This energy supplier switching trick could save you £100

Your gas and your electricity do not have to come from the same company. They are two separate supply contracts on two separate meters, and nothing stops you holding one with Octopus Energy and the other with EDF. Switch each one through a referral link and you collect two rewards rather than one: £50 from each supplier, about £100 in total, on switches you were free to make anyway. Move both fuels to a single supplier and the same effort earns £50 once.

The reward is two-sided at all six suppliers below, so the person whose link you use is paid the same again. Split across two of the five that pay £50, that is £200 leaving the energy industry and arriving in two households.

Dual fuel is a bundle, not a rule

The reason this surprises people is that “dual fuel” is marketed as the default rather than as the product it is.

Your electricity supply is identified by an MPAN, the supply number printed on your electricity bill, and your gas by an MPRN, its gas equivalent. They are separate registrations held in separate industry databases, and a supplier takes over one, the other, or both. A dual-fuel tariff is one company selling you two contracts at once, sometimes with a small discount for the convenience of billing them together. It is a commercial bundle. No rule ties the two together.

So moving one fuel and leaving the other is an ordinary switch, not a special request you have to argue for. The new supplier registers the meter you gave it and has no interest in what the other one is doing.

What actually happens when you do it

My electricity is with EDF and my gas is with Octopus Energy, and it has been since July 2026. Before that I ran Octopus electricity alongside E.ON Next gas for nearly four years, from November 2021 to September 2025.

The switch was the least eventful part. EDF asked for a postcode and bank details, quoted me, and settled the rest with Octopus directly. I gave no meter reading and never contacted my outgoing supplier. Supply moved in about two weeks with no interruption, and my Octopus gas account was untouched throughout, still on the Fixed tariff it was already on.

I joined EDF through a friend’s referral link rather than my own, and about a month after my first direct debit went out, £50 in bill credit landed on my account and £50 landed on theirs. Both halves, at the advertised figure, on roughly the advertised timetable.

That covers one half of my split. The other half earns nothing, because I have been an Octopus customer since September 2019 and there is no referral to claim on a supply you already hold. I have been on the referrer’s side often enough, mostly at E.ON Next, where the reward is a retail voucher and it has arrived every time.

The six suppliers that pay in full for a single fuel

The move only works where a supplier pays the whole reward for one fuel. Six do:

Any two of those six make a working pair, which is fifteen combinations, ten of them paying the full £100 because both halves pay £50.

Sainsbury’s Energy is the one that pays less, and it is worth naming why. Sainsbury’s Energy is supplied by E.ON Next, and its referral is not merely similar to E.ON’s: it is the same scheme. Same voucher wording, same four-week wait after the first direct debit, same three caps of five rewards in any 24 hours, 25 in a year and £1,500 in a year. The only thing that differs is the number, £50 at E.ON Next against £30 wearing a Sainsbury’s badge, for a referral that goes through the same supplier either way.

The three suppliers that make bad split partners

• ScottishPower headlines the biggest reward on the market at up to £60, but that figure needs both fuels. A single-fuel switch drops it to £30, so splitting costs you money here rather than making it.
• British Gas reaches the same place by a different route, pricing at £25 per fuel so that £50 requires moving both. Half your energy earns half the reward.
• Utility Warehouse requires the joining customer to take two different services, and dual fuel counts as one service. An energy-only switch never qualifies, split or not. It is a bundling scheme wearing a referral’s clothes.

How to split your fuels, step by step

What the second £50 costs you

Splitting is not free, and the costs are worth stating before the number tempts you.

Admin, permanently. Two accounts, two direct debits, two apps, two sets of meter readings, and two suppliers to ring when something is wrong. This is the real price, and it is charged monthly rather than once.

Any dual-fuel discount you were getting. Where a supplier offers one it is usually modest, but it is a live number rather than a rounding error, so check yours against £50 rather than assuming the referral wins.

The reward can be taken back. Several schemes claw back. Good Energy removes the credit from both accounts if the referred customer leaves within six months. So Energy hangs its payout on 90 days on supply, and Your Co-op Energy on continued supply after the cooling-off period. If you switch again quickly, splitting for £100 can settle at less than that.

Comparison sites break the referral. E.ON Next, EDF, Sainsbury’s Energy and Your Co-op Energy all state outright that signing up through a price-comparison website does not qualify for the reward. Use a comparison site to pick the tariff by all means, then complete the switch through the referral link itself, or the referral silently fails to track and neither side is paid.

None of that makes the move a bad one. It makes it a trade: about £100 and two extra logins against one bill and one app.

Who gets the other £50

The reward is two-sided, so somebody is always paid the referrer’s half. If you use the links on this site, that somebody is me, and you should read the rest of this page knowing it.

Three of the six suppliers above, Octopus Energy, E.ON Next and EDF, are ones I’ve used myself and link to, and those links earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The other three, So Energy, Good Energy and Sainsbury’s Energy, stack in exactly the same way with no link of mine attached, and the arithmetic does not change if you use a friend’s link instead of mine. I would rather explain the mechanism and lose the click than be the only route to it.

The full picture across all twelve UK suppliers that run a scheme, including the six that are no good for splitting and the ones that have quietly closed, is in our UK energy refer-a-friend league table, with the underlying data published as a CSV. How we check the schemes we link to is set out in our testing methodology.

Frequently asked questions

Can you have different suppliers for gas and electricity in the UK?

Yes. Gas and electricity are separate supply contracts registered against separate meters, an MPRN for gas and an MPAN for electricity, and a supplier can take over one without the other. “Dual fuel” is a commercial bundle a supplier sells, not an industry requirement. Switching one fuel and leaving the other with your existing supplier is a standard switch that needs no special arrangement, and your remaining account is unaffected.

Do you get two referral rewards if you split your fuels?

Yes, provided both suppliers pay the full reward for a single-fuel switch. Six UK suppliers do: Octopus Energy, E.ON Next, EDF, So Energy, Good Energy and Sainsbury’s Energy. Switch your electricity to one through a referral link and your gas to another, and each pays its own reward, which is about £100 where both pay £50. Moving both fuels to a single supplier earns one reward. It does not work with ScottishPower or British Gas, which halve the reward for a single fuel, or with Utility Warehouse, which does not pay on energy alone at all.

Does splitting your gas and electricity cost more?

Not on the unit rates, which are set per fuel and do not change because your other fuel sits elsewhere. What you can lose is a dual-fuel discount where your supplier offers one, and those are usually small enough to be worth checking against the second £50 rather than assumed either way. The real cost is administrative: two accounts, two direct debits, two apps and two sets of meter readings, every month rather than once.

Which UK energy suppliers pay a full referral reward for a single fuel?

Octopus Energy (£50 bill credit), E.ON Next (£50 retail voucher, or account credit at its discretion), EDF (£50 bill credit), So Energy (£50, set per campaign), Good Energy (£50 bill credit) and Sainsbury’s Energy (£30, voucher or bill credit). Sainsbury’s Energy is supplied by E.ON Next and runs the identical scheme for £20 less.

Is splitting your fuels against the terms?

No. Each supplier is signing up an ordinary new customer for the fuel it supplies, which is exactly what its scheme is for, and none of the six requires that you bring both fuels or that you hold no account elsewhere. The restrictions that do exist are the ones named above: comparison-site sign-ups, minimum periods on supply, and the dual-fuel gates at ScottishPower and British Gas that make those two poor partners rather than forbidden ones.