Heat Pump Costs UK 2026: Price Breakdown & Calculator

What We'd Do

1. Decide on timing first. If your gas boiler is working, we'd wait until it's nearing the end of its life (the worked example below shows why). If it's due for replacement, or you're on oil or LPG, start now.
2. Insulate the cheap things first. Filling cavity walls and topping up the loft can bring the heat pump down a size, which is cheaper to buy and to run.
3. Get three quotes from MCS-certified installers, each with a room-by-room heat loss survey, and check the size on each against our calculator below. A quote with no survey isn't one we'd accept.
4. Once you're going ahead, aim to have it fitted before 31 March 2027, while the VAT is 0% (worth about £560 to £780 on a typical install, against the 5% that applies from April). We wouldn't replace a healthy boiler early for it, but it beats waiting for better weather, so book now rather than holding out for summer; if you can't make that date, spring or summer is the next best time.
5. Move to a heat pump tariff once it's running: on our figures it more than doubles the saving against gas.
6. Get the warranty conditions in writing at quote stage, including what servicing it needs.

What Does a Heat Pump Actually Cost?

Half of the air source heat pumps installed under the grant in April to June 2026 cost between £11,100 and £15,600 (DESNZ Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics; a quarter cost less, a quarter more, and the median was £12,908). Take off the £7,500 grant and that's £3,600 to £8,100 out of your pocket. A new gas boiler is about £2,750 (our estimate), so the heat pump usually costs £900 to £5,400 more. By size, the 2025/26 medians were about £11,500 for a 4 to 6kW unit (a small home), £12,200 for 6 to 8kW (a typical 3-bed) and £13,900 for 10 to 12kW (a larger house). The Energy Saving Trust puts the typical figure at around £12,000, which agrees. Pick the options that match your home below for a closer estimate:

Air Source Heat Pump Installation Cost, Item by Item

An air source heat pump isn't one cost: it's several, and installers quote them differently. Some give you an all-in price; others list components separately. Here's our rough estimate of each element in 2026. Added up, they mostly come in below what real installs cost (the DESNZ figures above), so use those for the total and these to read a quote:

• Heat pump unit: £3,000 to £7,000 depending on brand, output, and model
• Installation labour: £2,000 to £4,000 for a standard installation
• Hot water cylinder: £500 to £1,500. A standard air source heat pump doesn't give hot water on demand like a combi, so coming from a combi you'll need a way to store it: a cylinder, or an alternative such as a heat battery (Energy Saving Trust).
• Radiator upgrades: £750 to £2,800 on a typical semi if your existing radiators are undersized for lower-temperature heating, more on a larger home (below)
• Electrical upgrades: £300 to £800 if your consumer unit needs upgrading to handle the load
• Pipework modifications: £0 to £1,500 depending on how your existing system is configured
• MCS certification and commissioning: usually included in the installer quote, but check, because the grant needs an MCS certified installer

Worth knowing: heat pump installations are 0% VAT until 31 March 2027 under the energy-saving materials relief. It's already in the prices above. From 1 April 2027 it goes to 5%, which would add roughly £560 to £780 to the middle half of installs: see VAT on heat pumps and solar.

Have Heat Pumps Got Cheaper? Not Really

You'll read that heat pump prices are falling. The government's own figures say otherwise. Here's the median installed price of an air source heat pump paid a Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant, in the same quarter each year:

So the typical job costs about 2% less in cash than four years ago, without adjusting for inflation, while the typical heat pump has shrunk from 10kW to 8kW. Smaller systems, but the price of the job has barely moved. Don't hold off waiting for a big fall. The grant, the 0% VAT that ends on 31 March 2027 and your boiler's age matter far more than the timing.

Source: DESNZ Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics, August 2026 release (published 24 September 2026), table Q1.1A: median, lower and upper quartile reported cost and median capacity of air-to-water redemptions paid, England and Wales, 2022 to 2026.

Ground Source Heat Pump Costs

Ground source heat pumps extract heat from the ground via buried pipework. They're significantly more expensive because of the groundwork, but more efficient too. Our figures use a SCOP of 4.0 for ground source against 3.5 for air source. (When we checked in October 2026, HeatpumpMonitor.org's 307 monitored systems with a full year of data, of all types together, averaged 4.01 units of heat for every unit of electricity, their measured seasonal efficiency.) Our estimates by type:

• Horizontal ground loops (trenches across your garden): £18,000 to £27,000 total. Needs a large garden: the Energy Saving Trust says a new-build three-bed needs two trenches of 30 to 40 metres.
• Vertical boreholes (the Energy Saving Trust says about 20cm wide and 75 to 200 metres deep): £27,000 to £42,000 total. Suits smaller plots but costs more for the drilling.

