heatingoilcost.com

The timing instrument

Order now or wait

The short answer

On the ten years to 2025 the cheapest month averaged 47.30p and the dearest 53.20p. That swing of 5.90p is worth GBP 70.80 on 1,200 litres. It is real but small next to what crude does, and it is the smaller of the two levers you hold.

Cheapest month

May47.30p

Dearest month

October53.20p

Swing

5.90pper litre

On 1,200 litres

GBP 70.80

Two levers exist. One is which week you order in. The other is whether you have left yourself any choice about it. The second is worth far more than the first, and almost nobody frames it that way.

The seasonal pattern, measured

Here is the month of year mean of the UK monthly series. The right hand column excludes 2026, because the March 2026 print of 104.05p is on its own large enough to make March look like the dearest month of the year. That would be a single shock masquerading as a seasonal pattern.

MonthMean, all yearsMean, excluding 2026Observations
January49.00p48.71p10
February48.68p48.20p10
March54.29p49.32p10
April53.70p48.67p10
May51.15p47.30p10
June51.34p48.81p10
July50.59p48.65p10
August52.28p48.51p10
September49.47p49.47p10
October53.20p53.20p10
November51.84p51.84p10
December49.44p49.44p10
Month of year means on the DESNZ monthly kerosene series from 2016. Both columns are published because the difference between them is itself the finding.

On the version with 2026 excluded, October is the dearest month and May the cheapest, a spread of 5.90p. That is a genuine autumn premium, and it is the opposite of the folk advice to fill up in the autumn before the winter rush.

The seasonal swing is worth about GBP 70.80 on a normal order. One month of the 2026 shock was worth GBP 607.08.

What a three week wait costs

LineOrder todayWait three weeks
Unit priceNobody publishes next month's price. Anyone who does is selling something.90.01punknown
1,200 litresGBP 1,080.12unknown
If the price rises 5%A rise of GBP 54.01 on the order.GBP 1,080.12GBP 1,134.13
If the price falls 5%A saving of GBP 54.01.GBP 1,080.12GBP 1,026.11
Delivery slot riskyou choose the weekyou take what is available
Run-out risknoneyours, and it is the expensive one
A 5% move on this orderGBP 54.01 either wayFive percent in three weeks is well inside what this series does routinely. The wait is a real bet with real stakes in both directions.

The thing that actually costs money

Running the tank down to the last few centimetres removes the timing lever entirely. Once you are inside a week of empty, you order at whatever the price is on the day, from whoever can come, and in a cold snap that is a queue. The cheapest habit is keeping enough in the tank that you can always say no to a bad week.

What we will not tell you

We will not tell you whether the price is going up. This site publishes what has been printed, with dates. The order now or wait mode on the fill desk takes your view of the move and shows what it is worth. It does not supply the view, and it will not pretend to.

Jan 2018 to Aug 2026 / 104 readings

low 20.26p / high 104.05p

The last 104 monthly prints. If you can see a clean seasonal cycle in that, you are seeing something the arithmetic cannot find.

Primary sources for this page

  • DESNZ Quarterly Energy Prices, table 4.1.1Monthly typical retail price of standard grade burning oil, the fuel sold to UK households as kerosene. Priced on the Monday nearest the 15th of the month, for deliveries of up to 1,000 litres, VAT at 5% included. This is the only official UK-wide domestic heating oil price series.
  • Consumer Council for Northern Ireland home heating oil price checkerA genuine weekly regional survey, the only one of its kind in the UK. The page returned HTTP 403 to our checker on 10 September 2026, so no basket figure from it is restated on this site. Follow the link for the current week.
  • EIA Winter Fuels OutlookPublished each October alongside the Short-Term Energy Outlook. Forecast household heating expenditure by fuel and region.
  • EIA New York Harbor ULSD spot priceDaily wholesale barge price. Published on this site only as a labelled wholesale proxy and never as a retail price.