About Cheaper Living

Cheaper Living compares Australian residential electricity and gas plans against your actual usage, rather than against a model household.

Why it exists

Most comparison sites price plans against a stereotype — a yearly total, a household size, a rough profile. That works badly for the households where switching matters most. If you have solar, charge an electric car overnight, work from home, or run hot water on a controlled-load circuit, when you use electricity decides which plan wins, and two homes with identical annual totals can owe hundreds of dollars apart.

This site prices every publicly listed plan against the shape of your usage. If you import your smart-meter data it goes further and bills your real half-hourly readings, month by month, so the answer reflects your actual peaks rather than an average of them.

What it does that others don't

• Prices time-of-use, block, seasonal and demand tariffs properly — including demand charges measured over the plan's own period, in kW or kVA as specified.
• Handles solar feed-in with tiered and capped rates, and shows plans that charge you to export rather than reporting them as “no credit”.
• Reads real meter files in your browser — NEM12 and several retailer and inverter formats — and backtests plans against them.
• Shows plans you may not be eligible for, with the condition stated, rather than hiding them.
• Flags every assumption it had to make, and estimates on the high side rather than in a plan's favour.

How it is funded

Some retailers pay us a commission if you sign up through a link here, and where they do we pass on a sign-up credit. That credit is counted in the estimated cost by default, which can lift those plans up the list — you can switch it off with one untick. Paying us never changes a plan's prices or its data, and buys no placement or promotion of any kind. The full position is on our editorial policy and disclosure pages.

That is the only revenue. There is no advertising, no sponsored listing, and nothing is sold.

What it does not do

• No account, ever. No sign-up, no password, no email address required.
• No data collection. Your usage and meter files stay in your browser and are never uploaded. See our privacy page for exactly what our servers do and do not see.
• No lead selling. We do not pass your details to retailers, because we do not have any.
• No cold contact. We have no way to reach you, and no intention of getting one.

Where the data comes from

The Consumer Data Right energy feed — the same published product data behind the AER's Energy Made Easy. We read that feed and price it; we do not edit it. We are independent of the AER, Energy Made Easy, and every retailer listed. Our data covers NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT; it holds no plans for Western Australia or the Northern Territory.

How the numbers are calculated is set out in full on our methodology page.

Who runs it

This site is operated in Australia by Cheaper Living, ABN 38 087 741 070. It is independently owned, and is not part of, funded by, or affiliated with any energy retailer, comparison group, or government body.

Contact

Bugs, ideas and general enquiries: see our contact page.