The pitch: 52 hours on the house
Reliant sells Truly Free Weekends on its website with one clean promise: no energy charge ($0) and no delivery fee ($0) from 8 p.m. Friday to 12 a.m. Monday, every weekend. Do your laundry Saturday, run the dishwasher Sunday, let the pool pump churn all weekend, and none of it shows up as a charge.
The "Truly" in the name is doing real work. Many free-period electricity plans waive only the energy charge and keep billing the utility's per-kWh delivery fee, which runs about 6.0 cents in Oncor territory. Reliant waives both. Its Truly Free Nights sibling uses the same mechanic on a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. window.
So the free part checks out. The question a free-period plan never answers on its own is what the other hours cost. For that you need the Electricity Facts Label, and to Reliant's credit, we found it. The numbers below come from the plan's own EFL for Oncor territory, dated August 1, 2026.
Claims vs. fine print
Four claims on the front. Four footnotes on the back. Here they are, side by side.
The mailer says
"No energy charge ($0) and no delivery fee ($0) during your free time-of-use period," 8 p.m. Friday to 12 a.m. Monday.
The fine print says
Verified in the EFL: weekend energy charge $0.00, weekend delivery charges $0.00. But the window covers 52 of the week's 168 hours, or 31%. The other 116 hours bill at 20.0 cents energy plus 6.0 cents Oncor delivery, 26.0 cents per kWh all-in, and a $4.06 monthly Oncor delivery charge is billed every cycle regardless.
Source: Reliant Truly Free Weekends plan page; EFL, Oncor service area, dated 08/01/2026
The mailer says
Shift your laundry, dishes, and pool pumping to the weekend and save.
The fine print says
Reliant's own advertised averages already assume you do. The EFL bases its 18.1 cent average at 1,000 kWh on a customer who puts 32% of monthly usage in the weekend window. Even with that shift built in, the plan prices 4.9 cents above the cheapest flat Oncor plan as of August 2026.
Source: EFL average-price note: "consumption profile over 12 months of 32% of consumption on weekends"
The mailer says
A 90-day satisfaction guarantee lets you change plans with no termination fee.
The fine print says
The switch must be to another Reliant plan, it is one-time use, and any unused incentives from the original plan are voided. Leaving Reliant before the 12-month term ends costs $150, waived only if you move and can document it.
Source: Reliant plan-page disclaimers; EFL disclosure chart
The rate Reliant does publish
Credit first: unlike TXU's phone-only Free Pass, this plan's Electricity Facts Label is public. The Oncor version dated August 1, 2026 discloses everything: $0 base charge, a $4.06 monthly Oncor delivery charge, a weekday energy charge of 20.0 cents per kWh, weekday Oncor delivery of 6.0 cents per kWh, and $0 for both during the weekend window. All-in, the 116 non-free hours cost 26.0 cents per kWh.
The EFL's advertised averages land at 18.5 cents at 500 kWh, 18.1 at 1,000, and 17.9 at 2,000. Notice how flat that curve is. With no base charge and no bill-credit cliff, this plan does not punish low usage the way credit plans do. What you pay hinges on one variable only: what share of your kWh lands inside the weekend window.
For scale, as of August 2026 the cheapest flat no-gimmick plan on the open Oncor market was 13.2 cents all-in at 1,000 kWh, and Reliant's own Basic Power listed at 16.1 cents. The weekend plan's 18.1 cent average, computed on Reliant's own favorable assumptions, is the most expensive of the three.
Truly Free Weekends is sold directly through reliant.com and Reliant's sales line to new residential customers. As of August 2026 it does not appear in the open Oncor marketplace feed we track, where Reliant lists ten other plans; the EFL surfaces on reliant.com after you enter a ZIP code.
How the free weekend works
The window opens at 8 p.m. Friday and closes at midnight going into Monday: 4 hours Friday night, all of Saturday, all of Sunday. That is 52 hours a week. Your smart meter's interval data tells Reliant which kWh fell inside the window, those are billed at $0, and everything else gets the weekday rate. The bill formula in the EFL is exactly that, plus the $4.06 monthly Oncor charge, which never goes away. A free weekend never means a $0 bill.
