Electricity Price per kWh in the Netherlands (2025 S2)
A kilowatt-hour costs 0.26 € in the Netherlands — $0.30, the 11th dearest of the 23 countries tracked here. What the main retailers charge, whether a heat pump beats gas here, and how clean the grid behind it is.
Electricity in the Netherlands costs 0.26 € per kilowatt-hour — $0.30 once converted — which puts it right on the median of the 23 countries tracked on this site. That is the price with all taxes included, for a household in the 2,500–4,999 kWh a year band — one definition applied to every country, because mixing tax-inclusive and tax-exclusive figures is what puts most country comparisons out by 15% or more.
What that means in practice: a household using 3,700 kWh a year pays about 962 € for the electricity itself. The number on your own bill will differ — that is what the retailer table below is for.
What the main retailers in the Netherlands charge
Indicative standard tariffs from the 3 largest retailers. Between the cheapest and the dearest there is 6 % — on 3,700 kWh a year that is 74 € you can move without using a single kilowatt-hour less.
| Retailer | Per kWh | At 3,700 kWh/yr |
|---|---|---|
| Eneco | 0.33 € | 1,221 € |
| Vattenfall | 0.34 € | 1,258 € |
| Essent | 0.35 € | 1,295 € |
Heating in the Netherlands: gas or a heat pump?
Gas costs 0.172 € per kWh in the Netherlands, against 0.26 € for electricity — so electricity is about 1.5 times the price of gas here. All taxes included on both sides, same period, so they can be compared directly.
That ratio decides how a house is cheapest to heat. A heat pump delivers several units of heat per unit of electricity; a 92% condensing boiler delivers slightly less heat than the gas it burns. The two cost the same to run at a seasonal COP of 1.4 — that is the break-even for the Netherlands. That is below what almost any modern air-source heat pump manages over a season, so in the Netherlands the heat pump is the cheaper machine to run and it is not close.
Where the break-even sits in 11 countries →
What things actually cost to run in the Netherlands
Yearly running cost at the Netherlands's average price of 0.26 €, all taxes included. Consumption figures are the same ones the appliance pages use.
| Appliance | kWh/yr | Per year | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refrigerator | 460 | 120 € | 9.96 € |
| Washing machine | 187 | 49 € | 4.06 € |
| Tumble dryer | 390 | 101 € | 8.45 € |
| Electric water heater | 1,577 | 410 € | 34.16 € |
Those four together come to 680 € a year in the Netherlands — $784. The same four cost $784 at the median of the 23 and $1,202 in Ireland, the dearest. Same appliances, same hours — the difference is entirely where they are plugged in.
How that compares
The Netherlands against the extremes and the middle of the 23 countries tracked, in dollars per kWh so the comparison is like for like.
How clean the electricity is
Price is only half of what a kilowatt-hour costs. The grid in the Netherlands emits 315 grams of CO₂-equivalent per kWh on a lifecycle basis, averaged over a year of generation. For the same 3,700 kWh household that is about 1,166 kg of CO₂ a year.
For scale: the cleanest grid tracked here is Norway at 20 g/kWh, the dirtiest is South Africa at 950 g/kWh. The Netherlands sits in the middle, 15th cleanest of 23.
This matters for a practical reason as well as an environmental one: on a clean grid, swapping a gas boiler for a heat pump cuts emissions immediately. On a coal-heavy one, the same swap mostly moves the emissions from your street to the power station.
The national figure is an average with all taxes included: your own tariff depends on your retailer, your contract, whether you are on time-of-use pricing, and the season. Standing charges are not in the per-kWh figure. For anything that matters, use the number on your own bill — every calculator here takes it.
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