How much does it cost to heat a home in winter 2026-27?

On EIA averages: $640 for natural gas, $1,196 for electricity, $1,246 for propane, and heating oil spending up 21% from last winter. The calculator's default 1,800 square foot moderate-climate gas home costs $688.12 for the season, $137.62 a month.

Why is my heating bill higher than the national average?

Usually one of three reasons: a bigger home, a colder climate, or poor insulation. The same gas house costs $995.96 in a cold climate and $362.17 in a mild one, and poor insulation lifts the moderate-climate bill from $688.12 to $1,019.43.

What months count as heating season?

This calculator uses November through March, five months, for its monthly average. The EIA winter outlook covers the same winter window, which is why the monthly figure divides the season by five.

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The heating ledger · Table No. 37

How Much Does It Cost to Heat a Home?

EIA winter averages by fuel for 2026-27, what moves your own bill away from the average, and a worked example for an 1,800 square foot home.

Filed October 25, 2026 · figures checked against 2026 sources

The national averages for winter 2026-27

The U.S. Energy Information Administration published its winter outlook in the Short-Term Energy Outlook released October 7, 2026, and the headline is a split, not a single number. Homes heating with natural gas are expected to spend $640 on average this winter, down 9% from last winter. Homes heating with electricity are expected to spend $1,196, up 4%. Homes heating with propane are expected to spend $1,246, down 3%. Homes heating with oil face the sharpest move: spending up 21%, driven by an oil price averaging about 34% higher, partly offset by warmer weather forecast for the Northeast, where most oil-heated homes sit.

Those four numbers are the most quoted heating figures of the season, and they are also easy to misuse. They are averages across homes of every size in every climate, and they describe spending on the heating fuel, not the whole energy bill. A small apartment in Georgia and a large farmhouse in Minnesota both sit inside the same average, which means almost nobody actually pays the average. The average is useful as a benchmark, and misleading as a prediction. This article uses it the first way: as the line your own number gets compared against.

What the average home heats with

Natural gas heats about 46% of American homes, electricity about 43%, propane about 5%, and heating oil about 3%, according to the Energy Information Administration's Winter Fuels Outlook. The fuel mix is regional in a way that matters for the averages. Heating oil is a Northeast story: about 3.4 million of the nation's 4.1 million oil-heated households are in the Northeast, roughly 82%. Propane is a rural story, where gas mains do not reach. Electricity is everywhere but means different things in different places: in the South it often means a heat pump, in older northern housing it often means baseboards, and the running costs of those two are not close.

That last point explains the strangest feature of the EIA table. The electricity average of $1,196 blends heat pumps, which move heat efficiently, with resistance heaters, which make heat at one-to-one efficiency. A home on resistance heat pays far more than the average; a home on a good heat pump pays far less. Any article that quotes the electricity average without that caveat is hiding the most important fact about electric heat.

A worked example: the default house

Run the calculator at its defaults, an 1,800 square foot home in a moderate climate with average insulation, heated with natural gas at $1.35 per therm, thermostat at 68 degrees with an 8 degree setback for 8 hours, and the season comes out at $688.12, or $137.62 a month across the five heating months of November through March. The house needs 44.32 million BTU of delivered heat for the season, which at 80% furnace efficiency means 554 therms of gas. The pre-setback cost is $747.95, and the setback saves 8%, or $59.84.

Against the EIA gas average of $640, that $688.12 sits about 7.5% above the line, squarely in the range this site calls near the average. The gap is not an error. The EIA average blends small homes and warm climates into the same number, while the default house is a middling 1,800 square feet in a moderate zone. Change one input and the story changes fast, which is the point of pricing your own house instead of quoting the average.

Climate moves the number more than fuel does

Keep the same 1,800 square foot, averagely insulated, gas-heated house and move it between climate zones. In a cold climate, with 5,500 heating degree-days for the season, the bill is $995.96. In a moderate climate, at 3,800 degree-days, it is $688.12. In a mild climate, at 2,000 degree-days, it is $362.17. The cold house costs nearly three times the mild house on the same fuel, the same insulation, and the same thermostat. Anyone comparing heating bills across states without adjusting for climate is comparing weather, not houses.

Size matters in the same linear way, because the model scales heat loss with floor area. At 1,200 square feet in a moderate climate the gas season is $458.75; at 2,500 square feet it is $955.72. Every extra 100 square feet of averagely insulated space in a moderate climate adds roughly $38 to the gas season at these prices. That is the arithmetic behind the advice to heat only the rooms you use: closing off a genuinely unused wing is not a rounding error, it is a line item.

The boxed insight. The national average is a blend of small southern homes and big northern ones. Your climate zone moves your bill more than your fuel choice does: the same gas-heated house costs $995.96 in a cold climate and $362.17 in a mild one, a $633.79 gap that no fuel switch can match.

How to use the averages honestly

Use the EIA figures as a smell test. If your gas season lands near $640, your house is behaving like the national average gas home, which is a reasonable place to be. If it lands far above, one of three things is true: your house is bigger than average, your climate is colder than average, or your house is leaking heat that insulation and sealing would keep. The calculator separates those three explanations, because each one has a different fix. A big house needs a smaller heated footprint or a cheaper fuel. A cold climate needs the same, plus patience. A leaky house needs sealing, and sealing pays back faster than almost any other heating investment, as the next article in this series shows in dollars.

One more caution about the averages: they are forecasts, and forecasts move with weather. The EIA outlook assumes national temperatures similar to last winter, warmer in the Northeast and much colder in the West. A cold snap in January rewrites every household's season, and no average published in October can price a February freeze. Treat the $640, $1,196, and $1,246 as the planning case, and keep a buffer for the cold case. The calculator's cold-zone row is a decent proxy for that buffer: about $996 for the default gas house, or roughly $308 above the moderate-zone bill.

The honest summary is this. Heating a home for a winter costs roughly $640 on gas, $1,196 on electricity, and $1,246 on propane at the national average, with oil up sharply this year. Your house will differ, and the difference is knowable: size, climate, insulation, fuel price, and thermostat, five inputs, one ledger. Price those five and the average stops being a mystery and starts being a benchmark you can beat.

Heating cost questions

How much does it cost to heat a home in winter 2026-27?: On EIA averages: $640 for natural gas, $1,196 for electricity, $1,246 for propane, and heating oil spending up 21% from last winter. The calculator's default 1,800 square foot moderate-climate gas home costs $688.12 for the season, $137.62 a month.
Why is my heating bill higher than the national average?: Usually one of three reasons: a bigger home, a colder climate, or poor insulation. The same gas house costs $995.96 in a cold climate and $362.17 in a mild one, and poor insulation lifts the moderate-climate bill from $688.12 to $1,019.43.
What months count as heating season?: This calculator uses November through March, five months, for its monthly average. The EIA winter outlook covers the same winter window, which is why the monthly figure divides the season by five.