The UK Winter Heating Price Report 2026: same heater, up to twice the price

Key findings

The same product, up to twice the price

We found 451 products sold by at least two of the 13 retailers: the same barcode, or the same brand and manufacturer model code, and the same bed size for blankets. 102 are sold by three or more. For the median product the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive retailer is 7.5%, or £5. But 98 products (22%) are more than 25% apart, and four cost twice as much or more.

Paid prices including displayed discounts, observed 30 September 2026. In the two Dreamland rows the cheapest price is a reduced price at one retailer.

Heated airers are the category to shop around for

Heated airers show the widest spread: on the 17 models sold by two or more retailers the median gap is 22.5%, or £19, and almost half (47%) are more than 25% apart. Electric blankets and throws are the most disciplined, with a median gap of 2.8%, largely because the big bedding brands hold a recommended price. Heaters and dehumidifiers sit in between, but carry the longest tails.

One of each at the median price, a dehumidifier, a heated airer, a heater and an electric blanket, costs £369.

No retailer is cheapest on everything

Among the nine retailers with at least 20 matched products, the share of products where each one is the cheapest or joint cheapest ranges from 17% to 64%. Retailer B is cheapest or joint cheapest on 58% of its 193 matched products. Retailer A, the largest catalogue in the study and mostly marketplace listings, is the most expensive seller on 40% of its 389 matched products.

Price index: a retailer's price on each matched product against the median of all retailers selling it (100 = market median), averaged over its matched products. Retailers J to M have fewer than 20 matched products each. Retailer A lists 98% of its in-scope products through marketplace sellers, Retailer C 61%.

What you pay for capacity and heat

Bigger dehumidifiers cost more but less per litre of daily capacity: £12.00 per litre up to 12 litres a day, £8.00 over 20 litres. For heaters, a 2 kW model draws 2 kW whatever its type. At Ofgem's average unit rate of 26.32p per kWh from 1 October, that is about 53p an hour at full power. What differs is the price of buying the kilowatt: a median £20 per kW for convectors against £106 for panel heaters.

Electric blankets: median price by size

A "was" price is not a market price

9.6% of all listings showed a reduced price against a higher was or recommended price, with a median displayed saving of 15.5%. On 178 matched products shown with a discount, another retailer was still cheaper in 1 in 5 cases (19%). In 9% of cases the retailer showing the discount was the most expensive seller of that product.

Why a retail pricing company studies heaters

Winter appliances are a clean test of price position: branded products, public prices, exact matching by barcode. The patterns match what we see in every retail category we monitor.

• The median hides the tail. Most products sit within a few percent of each other. The gaps that cost sales, or margin, are in the fifth of products nobody checks.
• A discount is relative to your own list, not to the market. A red was price can still leave you the most expensive seller.
• Marketplaces widen the spread. Third-party sellers price the same barcode differently from the retailer that hosts them, and shoppers see both.

Retailgrid collects competitor prices, matches products like for like and shows where each price sits against the market. See how competitive pricing and price monitoring work in Retailgrid.

Methodology

Every publicly listed price for dehumidifiers, heated clothes airers, electric heaters and electric blankets and throws on the websites of 13 of the largest UK online sellers of these categories, collected on 30 September 2026 in GBP including VAT. Amazon is excluded. 5,105 listings remain after removing gas, paraffin and patio heaters, towel rails, heat pumps, accessories, refills, refurbished, multipack and out-of-stock items. The price is the price paid today, including discounts shown on the page, and excluding member-only prices, multibuys, vouchers and delivery. Marketplace listings on a retailer's site are included. Products are matched by barcode (GTIN-13) or by brand and manufacturer model code, and by bed size for blankets; groups whose titles disagree on capacity or wattage are dropped. Prices were checked by hand on the live sites. Electricity prices: Ofgem, price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026. Retailers are shown as A to M. Retailgrid is not affiliated with any retailer or brand and was not paid to produce this report.

Cite as: Retailgrid, The UK Winter Heating Price Report, October 2026. Figures and the dataset may be reused with attribution and a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). The CSV has one row per category and retailer; the product-level dataset (451 identical products), the full listing-level dataset and a PDF edition are available to journalists and researchers on request. Media: maxim@retailgrid.io