UK energy refer-a-friend league table (2026): who actually pays what

Referral Plug covers UK refer-a-friend schemes, and two of the suppliers below, Octopus Energy and E.ON Next, are ones I've personally used and link to (those links earn a commission at no extra cost to you). The other ten suppliers I have no commercial relationship with: their schemes are described purely from their own published terms. Nobody paid to be ranked here, and, as you'll see, the supplier I earn from doesn't top the headline table anyway.

The headline finding: if you rank UK energy referrals by the number alone, Octopus Energy does not win. ScottishPower does, at up to £60 for a dual-fuel switch. But the pounds figure turns out to be the least useful column in the table. Once you read the actual terms, twelve UK suppliers run a live refer-a-friend scheme, and they differ far more in how they pay than in how much: nine pay bill credit and three pay a voucher; several only pay the full amount if you move both gas and electricity; one (Utility Warehouse) won't pay for an energy switch at all unless you also take a second service; and several make you wait weeks, or meet an awkward condition, before anything lands. There's also a legitimate way to collect two rewards at once, by splitting your gas and electricity across two suppliers, which we come to below. The full table, the method, and the small print that quietly cancels the reward are all here.

Most "best energy referral" lists just reprint the headline pounds and stop. That is the one number that tells you the least, because a £60 you wait ninety days for, or that halves unless you move both fuels, is a worse deal than a £50 bill credit that lands cleanly after your first direct debit. So this table records the things the headline hides.

How we built this table

The method was deliberately simple and repeatable, and it is the same approach we used for our voucher code reliability study: go to the primary source and read it.

• What counts as in scope: UK domestic (household) energy suppliers that run a customer refer-a-friend or recommend-a-friend scheme. Business-only schemes, installation referrals (solar, boilers, EV chargers), and multi-level "partner" or "distributor" earning models are out of scope, because they are not a like-for-like household referral. Where a supplier runs one of those alongside a normal scheme, we note it but don't rank it.
• Source of truth: each supplier's own published refer-a-friend terms and scheme page, cross-checked against MoneySavingExpert's energy rewards guide where a second reading helped. Every figure in the table traces to the supplier's own words, not to a coupon-aggregator site (more on why that matters below).
• What we recorded: reward value each side, reward form (bill credit, retail voucher, or other), how and when it pays out, any referral cap, the qualifying switch needed for the full amount, and the terms most likely to void the reward.
• What "tested" means here: two of these schemes, Octopus Energy and E.ON Next, are ones I use and re-verify end to end as part of our monthly checks, including that the link tracks and the reward actually lands. The other ten I have read but not personally banked a payout from. That distinction is marked, not hidden.

Limitations, stated plainly: this is a snapshot of published terms in July 2026, and energy schemes move. Reward values change (EDF's, for example, is explicitly variable and ran a temporary boost earlier in the summer), schemes get paused, and the small print gets rewritten. Treat every figure as "correct as published on the date we checked," verify the live terms on the supplier's own page before you rely on one, and read the pounds as indicative rather than a permanent league position. We date this study and re-run it.

The league table

Ranked by headline reward per person, highest first. Where two suppliers headline the same amount, the faster and cleaner payout is listed first.

A note on Your Co-op Energy: its published terms clearly promise the referrer £25, but are not clear that the joining friend gets a matching reward, so we've recorded the referrer figure and flagged the gap rather than assume it. Co-op's energy runs on Octopus's platform behind the scenes, but it is a separate brand with a separate, smaller scheme, not a second way to claim Octopus's £50.

The headline number is the column that matters least

ScottishPower's up-to-£60 is the biggest figure on the table, and I'm not going to pretend £50 beats £60 on the number alone: it doesn't. But two things sit behind that £60. It needs a dual-fuel switch (single fuel drops you to £30), and it pays as account credit like most of the others, not as a bigger or more flexible reward. The extra tenner is real; whether it survives contact with the rest of the terms is the actual question.

EDF is the clearest warning against reading the number as fixed. Its scheme is explicitly variable: the amount is set in each customer's account, not nailed down in the terms, and it ran a temporary boost (a larger reward to both sides) for a few weeks earlier in the summer before reverting to the standard £50. A headline you screenshot today can be a different headline next month.

Bill credit, voucher, or something you have to redeem

Reward form splits the table more usefully than value does. Nine of the twelve pay bill credit: money knocked straight off your energy account, no code to redeem, no retailer to choose, nothing to forget in an email. Octopus, ScottishPower, EDF, So Energy, Good Energy, Utility Warehouse, Fuse and (for the referrer) Co-op all work this way. Ecotricity does too, except for prepay customers, who get a John Lewis voucher.

Three pay a voucher instead. E.ON Next pays a retail voucher you pick from a list (M&S, Sainsbury's, Argos, Ticketmaster and more), which is genuinely flexible if you'd rather have spending money than a smaller energy bill. British Gas pays a gift voucher, typically Amazon, and can take up to ninety days to send it. Sainsbury's Energy pays either a voucher or credit, at its discretion.