For most people, air source is the practical choice. The higher efficiency can offset some of ground source's extra upfront cost over the system's life, but on a typical three-bed it saves only £80 to £90 a year against air source, while the 2025/26 median install cost £26,200 against about £13,000 for air source. Real installs vary a lot: the middle half of ground source installs paid a grant in April to June 2026 cost £18,100 to £42,100, or £10,600 to £34,600 after the £7,500 BUS grant (a small sample, so treat it as rough). See our ground source heat pump guide for the full picture.

Cost by House Type

Your house sets how much heat it needs, which sets the size of heat pump and part of the price. The chart shows what real installs cost, before the £7,500 BUS grant, for the size band we've matched to each house type; subtract the grant for your net spend. Treat it as an illustration: the examples further down show a well-insulated four-bed can need less.

Heat Pump Cost for a 2, 3, 4 or 5 Bedroom House

The number of bedrooms barely predicts the price. What sets the price is the size of heat pump, and what sets the size is how fast the house loses heat. A well-insulated four-bed can need a smaller heat pump than a draughty three-bed.

To show it, we ran some example homes through the same heat loss model our heat pump size calculator uses (EPC default U-values, Birmingham's MCS design temperature), then priced each size from the DESNZ Boiler Upgrade Scheme medians for 2025/26:

Heat loss from the calculator's model at -5.1C outside and 20C inside, double glazing fitted before 2002, ground floor unknown; size is the next common heat pump size up. Costs are DESNZ Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics table A1.3A, median reported cost by capacity band, air source, 2025/26, before the grant. A size on the edge of a band counts in the band above, as DESNZ defines them (a 6kW pump is in the 6 to 8kW band). They're medians, so half of installs cost more.

So for a four-bed house, expect a heat pump somewhere between about 6kW and 10kW, and a median price of roughly £12,200 to £13,900 before the grant, or £4,700 to £6,400 after it. Filling the cavity walls and topping up the loft first can drop it a size, which is worth several hundred pounds off the heat pump and a lot more off your bills. Put your own home into the calculator for a figure that's actually yours.

Do You Need New Radiators?

Heat pumps heat the water to about 35 to 55C, compared with 70 to 80C from a gas boiler (British Gas's figures). That means your existing radiators may need to be larger to deliver the same warmth. An MCS-certified installer will carry out a room-by-room heat loss calculation to work out which radiators, if any, need replacing.

The good news: some homes don't need new radiators at all. A well-insulated newer home may keep most or all of its existing radiators, while older homes (particularly Victorian and Edwardian properties) are more likely to need upgrades: on our estimates £750 to £2,800 for a typical semi, and up to £4,800 for a larger or poorly insulated home. If your home has underfloor heating, you're ideally placed: heat pumps and underfloor heating are an excellent pairing. See our guide to radiators for heat pumps for sizing advice.

What Size Heat Pump Will You Need?

Size drives both the price and how efficiently the system runs. Describe your home below for a ballpark figure, built from the same default values an EPC assessor uses and the outdoor design temperatures MCS installers must design to. Use it to sanity-check the size on any quote:

Annual Running Costs

Running costs depend on your electricity tariff, the heat pump's efficiency (SCOP), and your home's insulation. Here's what a typical 3-bed semi pays per year with each heating system:

If you're on gas, the saving is modest at standard rates and more than doubles on a heat pump tariff. If you're on oil, LPG, or direct electric heating, a heat pump is a no-brainer: you'll save from about £480 a year (against LPG) to about £1,900 (against direct electric heaters) in running costs alone.

Every row assumes the same house, with a heat demand of 9,500 to 10,300 kWh a year (DESNZ's median and mean gas use for a 3-bed home, as heat), at the Ofgem cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026. The air source rows use our assumptions of a SCOP of 3.5 and, on the heat pump tariff, a blended 20p/kWh. If the SCOP drops below 2.97, the heat pump costs more than the gas boiler it replaced, which is why the install matters. Oil is BoilerJuice's UK average for 23 October 2026, plus 5% VAT. LPG is the shakiest row: Ofgem's cap only covers gas and electricity, nothing caps bulk LPG and nobody publishes an average, so we've used our estimate of 75p a litre. Put the price from your own invoice into the heat pump savings calculator.

Several suppliers now offer dedicated heat pump tariffs that bring the price of heat pump electricity below the 26.32p Ofgem standard cap rate, each in its own way (cheap windows, a daily tracker price or a discounted rate). The big ones are Cosy Octopus (three cheap windows totalling eight hours a day), EDF Heat Pump Tracker, E.ON Next Pumped and British Gas's heat pump tariff. Our heat pump tariff comparison prices them hour by hour for your home. We'd only use Octopus Go, the older five-hour overnight tariff aimed at EV drivers, with a heat pump that has a buffer tank, as it isn't designed for heat pumps. See our detailed running costs guide for real-world data, or use our heat pump savings calculator to model your specific home.

