Octopus Smart Export Guarantee rates: Outgoing Octopus and the SEG tariff

What Octopus pays for the electricity your panels send back, tariff by tariff, who is allowed each one, and how Octopus says you apply. Read from Octopus's own pages, with how it compares to every other supplier we track. Nobody is going to ring you.

Figures on this page last checked 24 October 2026. Each carries its own receipt with its own date.

Octopus runs four export tariffs. Three of them are for people who buy their electricity from Octopus, and one, the Octopus SEG tariff, is for people who want to keep another supplier. Octopus's own SEG page says that second group misses out on the better rates, which is honest of it, and the table below shows by how much.

Octopus's export tariffs

• SEG. Octopus's rate for people who buy their electricity elsewhere. Their page is open about the fact that their own customers get more.
• Prime Outgoing Octopus. Two rates by time of day. The 16p only applies between 4pm and 7pm, so it suits a battery that can hold the day's export until then. Without a battery, the 9p is closer to what you would see.
• Outgoing Octopus. Octopus's flat customer rate. Their page says it pairs only with certain import tariffs, so check yours qualifies.
• Agile Outgoing Octopus. The rate follows the wholesale market half hour by half hour, so there is no figure to put in the table. It is for people with a battery who want to play the peaks.

How Octopus compares with every other supplier

We keep every supplier's export rates in one table, each read from that supplier's own page. Here is where Octopus's rates sit in it, group by group, because a rate only means something against the others you could actually have.

• SEG, 4.1p/kWh. 6th of 14 single rates in the tier “Open to anyone”. The top of that tier pays 13p/kWh, 8.9p/kWh more: Fuse Energy's Single Rate Variable Export.
• Outgoing Octopus, 12p/kWh. Joint 3rd of 10 single rates in the tier “For that supplier's electricity customers”. The top of that tier pays 13p/kWh, 1p/kWh more: E.ON Next's Next Export Exclusive v3 and EDF's Export 12m V2.

The ranks and the differences in pence are our comparison from the table as we last read it, not figures Octopus publishes. Rows paying the same rate share a place. Time-of-use and wholesale-linked tariffs anywhere in the table are left out of the ranking, because they have no single rate to rank. Here that means Prime Outgoing Octopus and Agile Outgoing Octopus. The rate open to anyone runs from 2p/kWh to 13p/kWh across the whole table.

What a rate is worth in years depends on the rest of the sum. The payback period page shows how far the export rate alone moves it for one example house, with every input linked.

What you need before you apply

As Octopus's own pages put it, in our words:

• For any of the three Outgoing tariffs, you have to be an Octopus electricity customer. If you are not, Octopus says you join one of its standard tariffs first and then apply.
• Outgoing Octopus pairs only with certain Octopus import tariffs, so check the one you are on before you count on it.
• A smart meter Octopus can read half-hourly export data from. Its page says that covers almost all SMETS2 meters and most SMETS1.
• If you started receiving Feed-in Tariff payments in the last 12 months, Octopus says the FiT rules stop you moving to Outgoing Octopus yet.
• Prime Outgoing Octopus is aimed at homes with solar and a battery, and Agile Outgoing Octopus at homes with storage that can wait for the high-price half hours.
• For the Octopus SEG tariff instead: a system in Great Britain of no more than 5MW (50kW for micro-CHP), certified under MCS or FlexiOrb, a letter or email from your network operator approving the export meter number, and no Feed-in Tariff export payments.

How to apply, as Octopus describes it

1. If you are not with Octopus and want an Outgoing tariff, sign up as a customer first, then come back to the Outgoing page and apply. If you are staying with another supplier, the Octopus SEG tariff has its own online application.
2. Octopus processes the application and asks your Distribution Network Operator for an export MPAN, the meter number for the electricity you send out. Octopus puts its own part at 2 days.
3. The network operator creates the MPAN. Octopus says this takes 1 to 4 weeks, is the longest step, and is out of its hands.
4. Octopus enrols the MPAN on your account, which it puts at 5 days, and emails you for a first meter reading. On the SEG tariff it also wants a photo of the meter to go with that reading.
5. After that Octopus pulls your export readings from the smart meter.

You apply on Octopus's own site. We do not take applications, we do not ask for your details, and nobody pays us for sending you there.

Is Octopus obliged to offer this?

Ofgem lists Octopus Energy Limited as a mandatory SEG licensee for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. Ofgem publishes which suppliers have told it they are taking part in the Smart Export Guarantee each year. The big ones have no choice: a supplier with enough household customers must offer a tariff. Smaller ones can volunteer.

Ofgem's rule is that your export payments, your electricity supply and your gas supply can each be with a different company. So you can take an open-to-anyone export tariff from one supplier and keep buying your electricity from another. The catch is in the table: the higher rates are mostly reserved for that supplier's own customers, so switching your export alone gets you the open tier.

The same page for other suppliers: ScottishPower, British Gas, EDF and E.ON Next.

Questions people actually ask

Where to go next

• Export rates: what each supplier pays for your exported power.
• Payback: how long the panels take to pay for themselves.
• Solar panel cost: what a solar system costs.
• All the figures Hearthsum keeps: the hub, with every page on it.