Neither form is universally better. A voucher is spendable anywhere; bill credit isn't, but it also can't expire in your inbox or get lost, and it needs no action from you. If you want the money with zero admin, bill credit wins. If you'd rather have a voucher to spend on something other than energy, E.ON Next is the pick, and it's the one voucher scheme here I've actually banked.

How long you wait, and the clauses that take it back

Speed ranges from about a month to about three. The fast group pays after your first direct debit clears: Octopus (around a month), E.ON Next and Sainsbury's (about four weeks), EDF (within about thirty days). The slow group makes you wait: British Gas can take up to ninety days, Your Co-op Energy around sixty, and So Energy pays after a fourteen-day cooling-off but hangs the reward on a ninety-day-on-supply condition.

That last point matters more than the raw wait, because several schemes can claw the reward back:

• Good Energy removes the credit from both accounts if the referred customer leaves within six months.
• So Energy and Your Co-op Energy both gate payout on the cooling-off period and continued supply, so an early cancellation undoes it.
• EDF and most others simply don't pay if the friend cancels the switch before it completes.

None of this is unusual or sharp practice; it's there to stop referral farming. But it's the difference between "we both got £50" and "we both would have got £50 if the switch had stuck," and it's exactly the sort of clause the headline number hides.

The traps worth naming

Three kinds of small print decide whether the full reward is actually reachable:

1. The dual-fuel gate. British Gas and ScottishPower only pay the full amount if you switch both gas and electricity; move one fuel and you get half. Octopus, E.ON Next, So Energy, EDF, Good Energy and Sainsbury's all pay in full for a single fuel.
2. Utility Warehouse's two-service catch. This is the harshest one, and it's easy to miss. UW's reward needs the joining friend to take two different services (from energy, broadband, mobile, and so on), and dual fuel counts as a single service. So an energy-only switch, gas and electricity included, never qualifies for the UW referral at all. It's a bundling scheme wearing a referral's clothes.
3. Comparison-site exclusions. Several schemes explicitly refuse to pay if the friend signs up through a price-comparison website rather than the referral link. E.ON Next, EDF, Sainsbury's Energy and Your Co-op Energy all state this outright. In practice it means: click the actual referral link, not "compare deals," or the reward silently doesn't track.

The split-fuel move: two referrals, two rewards

Here's something the one-supplier framing hides. Your gas and your electricity don't have to be with the same company. You can switch your electricity to one supplier and your gas to another, and because several schemes pay the full reward for a single-fuel switch, you can claim a referral on each. Move both fuels to a single supplier and you get one reward; split them across two and you get two.

The suppliers that pay in full for a single fuel, and so make good split partners, are Octopus Energy, E.ON Next, So Energy, EDF, Good Energy and Sainsbury's. The cleanest version, and the one most people can actually action, is Octopus on one fuel and E.ON Next on the other: switch your electricity to Octopus for £50 in bill credit, and your gas to E.ON Next for a £50 voucher, and you've banked around £100 for switches you were free to make anyway. You become a customer of each for the fuel it supplies, which is exactly how any single switch works.

Two honest caveats. First, this only stacks with the single-fuel-in-full suppliers: British Gas and ScottishPower halve the reward for a single fuel, so they're poor split partners, and Utility Warehouse won't pay on energy alone at all. Second, you're trading simplicity for the extra fifty. Two suppliers means two accounts, two direct debits and two apps, and you give up whatever small convenience, or occasional dual-fuel discount, comes from keeping both fuels in one place. If that admin is worth £50 to you, splitting is a real, above-board way to double the reward. If it isn't, pick one supplier and take the single £50.

Where Octopus Energy actually lands

Honestly? Not top of the headline table. ScottishPower's £60 beats it on the number, and several others match its £50. What Octopus wins is every dimension the number hides:

• Form: bill credit, no voucher to redeem or wait ninety days for.
• Speed: it lands after your first direct debit, in the fast group.
• No gate: the full £50 pays for a single fuel; there's no dual-fuel or two-service hurdle.
• Tested: it's one of only two schemes here I use and re-verify every month, so the link and the payout are checked, not just published.
• Longevity: the £50 domestic rate has held since at least 2019, which, in a market where OVO closed its scheme and EDF's amount floats, is its own kind of value.
• Unlimited: no cap on how many friends you can refer.

I've been an Octopus customer since September 2019, so this isn't a neutral corner to argue from, and I've kept the table honest precisely so that admission means something. The case for Octopus was never that it's the biggest number. It's that it's the cleanest, fastest £50 on the board, and one of only two here I've tested end to end. The full current terms and the tested link are on the Octopus Energy referral page, and if you'd rather have a voucher than bill credit, E.ON Next's £50 is on the E.ON Next referral page.

The schemes that don't exist, whatever the aggregators tell you

Part of an honest table is saying which suppliers don't run a scheme, because coupon sites will happily invent one:

• OVO Energy closed its refer-a-friend scheme on 20 December 2025. Its own terms and staff say so plainly, and its marketing pages now redirect. Yet several referral-code aggregators still list OVO at "£50, live 2026," because they auto-insert today's date onto a dead offer. It is not live.
• Shell Energy no longer supplies home energy at all: Octopus bought the business and moved every customer across by March 2024. If you were a Shell Energy customer, you're now an Octopus one and can use Octopus's scheme.
• Outfox the Market (now Outfox Energy) has no refer-a-friend scheme we could verify from any credible source, despite coupon pages claiming a "£50" or "£10" reward. Treat those as fiction until Outfox says otherwise.
• Utilita, Boost, 100Green and E run no current household referral we could confirm. Rebel Energy and Tomato Energy stopped trading in 2025 and no longer exist as suppliers.