Servicing and Maintenance Costs

Heat pumps need an annual service, just like a gas boiler, and the manufacturer's guarantee can depend on it: Vaillant's terms say its heat pump guarantee becomes invalid if the heat pump isn't serviced every year.

• Annual service: about £190 a year. British Gas charges £189 for a one-off air source heat pump service, against £119 for a gas boiler. Our heat pump service costs guide compares other plans.
• Warranty: check the conditions, not the headline. Vaillant ships the aroTHERM plus with a 2-year standard guarantee that "can be extended up to 7 years", but only where the installer is a Platinum or Renewable Partner and registers the unit with a Vaillant cylinder. Get the conditions in writing at quote stage.
• Typical lifespan: 15 to 20 years, and some go well beyond 20 with good servicing, according to the manufacturer Intergas and the installer OVO. OVO puts hot water cylinders at 20 to 25 years, so they often outlast the heat pump.
• Repairs: once the guarantee has run out, anything from about £150 for a simple electrical fault to around £2,000 for a new compressor, on our estimates.

A blocked outdoor coil and a system running below design pressure both cost you efficiency, so don't skip the annual service. On the plus side, there's no combustion: no flue, no gas supply and no carbon monoxide risk.

How Long Does Installation Take?

Expect a few days to a week. British Gas says most of its heat pump installations take five days; Octopus says most of its installs take a few days, and that hot water is usually back on by the end of the first day. Roughly, the work goes:

• The outdoor unit, its base and the electrical connections
• Pipework, the hot water cylinder and the connection to your existing heating system
• Any radiator upgrades, then filling, commissioning and testing the system

Before 31 March 2027, we'd book as soon as you have a quote you're happy with, because the 0% VAT is worth more than good weather. After that, late spring or summer is best, so a job that overruns doesn't leave you cold. Ground source installations take longer, because of the trenching or borehole drilling.

Grants and Financial Help

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) is the big one: £7,500 off the cost of an air source or ground source heat pump. Your installer applies on your behalf, and the grant is deducted from the invoice, so you never see it. The Warm Homes Plan funds it with £2.7bn to 2030 (£295m in 2025/26, rising to £709m in 2029/30). The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2026 extend the scheme to 2030, so Ofgem can now issue vouchers up to 31 December 2029, two years later than before. From 28 April 2026, air-to-air heat pumps are eligible for a separate £2,500 grant on paper (one grant per property; you can't claim both), but nobody can claim it yet: in September 2026 MCS said no installers were certified for air-to-air.

But BUS isn't the only financial help available:

• ECO4 scheme (England, Scotland, Wales): If you claim certain benefits or live in social housing, you may get help paying for a heat pump through your energy supplier's ECO4 obligation. Extended to 31 December 2026.
• Home Energy Scotland (Scotland only): A parallel scheme used instead of BUS. It offers a £7,500 grant (up to £9,000 with the rural uplift) plus an optional interest-free loan of up to £7,500.
• Nest (Wales): free heat pump, insulation and solar improvements for eligible Welsh households
• 0% VAT: Already included in prices above, about £560 to £780 less than the 5% that applies from 1 April 2027

Mortgage lender incentives are another source of help. Several lenders now offer cashback to qualifying mortgage customers for energy-efficient home improvements:

• Halifax Green Living Reward: £2,000 cashback for installing a heat pump
• Lloyds Eco Home Reward: £2,000 cashback for installing a heat pump
• Barclays Greener Home Reward: £1,000 for an air source or ground source heat pump

Neither Halifax's nor Lloyds' offer page says the cashback rules out the BUS grant, so in theory you could get £7,500 (BUS) + £2,000 (lender cashback) = £9,500 in total support. Check the lender's terms before you count on it. That would bring a typical £11,100 to £15,600 installation down to about £1,600 at the small end and £6,100 at the large end. Use our grant eligibility checker to see what you qualify for.

Payback Period: Worked Example

Here's the maths for the most common scenario: a 3-bed semi replacing a gas boiler with an air source heat pump.

Annual servicing is a bit dearer on a heat pump: £189 against £119 for a one-off service at British Gas, so about £70 a year more (see heat pump service costs). But a heat pump lasts 15 to 20 years, and some well beyond that with servicing, against a gas boiler's 10 to 15, so you'll usually skip a boiler replacement (about £2,750) inside the heat pump's life.

