EDF referral code

EDF publishes the mechanism plainly, and it is worth reading before you read any saving figure: "The Simply Tracker tariff is priced in line with the most recent price cap. The price cap is reviewed and updated by Ofgem every three months, in January, April, July and October. We've reduced the standing charge by applying a daily discount of 6.85p (inc VAT) for both electricity and gas. Over a year, that's £25 off the electricity standing charge and £25 off the gas standing charge. A total of £50. The discounted standing charge is the same in all regions and will be applied no matter how much energy you use." (EDF, tracker tariffs (opens in new tab))

So what you are buying is a fixed daily discount on the standing charge, the flat fee your supplier charges every day before you have used a single unit. The unit rate is the cap rate. My own electricity standing charge is 42.84p a day against the 49.70p Ofgem sets for Region H (Southern) this quarter, a gap of 6.86p, which is EDF's published 6.85p discount plus a hundredth of a penny of rounding. My unit rate is 26.42p, which is the Region H cap rate to the penny.

Two consequences follow, and both are on this page because they are the ones a quote will not tell you. The saving is worth the same to every customer, because it is per day rather than per kWh. And it cannot beat a tariff priced below the cap unit rate, because it is not competing on the unit rate at all.

The tariff carries a £25 exit fee per fuel, needs a smart meter to be installed if you are on a traditional prepayment meter, and reprices on the same quarterly cycle as the cap. My term runs to September 2027.

Here is the whole calculation, on my actual usage of 2,095 kWh a year of electricity in Region H (Southern), using the rates in force for the 1 July to 30 September 2026 cap period:

The headline nobody in this corner of the market writes down: a comparison quotes you against the price cap, not against the fix you are already on. Same tariff, three answers, and only one of them is yours. Quoted against the cap, EDF looks like a saving. Quoted against the Octopus Fixed I was actually paying, it is £70.13 a year worse, and I switched anyway because that Fixed was expiring in September 2026 and would have rolled onto a variable rate.

The £70.13 figure is a snapshot of one cap period, not a permanent gap. It moves every time Ofgem reprices, next on 1 October 2026. The £12.97 against Octopus Flexible and the £25.04 against the cap move the same way.

Worth saying out loud, because it is awkward for a page recommending a supplier: £50 of referral credit is worth about four years of the £13 gap against Octopus Flexible, and about eight and a half months of the £70 gap against the Fixed. At these margins the referral is worth more than the supplier choice. That is an argument for taking a referral wherever you switch, not an argument for switching to EDF.

You can run this for your own home. Take the daily standing-charge gap in pence, multiply by 365, and divide by the unit-rate gap in pence per kWh:

365 × standing-charge gap ÷ unit-rate gap = the usage in kWh a year below which the low standing charge wins.

Against the Ofgem cap, the unit-rate gap is zero, so the threshold is infinite: the standing-charge discount wins at every level of usage. Against the Octopus 12-month Fixed I left, the standing-charge gap is 0.82p and the unit-rate gap is 3.49p, so the threshold is 86 kWh a year. A UK home uses roughly that in a fortnight, so in practice the Fixed is cheaper at every usage anyone actually has.

Generalise it and you get the durable version of this page's finding, which survives the next cap change and the one after: a tracker priced at the cap unit rate can never beat a fix priced below the cap unit rate. The standing-charge discount is a fixed number of pounds a year. A lower unit rate scales with everything you use. Past a trivially small usage, the second one wins.

One misconception to clear up, because it is the one most readers arrive with. Lower usage does not earn you a bigger saving here. EDF's discount is £25 a year per fuel whether you use 500 kWh or 5,000. What lower usage changes is the share: £25 off a £400 bill is 6%, £25 off a £900 bill is under 3%. The saving is flat; only its proportion moves. Against Octopus Flexible the same holds for a different reason, since the two unit rates match to three decimal places, so the gap is £13.03 a year at 500 kWh and £12.96 at 2,500. Cutting usage does not widen it.

What EDF states on its refer-a-friend page (opens in new tab):

• Both sides get £50 off their energy bill, credited automatically to the EDF account
• It "typically takes around four weeks from when your friend joins", and both parties must have made a payment first
• Only residential properties can be referred, and the friend must not already be an EDF customer
• The credit cannot be withdrawn as cash, and cannot be combined with another new-customer promotion
• If either account closes before the credit is applied, the referral is cancelled
• EDF states no limit on how many people you can refer

The switch itself was the least eventful part. EDF asked for a postcode and bank details, quoted me, and handled the rest with Octopus; I gave no meter reading and did not contact my old supplier. Supply moved in about two weeks with no interruption, and I paid no exit fee because the Fixed term on that fuel was inside its final period. My gas stayed with Octopus throughout, still on Fixed, which is what makes this a split-fuel setup rather than a switch away.

What I cannot tell you yet is whether the £50 lands. Two weeks in, no billing cycle has completed on either side. I would rather say that than let an advertised figure read as a tested one. If the payout does not arrive, this page reverts to paused rather than keeping a link live on a reward I have not seen.