changed when MCS overhauled its scheme in 2026, what a proper survey looks like, and the questions that expose a bad quote quickly.
By property type
The national cost figures are a starting point, not an answer. Your building decides where in that range your quote lands, and what matters differs sharply from one type to another: wall construction in a 1930s semi, the lease in a flat, the loft in a bungalow. These guides go property by property.
Heat pumps in a Victorian terrace
The received wisdom is that solid walls make a Victorian terrace a poor candidate. The monitoring data says otherwise, and the geometry explains why: a mid-terrace has only two external walls where a semi has three. The walls are worse, but there are fewer of them. Covers what the government’s trial found about terraces specifically, why the outdoor unit and the hot water cylinder are the real constraints rather than the brickwork, and what internal wall insulation costs if you decide to do it.
Heat pumps in a 1930s semi
The interwar semi is one of the most common property types in the country, and the assumption everyone makes about it is unreliable. The 1930s sits on the transition between solid and cavity wall construction, and which one you have changes the economics of the whole project. Covers the check to do before getting quotes, what the government’s monitoring data says about performance in this age of property, and the permitted development change that removed the biggest siting obstacle for semis in 2025.
Heat pumps in a flat
The hardest property type in the set, and the obstacle is rarely technical. It is the lease. Covers what the freeholder has to agree to and what that typically costs, why blocks with communal heating generally cannot claim the grant individually, and the April 2026 change that made a heat pump viable in flats with nowhere to put a hot water cylinder. A number of guides published this year still have that last point wrong.
Heat pumps in a bungalow
A bungalow has the worst fabric heat loss of any common house type and is also the easiest to fit a heat pump into. The roof sits above the whole floor plan rather than half of it, which is why the loft is the cheapest improvement available and why doing it before the survey changes the quote. Covers the geometry, the solid floor problem, and why an off-grid bungalow on oil has the strongest case of any property in this section.
How a heat pump actually works
A heat pump does not generate heat by burning anything. It moves heat that already exists in the outside air or the ground into your home, using electricity to run a compressor. Because it is moving heat rather than creating it, it delivers more energy than it consumes, typically around three units of heat for every unit of electricity, which is what the efficiency figures are describing.
The practical consequence is the bit people are rarely told. A heat pump produces water at a lower temperature than a gas boiler, usually somewhere around 45 to 55 degrees rather than 70 plus. It heats your home steadily over longer periods rather than blasting radiators hot and then shutting off. That is why radiator sizing and insulation matter so much, and why a system designed properly for your house behaves very differently from one dropped in as a like-for-like boiler swap.
The types, briefly
- Air source, air-to-water. The standard choice for UK homes. Outdoor unit, connects to your existing wet central heating and hot water cylinder. Eligible for the £7,500 grant.
- Ground source. More efficient and more expensive, because it needs boreholes or ground loops and therefore land and groundworks. Same £7,500 grant. Usually a rural or large-property option.
- Air-to-air. Heats rooms directly with warm air rather than heating water, so it provides no hot water and you need a separate solution for that. Became eligible for a £2,500 grant in April 2026.
When a heat pump is the wrong answer
This is the section other sites leave out, so it is worth being direct about it.
A heat pump is a poor fit if your property is very poorly insulated and you have no budget to address that first. The system can still work, but it will need to be larger, cost more to install and cost more to run, and you will have spent a lot of money on an expensive way to heat a leaky building. Fabric first is a cliché because it is correct.
It is also questionable if you have nowhere sensible to put a hot water cylinder, if you are on a standard electricity tariff with no intention of switching, or if you are planning to move within a couple of years. The payback horizon is long and it is not reliably recovered in sale price.
One thing worth clearing up, because it is used as a sales argument. From 24 March 2027, new-build homes in England must use low-carbon heating. That rule applies to new builds only. The proposed 2035 phase-out for existing homes was dropped when the Warm Homes Plan was published in January 2026, and there is currently no deadline requiring anyone to remove a working gas boiler. If someone tells you a ban is coming for your house, they are wrong.
Running costs and tariffs
Whether a heat pump saves money depends as much on what you pay for electricity as on the heat pump itself, which is why that material lives in our energy bills section rather than here. Three pages there matter particularly to a heat pump household.
Time-of-use tariffs. A heat pump is one of the few loads large enough to make a time-of-use tariff clearly worthwhile, and hot water in particular shifts easily into a cheaper overnight window.
Standing charges. Removing your gas supply entirely once a heat pump is installed saves around £108 a year, and lower standing charge tariffs are almost exactly the wrong choice for a heat pump household.
The price cap. Every running cost figure in this section uses the current cap, and the 2.8 break-even figure moves whenever it does.