Is Now a Good Time to Switch Electricity Providers?
Short answer: YES! — and the timing this year is better than usual. Here's why.
Your retailer just reset their pricing anyway
Every 1 July, the regulated benchmark prices reset, and most retailers reprice their own market offers around the same time. That means right now, every plan on the market — including the one you're currently on — has effectively just been "re-quoted" against the new benchmark. There's no better moment to compare than immediately after everyone's numbers have moved, because you're comparing fresh prices against fresh prices, not last year's deal against this year's.
If you switch in October, you're comparing whatever's left of your current plan against other already-adjusted plans. Right now, you get to see the full reset all at once.
Most people are sitting on a plan they haven't looked at in years
Retailers are required to tell you if a better deal is available — but only once every 100 days. Plenty of households are on plans that were competitive when they signed up and have quietly drifted since, especially if a fixed-term discount expired without anyone noticing. There's no loyalty bonus for staying — in fact the opposite is almost always true — discounts tend to be heavily weighted toward new customers.
New rules make switching lower-risk than it used to be
A batch of consumer protections landed alongside this year's price reset:
Retailers can only raise your price once per year, so you're not signing up only to get hit with a second increase mid-contract.
Account establishment fees and re-energisation fees are being banned, removing two of the small frictions that used to make switching feel like a hassle.
Short-term discount plans can no longer leave you paying more than the standard default rate once the discount lapses — a rule explicitly targeting "bait and switch" style offers.
What to actually check before switching
Switching is straightforward, but a like-for-like comparison needs more than the advertised rate:
Your real usage pattern — a plan with a slightly higher usage rate but a lower daily supply charge can still come out ahead for low-usage households and vice versa for heavy users.
Time-of-use structure — if you're on, or eligible for a time-of-use or Solar Sharer-style plan, your actual savings depend on when you use power, not just how much.
Exit fees and contract terms — most market offers have no exit fees, but it's worth a quick check especially on older contracts.
Whether you're comparing against the new benchmark or the old one — given the regional differences this year (most areas falling, South Australia's flat-rate edging up), "is this plan good" only makes sense relative to where prices have actually landed for your area.
What is the easiest way to actually do this
In theory you can do all of the above manually — pull your last few bills, work out your real usage, and check it against every retailer's current rates. In practice, almost nobody does, because it's incredibly boring and the rates are mind-bogglingly hard to compare side-by-side.
So, we created SwitchBuddy! SwitchBuddy does this for you. Upload your most recent bills and we'll check your actual usage against current market offers — including the new pricing structures that landed this July — and tell you plainly whether switching is worth it and which plan suits your actual usage!