There is a meter-data catch in the fine print. If Oncor delivers less than 50% of your interval data for a billing period, the unmatched usage bills at 68% of the weekday energy charge, about 13.6 cents per kWh, and none of it counts as free. Your free hours depend on the meter reporting cleanly.
Worth knowing before you pick a window: the Truly Free Nights version of this same mechanic is free 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. every night, which is 63 hours a week, 11 more free hours than the weekend version. Weekends only win if your usage genuinely piles up on Saturday and Sunday. Reliant sells the same mechanic on a nightly window; see our Truly Free Nights review.
Do the math on 52 free hours
Start with the ceiling. The window holds 31% of the week's hours, so if your usage were spread evenly, 31% of it would be free and your effective cost at 1,000 kWh would be about 18.4 cents per kWh. Reliant's EFL assumes a slightly better 32% weekend share and gets 18.1 cents. Either way you are paying about $181 a month for the same 1,000 kWh a 13.2 cent flat plan delivers for $132. That gap is $588 a year, on the plan's own assumptions.
To just break even against that flat plan, you need roughly 51% of your monthly usage inside the window. Since the window is only 31% of the hours, your weekend hours would have to run about 2.3 times the per-hour usage of your weekday hours, every week, all year. Laundry and dishes will not move that needle. In a Texas summer, air conditioning is half or more of the bill, and the AC follows the heat, not your calendar: it runs Tuesday afternoon whether or not you are saving your chores for Saturday. Hot weekdays are not optional.
And the weekend share cuts both ways. The plan pays off for households that are home all weekend running heavy loads. Spend Saturday out, travel for a wedding, visit family for a holiday week, and your weekend share drops while the weekday rate keeps billing at 26.0 cents. The structure charges most for the weekends you did not stay home. If your heavy flexible load runs at night instead, an EV in the garage for example, the nights version of this trade fits better than the weekend one.
52 of 168
Hours per week that are free: 8 p.m. Friday to 12 a.m. Monday, 31% of the week
26.0¢
All-in weekday rate per kWh (20.0¢ energy + 6.0¢ Oncor delivery), per the plan's own EFL, August 2026
~51%
Share of monthly usage needed in the window to match a 13.2¢ flat plan, about 2.3x weekday-hour intensity
$588/yr
Extra cost vs the cheapest flat Oncor plan at 1,000 kWh, using the EFL's own 32% weekend assumption (August 2026)
Fine print, decoded
The five footnotes on the back of the mailer, translated into plain English.
| What the footnote says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Weekday Energy Charge 19.9788¢ per kWh; Oncor Electric Delivery Weekday Delivery Charges 6.0295¢ per kWh. | The 116 non-free hours cost 26.0 cents per kWh all-in. The cheapest flat plan on the open Oncor market charged 13.2 cents for every hour of the week as of August 2026. |
| "Average price calculation is based on consumption profile over 12 months of 32% of consumption on weekends." | Reliant's advertised 18.1 cent average already assumes you push nearly a third of your usage into the window. If your weekends are lighter than that, your real average runs higher than the ad. |
| If less than 50% of interval data is received from the TDSP or estimated, an energy charge of 68% of the Weekday Energy Charge applies to the usage difference. | When smart-meter data comes in incomplete, the unmatched usage bills at about 13.6 cents per kWh, with none of it matched to the free window. The free weekend exists only where the meter data proves it. |
| Oncor Electric Delivery Monthly Delivery Charges $4.06 per billing cycle; Base Charge $0.00. | No Reliant base charge, which is genuinely good. But the utility's $4.06 monthly charge bills every cycle, free weekend or not. |
| Termination fee: Yes. $150. Applies through the end of the contract term. Does not apply if the customer moves and provides evidence. | Twelve months or $150, unless you move and can document it. The 90-day guarantee only lets you swap to another Reliant plan. |
What to do instead
For contrast, here is the live Oncor market on the day we published (August 2026). The cheapest all-in plan at 1,000 kWh was 7.0 cents per kWh, but it earns that number with a bill credit that punishes you in low-usage months; bill-credit plans cut both ways. The cheapest flat plan with no credits, no tiers, and no time windows was 13.2 cents at 1,000 kWh. Every plan below publishes its full Electricity Facts Label before you enroll.