How this site works

Texas providers know the three numbers you see when you shop. PowerToChoose.org shows every plan’s price at exactly 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh a month. So plans are built to look cheap at those three points and cost more everywhere else.

The favorite trick is the bill credit. A plan advertises 9.8¢ per kWh. But that rate depends on a $100 credit you only get above 1,000 kWh. Use 999 kWh in a mild month and the credit vanishes. That month you really pay about 20¢. A few mild months a year can make the “cheapest” plan one of the most expensive.

We read each plan’s Electricity Facts Label. That is the legal document where the real pricing lives. We compute what every plan would cost at your usage, month by month, for a full year. Plans are ranked by true annual cost, lowest first. Beside each one we show the gap between the advertised rate and your real rate. If your usage sits near a plan’s credit cliff, we warn you which months are at risk.

Enter your last twelve months of bills and we use them directly. Enter less, or just pick a household size, and we shape the year to the real Texas pattern. That pattern is built from five years of federal usage data: a big summer AC peak, a small January bump, and the lightest months in spring and late fall. That shape matters. A flat every-month average sits exactly where bill-credit plans hide.

We leave out time-of-use, variable-rate, and prepaid plans. None can be honestly ranked by one annual number, so we do not try. Some plans have credits with conditions, like autopay or paperless billing. Our costs assume you earn them, and we flag every one so you know what can be taken away.