Electricity Provider in Berlin: What Staying on the Default Tariff Costs You
A friend in Wedding showed me her electricity bill last month and asked why it was so high for a one-room flat. She had moved in three years earlier, switched on the lights, and never signed anything. That is the most common Berlin electricity story I know: nobody picks a supplier, so the city picks one for you.
The supplier Berlin picks is Vattenfall's default tariff, the Grundversorgung. It is safe and it never cuts you off for being new, but it is rarely the cheapest way to pay for the same electricity. Since 1 April 2026 it costs 37.93 cents per kWh plus €13.40 a month, gross.
My advice: find out how many kWh your household really uses, then compare every offer at that number. I checked the prices and the switching rules on 19 September 2026.
Kraftwerk Klingenberg on the Spree in Rummelsburg. Where your electricity comes from and who bills you for it are two different questions.
How the electricity provider in Berlin gets chosen for you
When you move into a Berlin flat, the power is already on. If you do not sign a contract with anyone, the electricity is still delivered and billed, by Vattenfall as the local default supplier. That is the Grundversorgung, and the law says the biggest supplier in each grid area has to offer it to every household.
Two things about it are genuinely good. You can leave at two weeks' notice, any time, and the default supplier has to take you. The weak point is the price.
Vattenfall itself wrote in its April 2026 price notice that the vast majority of Berlin customers have already moved to cheaper special contracts. The people still on the default tariff are mostly the ones who never looked, like my friend in Wedding.
What the default tariff really costs at your consumption
The April change looked like good news: the price per kWh dropped by 6.46 cents, from 44.39 to 37.93. At the same time the monthly base price rose from €10.90 to €13.40. That is €160.80 a year before you boil a single kettle.
For a big household the trade is fine. For a small flat it is not, because the fixed part is spread over fewer kWh:
1,200 kWh (a typical one-person flat): €616 a year, which is really 51.3 cents per kWh
1,900 kWh (two people): €881 a year
2,400 kWh (three people): €1,071 a year
Those consumption figures are the flat averages from the national Stromspiegel, for homes where gas or district heating makes the hot water. If an electric Durchlauferhitzer heats your shower, add a third or more.
Read your own number first
Every comparison starts with one figure: your kWh for a year. It is printed on your last annual bill as Verbrauch. If you have no bill yet, take two meter readings a few weeks apart and scale them up, or use the household averages above for a first look.
An old BEWAG meter, from the days when West Berlin's power company owned the grid. The black digits on the left are the kWh; the red one is a tenth.
Berlin's grid is run by Stromnetz Berlin, owned by the city, and it reads the meters no matter who your supplier is. When the reader is coming, a yellow notice goes up in the stairwell. You can also type the reading in yourself online.
The Stromnetz Berlin notice that goes up before the meters are read. Photograph your own meter that day and you have a reading for any comparison.
Which offer wins at the kWh you actually use
The tool below draws each tariff as a line: yearly cost against consumption. The red line is the default tariff, and the yellow band is your year. Type the two prices from any offer you have, the Arbeitspreis in cents per kWh and the Grundpreis per month, and add up to four offers side by side.
Two things are worth watching as you play with it. An offer with a lower price per kWh but a higher base price can still lose at small consumption, and the tool marks the kWh where two lines cross. And a bonus only moves the solid line for year one: the dashed line is what the same contract costs once the bonus has been paid.
Take a plain example offer at 27.50 cents and €12.50 a month. At 1,900 kWh it costs €673 a year against the default's €881, so it saves about €209 every year, with no bonus involved. On comparison portals on 19 September 2026, the cheapest 12-month offers for Berlin addresses came in lower still.
The bonus trap in year two
Comparison portals sort offers by the first-year price, and that price includes the new-customer bonus. That is how a tariff with a €200 bonus and a high price per kWh ends up at the top of the list.
The Verbraucherzentrale gives the simple fix: switch the bonus filter off and compare the plain yearly cost first. Two more details matter:
The bonus is often paid only after 12 months of actual supply, which starts weeks after you sign, so leaving at the end of the minimum term can cost you the bonus.
The price guarantee runs for 12 or 24 months and often leaves out taxes and levies. After that, the supplier can change the price with at least a month's warning, and you may then leave at no cost before the new price starts.
A bonus tariff can still be the right choice if you are happy to switch again every year. I am not, so I pick on the dashed line and treat a bonus as a small extra.
What switching actually involves
Switching is free, and it is less work than it sounds. The new supplier does the paperwork, including cancelling the old contract for you.
Have your last bill at hand. The meter number and the MaLo-ID (market location ID) on it make the switch run cleanly.
Leaving the default tariff takes two weeks' notice. Since June 2025 the technical switch itself happens within 24 hours on a working day, as the Bundesnetzagentur explains.
Special contracts can run for at most two years at first, then extend by a year at a time, and from then on can be cancelled with one month's notice.
Moving flat: sign up before the move date. Electricity can no longer be booked backwards, so without a contract you land back in Vattenfall's default supply at the new address.
If you are also checking your other flat costs, the Nebenkostenabrechnung guide covers what your landlord bills separately, including the electricity for the stairwell lights.
The part of the bill no supplier can change
A good share of every Berlin bill goes to the grid, and that part is the same whoever sends the invoice. For 2026, Stromnetz Berlin charges households 8.88 cents per kWh, down from 11.86, thanks to a federal subsidy for the national transmission grid. For its typical Berlin home of 1,950 kWh, that alone is about €58 a year less.
The Abspannwerk on Paul-Lincke-Ufer, a 1920s substation of the old Berlin power company. The grid behind it still belongs to one operator, whichever supplier you pick.
This is why the cheapest offers cluster so tightly. Suppliers compete on the energy price and their margin, and the grid, levies and taxes are the same for all of them. A price far below the rest deserves a second look at the small print.
My move for this autumn
Autumn is the right moment, because the dark months are when a Berlin flat uses the most light and the most laptop hours. Here is what I would do this week:
Find your kWh on the last bill, or read the meter twice.
Put the default tariff and two or three offers into the tool, with the bonus left out first.
Pick the offer that wins on the dashed line at your consumption, not the one at the top of a portal list.
Put a reminder in your calendar a month before the price guarantee ends, so a price change never catches you asleep.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte on Köpenicker Straße. It sells heat and power into the city, but it does not decide what a Wedding flat pays per kWh.
For the rest of your fixed costs, the Rundfunkbeitrag guide shows where people pay that fee twice, and the balcony solar guide works out what a panel on your railing earns against the price per kWh above. My weekly newsletter carries one of these practical Berlin money notes every week.
Image credits
Source and licence details for the 5 photographs used in this article.
Kraftwerk Klingenberg on the Spree at Rummelsburg: A.Savin, Free Art License 1.3, via Wikimedia Commons.
An old BEWAG electricity meter: RobbieIanMorrison, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
A Stromnetz Berlin meter reading notice: RobbieIanMorrison, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The courtyard of the Abspannwerk on Paul-Lincke-Ufer: Axel.Mauruszat, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Heizkraftwerk Mitte on Köpenicker Straße: Gunnar Klack, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.