If your boiler is due for replacement anyway, the maths is genuinely good: after the BUS grant you're spending about £1,950 more than you would on a new combi, and saving £130 to £140 a year at standard rates or £300 to £320 on a heat pump tariff. That pays back in 14 to 15 years on a standard tariff, or 6 to 7 on a heat pump tariff, on fuel alone. Count a heat pump's dearer servicing (about £70 a year) and it's 28 to 33 years on a standard tariff, or 8 on a heat pump tariff. Not needing another boiler in 10 to 15 years (about £2,750) brings those back down.

If your boiler is still working and you're scrapping it early, you're paying the whole £4,700 net, so the payback is about 35 years on a standard tariff or about 15 years on a heat pump tariff, on fuel alone. Count the extra servicing and it's about 20 years on a heat pump tariff, and on a standard tariff it doesn't pay back within the heat pump's life. That's the honest number, and it's why we'd tell almost anyone with a healthy boiler to wait.

For oil and LPG homes, the payback is far faster, because the running cost savings are £480 to £600 a year rather than £130 to £140, and the BUS grant pays an extra £1,500 until March 2027 if you've also got no mains gas connection.

What Affects the Final Price?

Several factors push costs up or down:

• Your location: we'd expect to pay more in London and the South East, though we haven't found official regional price data to put a figure on it.
• Access and complexity: Unusual layouts, difficult access, or homes requiring significant pipework changes increase labour costs
• Brand choice: Nobody publishes installed prices by brand, so if you want to know what a Vaillant, Mitsubishi or Daikin adds, get the same spec quoted with each. Warranties differ too: Vaillant's longest term, for one, needs a Platinum or Renewable Partner installer and a Vaillant cylinder. See our best heat pumps comparison.
• Time of year: after 31 March 2027, we'd aim for spring or summer, so there's no rush and no cold house if the job overruns. Until then, the 0% VAT matters more.
• Insulation level: Poorly insulated homes need a bigger (more expensive) heat pump to compensate. It often makes financial sense to insulate first, which lets you install a smaller, cheaper unit.
• Existing system: Homes with underfloor heating or oversized radiators need less modification. Homes with a combi boiler need somewhere to store hot water: a cylinder (£500 to £1,500 extra on our estimates) or an alternative such as a heat battery.

How to Get the Best Price

Heat pump installation prices vary a lot. Here's how to avoid overpaying:

• Get at least three quotes. Real installs vary by about £4,500 between the cheaper and dearer ends of the typical range. The more quotes you get, the better your sense of a fair price. If one of them is from Octopus, read our Octopus heat pump review for what its headline price leaves out.
• Only use MCS-certified installers. You need an MCS certified installer for the BUS grant, and it's your quality assurance. Check the MCS installer directory.
• Beat the VAT deadline. Get it fitted before 31 March 2027 while the VAT is 0%; after that, book for spring or summer so the work isn't squeezed in before winter.
• Ask about package deals. Ask whether combining the heat pump with radiator upgrades or insulation work brings the price down.
• Check what's included. Make sure the quote covers the hot water cylinder, any radiator upgrades, electrical work, MCS certification, commissioning, and the warranty terms. A cheap quote that excludes the cylinder or radiators isn't actually cheaper. Our guide to comparing heat pump quotes has a line-by-line example and a checklist.
• Don't necessarily pick the cheapest. An installer who spends time on a proper heat loss survey, recommends the right size unit, and takes an extra day instead of rushing it can save you more in running costs over the system's life than you'd save on the installation price.

Is a Heat Pump Worth It?

In our view, yes, if one or more of these applies:

• Your boiler is due for replacement anyway (the extra over a new boiler falls to about £1,950)
• You're on oil, LPG, or direct electric (the running cost savings are massive)
• You can move to a heat pump tariff such as Cosy Octopus (which takes the saving to £300 to £320 a year on a three-bed semi)
• Your home is reasonably well insulated
• You'll stay long enough for it to pay back: even in the best case above, a replacement-due boiler on a heat pump tariff, that's 6 to 7 years on fuel alone

It's a harder sell if you have a working, efficient gas boiler and you're on a standard electricity tariff: the running cost saving is real but modest, and the payback runs to about 35 years on fuel alone. Even then, a heat pump is increasingly a case of when rather than if: the Future Homes Standard gives new English homes low-carbon heating by default from 24 March 2027, and the £7,500 BUS grant is funded through to 2030. The answer to when is usually "when the boiler dies".

For the full comparison, including 15-year costs and when gas still makes sense, use our heat pump vs gas boiler calculator.

Where to Go Next

• Heat pump running costs: what it costs a year at the current price cap, against gas.
• Best heat pumps in the UK, and why the installer matters more than the brand.
• Heat pumps in old houses: Victorian, 1930s and 1950s homes compared.
• Replacing a boiler with a heat pump: the ten-year sums when your boiler fails.
• Air-to-air heat pumps: the cheapest heat pump you can fit, and why its £2,500 grant can't be claimed yet.