Tracker tariff explained

Tracker is Octopus’s tariff for people who want total price transparency. Your electricity and gas rates change daily, following wholesale market prices through a published formula. No hidden margins, no guessing what you’re paying. You can see tomorrow’s rate today and check exactly how it was calculated.

How the pricing works

Each day, your unit rate is calculated from the wholesale cost of energy on the day-ahead market, plus a fixed component covering Octopus’s costs (network charges, policy costs, their margin). For electricity, the wholesale price comes from the N2EX GB Day-Ahead auction. For gas, it uses the day-ahead price from Marex Spectron. The formula is publicly available and region-specific, so you can verify any day’s rate yourself.

The important distinction from Agile is that Tracker gives you one price for the entire day. It doesn’t change half-hourly. Whatever the rate is at midnight stays the same until the next midnight. This makes it simpler to understand and plan around than Agile’s 48 daily price slots.

Tracker is a 12-month fixed-term tariff, which means that while your daily unit rates change, the formula and standing charges are locked for the duration of your term. You’re free to leave at any time with no exit fee. If you do leave, you can’t rejoin Tracker for nine months.

Both electricity and gas are available on Tracker. It’s one of the few Octopus tariffs that covers both fuels with variable wholesale-linked pricing.

The tracker index

Octopus publishes a tracker index that shows each day’s rate and how it was derived. You can find this on their website and through the API. It shows the wholesale cost, the pass-through costs and the final unit rate. Everything is visible.

This level of transparency is unusual in the energy industry. Most suppliers set their prices quarterly (at best) and give you little insight into how they arrived at those numbers. Tracker shows you the workings every single day.

Checking tomorrow’s rate

You can see the next day’s rate by early evening, once the day-ahead auction results are published. The Octopus app shows it, and several third-party tools display Tracker prices alongside historical data so you can see trends.

This forward visibility is useful for planning. If tomorrow’s rate is unusually high, you might decide to put off running the tumble dryer. If it’s low, you might take the opportunity to do a big load of washing. The adjustments are more modest than Agile (where individual half-hours can be dramatically cheap), but there’s still room to save.

How Tracker differs from Agile

On the surface, Tracker and Agile sound similar. Both follow wholesale prices. The practical difference is significant:

Agile gives you 48 different prices per day, changing every half hour. This creates opportunities for big savings if you can shift usage to cheap slots, but it also means you might pay 40p/kWh at 5:30pm and 5p/kWh at 3am. The spread within a single day can be enormous.

Tracker gives you one price for the whole day. The variation happens between days, not within them. Monday might be 20p/kWh and Tuesday might be 15p/kWh, but within each day the price is constant. This means there’s no benefit to shifting usage to 3am instead of 3pm on Tracker. Use electricity whenever you need it that day.

Tracker suits people who want transparency without the need to plan around half-hourly price windows. Agile suits people who actively want to optimise their usage timing.

Who benefits from Tracker

People who want to understand what they’re paying. If the opacity of traditional energy pricing frustrates you, Tracker is refreshingly clear. You can see exactly where every penny goes.

Those who believe wholesale prices will stay low or fall. Tracker tracks the market in both directions. When wholesale costs drop, your rate drops the next day. No waiting for a quarterly price cap review. If you’re optimistic about energy prices, Tracker lets you benefit from falling costs immediately.

Households that can’t easily shift usage. Unlike Agile or the time-of-use tariffs, Tracker doesn’t reward you for changing when you use energy. The price is the same at every hour. If your household runs on a fixed schedule and you can’t realistically move laundry to midnight, Tracker gives you wholesale-linked pricing without requiring any behavioural change.

Dual fuel customers. Tracker covers both gas and electricity, both linked to wholesale prices. If you want your gas costs to be transparent too, this is one of the few options that delivers that.

When Tracker costs more than Flexible

Tracker follows wholesale prices without the smoothing effect of the Ofgem price cap. The cap acts as a ceiling that protects Flexible customers during price spikes. Tracker does have its own safety net, Price Cap Protect, which limits the daily unit rate to a maximum of 100p/kWh for electricity and 30p/kWh for gas. In practice, rates very rarely approach these levels, but the protection exists for extreme scenarios.

During periods of high wholesale costs (cold winters with low wind generation, international gas price spikes), Tracker rates can climb above the Flexible rate. This happened during the energy crisis of 2022-2023 when wholesale prices soared. Tracker customers paid more than those on Flexible during the worst months.

Conversely, when wholesale prices are low, Tracker customers benefit immediately while Flexible customers wait for the next quarterly cap adjustment. Over the long term, Tracker has generally matched or beaten Flexible, but the ride is bumpier.

Standing charges

Tracker standing charges are similar to Flexible. They don’t vary daily. They’re locked for the duration of your 12-month term and reviewed each quarter when the Ofgem price cap updates. Typical figures are around 45-55p/day for electricity and 28-35p/day for gas, depending on your region.

Historical performance

Looking at the last few years tells a mixed story. Before the 2022 energy crisis, Tracker consistently beat the standard variable tariff. During the crisis, it was more expensive for several months. Since prices settled back down, Tracker has generally been competitive again.

The lesson is that Tracker carries risk. In exchange, you get transparency and the potential for lower costs when markets are favourable. If you’d be uncomfortable with your rate jumping 5p/kWh on a cold day, Flexible might give you more peace of mind.

Is a smart meter required?

Yes. Like all of Octopus’s non-standard tariffs, Tracker requires a smart meter so they can bill you accurately based on daily rates. Without one, you’d be stuck on estimated readings that don’t correspond to specific daily prices.

If you need a smart meter installed, Octopus will do it for free. Book through the app and you can switch to Tracker once it’s up and running.

Use the tariff comparison tool to see how Tracker rates compare to Flexible or Agile in your area.