This is exactly why the method matters: read the supplier, not the aggregator. The sites that publish the most "energy referral codes" are the least reliable place to find one that pays.

Cite this study

This league table is original research, read from each supplier's published terms in July 2026, and you're welcome to cite or link to it with attribution. A ready-to-use line:

A 2026 Referral Plug study of UK domestic energy refer-a-friend schemes found 12 suppliers running a live customer referral. ScottishPower carried the highest headline value at up to £60 for a dual-fuel switch, but most schemes paid in bill credit rather than a bigger number, several paid the full amount only for a dual-fuel switch, and a household could split its gas and electricity across two suppliers to collect two rewards at once.

Full citation: Seb Place, "UK energy refer-a-friend league table (2026): who actually pays what", Referral Plug, July 2026. https://www.referralplug.co.uk/blog/energy-refer-a-friend-league-table (opens in new tab)

The method sits under "How we built this table" above, and our wider testing methodology explains how we verify the two schemes we link to.

Where Referral Plug fits

We're not a switching site, and this table is partly here to say so plainly: for the cheapest unit rates, a comparison site like Uswitch or MoneySavingExpert's Cheap Energy Club is where to start, and we've written honestly about who undercuts Octopus on price. What a referral adds is a flat reward on top of whatever tariff you pick. Of the twelve schemes here, the two we can actually stand a tested link behind are Octopus Energy (£50 bill credit) and E.ON Next (£50 voucher), the two I use myself and re-check every month. If you want to weigh them directly, we've compared Octopus vs E.ON Next and E.ON Next vs British Gas in detail, and you can estimate your own switch saving with our Octopus savings calculator.

Frequently asked questions

Which UK energy supplier pays the most for a referral?

By headline value, ScottishPower, at up to £60 each for a dual-fuel switch (£30 for a single fuel). A cluster of suppliers pay £50, including Octopus Energy, E.ON Next, EDF, So Energy, Good Energy and British Gas (British Gas only pays the full £50 for a dual-fuel switch). But the biggest number isn't automatically the best deal: ScottishPower pays as account credit and needs a dual-fuel switch for the full amount. A cleaner, faster, single-fuel £50 that pays out with no strings is often worth more than a £60 with conditions attached.

Do UK energy referrals pay bill credit or a voucher?

Mostly bill credit. Nine of the twelve live schemes pay money straight off your energy account: Octopus, ScottishPower, EDF, So Energy, Good Energy, Utility Warehouse, Fuse, Your Co-op Energy, and Ecotricity (except its prepay customers, who get a John Lewis voucher). Three pay a voucher instead: E.ON Next (a retail voucher from a choice of shops), British Gas (typically an Amazon gift voucher, up to 90 days later), and Sainsbury's Energy (a voucher or credit, at its discretion).

Can you claim two energy referral rewards at the same time?

Yes, if you split your fuels. Your gas and electricity don't have to be with the same supplier, and several schemes (Octopus Energy, E.ON Next, So Energy, EDF, Good Energy and Sainsbury's) pay the full reward for a single-fuel switch. So you can switch your electricity to one supplier and your gas to another and collect a referral on each: moving electricity to Octopus (£50 bill credit) and gas to E.ON Next (£50 voucher) nets around £100. Moving both fuels to a single supplier only earns one reward. The trade-offs are managing two accounts and two direct debits, and that it doesn't stack with British Gas or ScottishPower, which halve a single-fuel reward.

Does signing up through a comparison site still earn the referral?

Often not. Several suppliers, including E.ON Next, EDF, Sainsbury's Energy and Your Co-op Energy, explicitly state that switching through a price-comparison website (or, in some cases, over the phone) does not qualify for the refer-a-friend reward. You have to complete the switch through the actual referral link. If you use a comparison site to pick a tariff and then sign up through it, the referral usually won't track, and neither side gets paid.

Does OVO Energy still have a referral scheme in 2026?

No. OVO closed its refer-a-friend scheme on 20 December 2025, and its own terms and support staff confirm customers can no longer generate or use referral links. Some coupon and referral-code websites still list OVO as offering "£50 in 2026," but that's a stale listing with the date auto-filled; it isn't a live offer. Always check the supplier's own page rather than an aggregator.

Which energy referral pays out the fastest?

The quickest schemes pay after your first direct debit clears, usually within about a month: Octopus Energy, E.ON Next, EDF and Sainsbury's Energy all sit in that group. The slowest make you wait considerably longer, with British Gas taking up to 90 days and Your Co-op Energy around 60. So Energy and Good Energy pay after a short cooling-off period but can claw the reward back if the new customer leaves within the qualifying window, so "paid" and "safe to keep" aren't always the same date.