Octopus Tracker: tariff explained (2026)

Octopus Tracker is a variable tariff that follows the daily wholesale price of energy: each day it sets one rate for your electricity and one for your gas, so the price you pay moves with the actual market rather than lagging behind a quarterly price cap. It's one of Octopus's smart tariffs, and you'll need a working smart meter to be on it. The appeal is transparency and speed — when wholesale costs fall, you feel it the next day, not months later.

What is Octopus Tracker?

Octopus Tracker is a variable tariff that follows the daily wholesale price of energy: each day it sets one rate for your electricity and one for your gas, so the price you pay moves with the actual market rather than lagging behind a quarterly price cap. It's one of Octopus's smart tariffs, and you'll need a working smart meter to be on it. The appeal is transparency and speed — when wholesale costs fall, you feel it the next day, not months later.

Who it’s best for

• Engaged households happy to glance at a daily price and ride the market up and down rather than have a fixed, predictable rate
• People who already have a working smart meter sending regular readings (it's a requirement to join)
• Bill-watchers who want to benefit quickly when wholesale energy prices fall, instead of waiting for the next price-cap change
• Anyone who wants the transparency of wholesale-linked pricing but finds Agile's half-hourly rates too fiddly — Tracker gives just one rate a day

How it works

Every day, Tracker publishes one electricity rate and one gas rate based on an independently published wholesale market price (the day-ahead auction for power and the wholesale gas market), updated just after midnight and locked in from midnight to midnight. That makes it different from Agile, which reprices every half hour, and from Flexible Octopus, which simply follows the Ofgem cap. The pricing formula and the daily standing charge stay fixed for your first year while only the daily unit rate moves with the market, and there are no exit fees — though if you leave Tracker there's a waiting period before you can rejoin, so it's worth committing rather than hopping on and off. There's also a built-in maximum daily price ("Price Cap Protect") as a backstop, but it sits well above the Ofgem cap, so the trade-off for catching the lows is exposure to higher rates during cold-weather spikes. Rates change daily and vary by region — always check the current numbers on octopus.energy before you decide.

Whether or not Tracker turns out to be your tariff, you can join Octopus through a referral link and get £50 credit (and so does the person who referred you) — and once you're a customer you can switch tariff for free, so picking Tracker on day one isn't a lock-in. The £50 lands automatically a few weeks after your switch completes and your first Direct Debit is taken, on top of any saving the tariff makes you.

Rates and availability change regularly — check current prices on octopus.energy. Last reviewed 1 June 2026.

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