Ontario electricity rates: what a kilowatt-hour actually costs

Two organisations decide what shows up on an Ontario electricity bill, and confusing them is why rate comparisons between cities usually go wrong.

The Ontario Energy Board sets the price of the electricity itself under the Regulated Price Plan. Those prices are the same across the province — a kilowatt-hour costs the same on-peak in Thunder Bay as it does in Toronto.

Your local distribution company — Toronto Hydro, Hydro One, Alectra Utilities and 55 others — moves that electricity to your house and charges separately for it. This is where cities genuinely differ, and it is a delivery charge, not a rate.

So when someone says electricity is cheaper in one Ontario city than another, they are almost always talking about delivery, not the per-kilowatt-hour price. The prices on this page are the OEB’s, effective November 1, 2025 – October 31, 2026.

The three Time-of-Use prices hold all year. The hours they apply to switch twice a year, which is the part most people get caught by — the 5 p.m. kilowatt-hour that was mid-peak in July is on-peak in January.

Weekends and statutory holidays bill at the off-peak rate all day, in both seasons. Hours are the same for every Ontario utility — they are set by the OEB, not by your local distributor.

Hydro One is the distributor for most of rural and small-town Ontario, and it is the one people most often assume has its own separate rates. It does not — not for the electricity itself.

Hydro One customers on the Regulated Price Plan pay the same OEB prices as everyone else: 9.8¢ off-peak, 15.7¢ mid-peak and 20.3¢ on-peak, on the same seasonal hours listed above. Ultra-Low Overnight and Tiered prices are identical too.

What differs is delivery. Hydro One’s residential customers are grouped by density — urban, medium density, low density and seasonal — and low-density rural customers pay materially more to have power delivered than an urban customer does, because there is far more line per household. That is a distribution charge set in Hydro One’s own rate application, not a different price for electricity.

It is also why solar tends to pay back faster on rural Hydro One properties than the per-kilowatt-hour rate alone suggests: those customers are usually on larger, unshaded lots, and the bill they are offsetting is bigger.

The per-kilowatt-hour price is only one line. A residential bill has four parts, and the rate everyone quotes is the first one:

• Electricity — what you used, at the RPP prices above.
• Delivery — moving it to your house. Part fixed, part per-kilowatt-hour, and the line that genuinely varies between utilities.
• Regulatory charges — operating the provincial grid.
• Ontario Electricity Rebate — a credit, applied before HST.

The OEB uses 700 kWh a month as its benchmark residential customer. Every RPP plan — Time-of-Use, Tiered and Ultra-Low Overnight — is priced to recover the same forecast supply cost at that consumption, which is what makes them comparable at all.

At 700 kWh, the electricity line alone runs $68.60 if every kilowatt-hour were off-peak and $142.10 if every one were on-peak. Real households land between the two — the OEB’s own figure is that Ontario homes use nearly two thirds of their electricity off-peak.

The Ontario Electricity Rebate is a provincial credit applied directly to residential bills. As of November 1, 2025 it is 23.5%, applied before HST.

At the OEB’s 700 kWh benchmark that is worth roughly $36 a month. It applies automatically to eligible residential accounts — there is nothing to sign up for — and it moves when the province changes it, which it has done several times.

Because the rebate is a percentage of the bill, it shrinks in absolute terms as your bill shrinks. Reducing consumption still saves you more than the rebate does.

Tiered charges one price regardless of the hour, up to a monthly threshold, then a higher one. Residential thresholds are 1,000 kWh a month in winter (November 1 – April 30) and 600 kWh in summer (May 1 – October 31). It suits households that cannot shift when they use power.

Ultra-Low Overnight charges 3.9¢ between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. every day, and 39.1¢ on weekday evenings between 4 and 9 p.m. — nearly twice the standard on-peak price. It is built for overnight EV charging and home batteries, and it punishes a household that cooks dinner at six.

You can switch plans by contacting your utility. Switching is free, but most utilities limit how often you can do it.