See what you'll actually pay.

What is a bill-credit electricity plan, and why does the sticker rate mislead?

A bill-credit electricity plan is a Texas retail electricity offer that subtracts a fixed dollar amount from the bill — typically $35 to $150 — when monthly usage crosses a threshold like 1,000 kWh. The marketed average rate on Power to Choose and most comparison sites is computed at exactly 1,000 kWh, where the credit fires and the effective rate looks low (often 7-9¢/kWh). At 400 kWh, the credit never triggers, so an apartment user pays the underlying energy charge (often 14-18¢/kWh) instead. In the ElectricRates.org validation set across 5 representative Texas usage profiles, the largest divergence between marketed rate and actual cost was $383 per year for a 400-kWh-per-month apartment. The Bill Analyzer accounts for this by simulating each plan's cost month-by-month using a 12-month usage shape — either the prior 12 months printed on the customer's bill or, when the bill prints only one month, an address-level estimate derived from the meter (ESIID) and home characteristics. For the most accurate readings, customers can authorize a one-time Smart Meter Texas pull from inside the tool.

Walk through the math on a real apartment profile: the $125 bill credit that costs apartments $383 a year.

How does the Bill Analyzer rank plans differently from other sites?

The Bill Analyzer ranks plans by simulated 12-month total cost at the customer's usage, not by the marketed rate at a single 1,000 kWh reference point. ElectricRates.org pulls each plan's full pricing structure from ComparePower — the energy charge, the TDU pass-through, and every bill credit threshold — at the 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh published price points. For each of 12 monthly kWh values — read directly from the uploaded bill when it prints a full year, or estimated from the meter address when it does not — the analyzer interpolates between those points to compute that month's bill, then sums all 12 to produce an annual total. Plans sort ascending by that total. The ranking reflects the rate the household is likely to pay, including months when a bill credit fires and months when it does not. Other Texas comparison sites typically display one rate at 1,000 kWh and stop there. These are estimates based on the plan's published rate and your usage profile. Your real bill will vary with seasonal use, rate changes, fees, and your utility's pass-through delivery costs.

Does the Bill Analyzer work outside Texas?

The Bill Analyzer is Texas-only today. Three structural reasons explain the scope. First, ComparePower's pricing API covers the ERCOT competitive retail market, which means Texas; the bill-credit math the analyzer is built to expose does not exist in other states' rate structures. Second, the bill-credit deception problem itself is specific to ERCOT competitive retail, where retail electricity providers compete for residential customers and use threshold-based credits as marketing levers. Third, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts use the Smart Enroll flow on ElectricRates.org backed by PowerKiosk, which exposes simpler fixed-rate contracts where the marketed rate and the actual rate generally match. For those states, visit the relevant comparison page on ElectricRates.org — the Bill Analyzer would not add value where the sticker rate is already the real rate.