Home Heating Cost Calculator 2027: Gas, Oil, Propane, Electric

How to Use the Heating Cost Calculator

Most fields come filled in. Two deserve a careful look: your fuel prices and your equipment.

1. Home size. Heated square footage only. Leave out the garage and any unheated basement.
2. Fuel prices. Your state’s average rates load automatically. Your supplier may charge more or less, so use the per-unit price from a recent bill if you have one. Wrong state? Pick yours from the price table below the calculator.
3. Heating equipment. Choose what heats the house now, or the system a contractor is quoting if you’re pricing an upgrade.
4. Efficiency. A furnace or boiler that’s 30-plus years old or still has a standing pilot light belongs in Low. Most units with a metal flue are Standard. If it vents through white plastic pipe, it’s High.
5. Duct insulation (furnaces and geothermal only). Bare metal ducts in an attic or crawlspace lose a good share of the heat before it reaches a room.

Hit Calculate. You get the season’s cost (mid-October to mid-April) for the cheapest fuel and for the fuel your equipment burns, every other fuel ranked by cost, and a low, mid and high price for a new system of the type you picked.

To size up an upgrade, run it twice: once for the system you have, once for the one you’re considering. The difference between the two yearly totals is roughly what the new system saves each winter. For a closer price on the equipment, use the furnace replacement cost calculator or the boiler cost estimator.

Therms, CCF and MCF: Fix Your Gas Price First

The calculator takes gas prices per therm (100,000 BTUs). Many utilities bill per CCF (100 cubic feet) or MCF (1,000 cubic feet) instead, and a CCF holds about 3.7% more heat than a therm. Skip the conversion and the gas estimate is off: a little with CCF, by a factor of ten with MCF.

• Billed per CCF: divide your price by 1.037.
• Billed per MCF: divide your price by 10.37.
• Billed per therm, or no gas service: leave it as it is.

For example, $2.05 per CCF works out to about $1.98 per therm.

Propane vs. Natural Gas: Which Costs More to Heat With?

If a gas main runs down your street, gas usually wins. Propane mostly makes sense where natural gas can’t reach.

At the national averages in the calculator (gas around $2.50 a therm, propane around $2.70 a gallon at roughly 91,500 BTUs per gallon), propane costs about 10-20% more for the same heat. The gap swings a lot by state: in some places propane runs double the price of gas, in a few it comes out even or cheaper. Put in your own rates before you decide.

Gas also gives you more equipment to choose from, while a propane install adds a conversion kit and a tank you buy or lease.

Propane vs. Heating Oil: Which Costs Less to Run?

Per 100,000 BTUs, the calculator’s national averages put propane near $3 and heating oil near $4.50, so oil costs about half again as much. In much of the Northeast, where most oil heat is, the gap is a lot narrower. The heating oil cost calculator tracks oil prices on their own.

Upkeep adds to oil’s cost. An oil burner needs a cleaning and tune-up every year, typically a few hundred dollars before you burn a drop. Propane burns cleaner and can usually go longer between service calls, and a high-efficiency propane unit gets roughly 10% more heat out of its fuel than typical oil equipment. Propane is the cheaper one to live with.

Bill Higher Than the Estimate?

The calculator assumes average insulation. If your real bill runs well above its number, the house is probably losing heat through the attic, walls or ducts, or the system is the wrong size. Check both before you blame the fuel. The HVAC load calculator shows what size system the house needs, and the attic insulation cost calculator prices the most common fix.

Every result also includes a heat pump line, so you can see what one would cost to run next to your current fuel. If that number looks good, the heat pump calculator prices the install. For firm prices on any new system, get free quotes from local heating contractors.