TL;DR:

  • Octopus Energy offers five main smart tariffs — Agile, Go, Intelligent Octopus Go, Flux, and Tracker — each designed for different usage profiles
  • EV owners who charge overnight are usually best served by Intelligent Octopus Go, which smart-charges your car in cheap grid slots automatically
  • Agile Octopus suits flexible households that can actively time-shift usage; Flux is specifically for solar-plus-battery households that want to earn on exports

The standard variable tariff that most UK households sit on doesn’t reward you for using electricity at different times of day. Everything costs the same whether you run the dishwasher at 4pm (when demand is high and grid carbon intensity is high) or at 2am (when both are low). Octopus’s smart tariffs change this — but they work very differently from each other, and picking the wrong one means you might not save anything at all.

Agile Octopus

Agile follows the wholesale electricity market in half-hourly increments, which means your rate changes 48 times a day. Prices can swing from 5p/kWh in the middle of the night (sometimes going negative when there’s surplus wind on the grid) up to 100p/kWh or more during peak demand events.

The Octopus app and API show you tomorrow’s prices from about 4pm, letting you plan usage around cheap windows. There’s also an alerts feature that notifies you when prices drop below a threshold you set.

Who it suits: Households that are genuinely willing to time-shift usage — running washing machines, dishwashers, and EV chargers at night, avoiding cooking and high-draw appliances during peak windows. Also anyone with home automation (Home Assistant, smart plugs) that can act on the price data automatically. The savings potential is high, but it requires engagement.

Who it doesn’t suit: Households with fixed routines that can’t change, or anyone who finds variable bills stressful. If you charge your EV at random times and cook dinner at 6pm every day regardless of price signals, you might actually pay more than on a standard tariff.

Octopus Go

Octopus Go is the simple smart tariff: a cheap overnight rate (typically 7–8p/kWh) for a fixed window (currently midnight to 5am) and a standard daytime rate for everything else. No complexity, no price monitoring required — you just schedule overnight-capable loads to run in that window.

Who it suits: EV owners who want a cheap charging window without the engagement of Agile. Set your car to charge between midnight and 5am, do the same with your dishwasher and washing machine, and save a straightforward amount each month without thinking about it.

Who it doesn’t suit: Households with solar panels, since Go doesn’t pay well for exports and doesn’t have the export optimisation that Flux offers. Also not ideal if most of your load is genuinely inflexible — you need to actually use the cheap window.

Intelligent Octopus Go

Intelligent Octopus Go is specifically designed for EV owners and goes further than standard Go. The tariff integrates directly with compatible smart chargers and EV apps (Ohme, Indra, Hypervolt, plus direct integration for Tesla, BMW, and several others). Rather than a fixed cheap window, Intelligent Octopus negotiates with your EV and the grid to charge at whatever times are cheapest and greenest.

You tell it when you need the car ready and how much charge you want. It handles the rest — sometimes charging you at 11pm, sometimes at 3am, sometimes splitting sessions across the night depending on grid conditions. All of those hours count as cheap-rate hours.

The cheap rate on Intelligent (typically around 7p/kWh) applies to all the hours when your car is actually smart-charging, not just a fixed window.

Who it suits: Almost any EV owner with a compatible charger. The combination of simple setup, guaranteed ready-by time, and smart optimisation makes it the default recommendation for most EV households.

Who it doesn’t suit: Anyone with an incompatible charger or car — the smart features require Octopus to control the charging session directly. If your setup isn’t compatible, regular Go gives a fixed cheap window that’s nearly as good.

Octopus Flux

Flux is the solar-and-battery tariff. It has three rates: a cheap overnight import rate, a standard daytime rate, and an export rate. Crucially, it pays you a meaningful export rate (typically around 15–20p/kWh at time of writing) for electricity you export to the grid, and the overnight import rate is cheap enough to fill your battery affordably.

The intended cycle: charge your battery from the grid overnight at the cheap rate, use solar during the day, export surplus solar plus any battery discharge during the peak export window when the rate is highest.

Who it suits: Households with both solar panels and a home battery system. If you have both, Flux can generate a reasonable income from your battery acting as grid storage. The economics depend on battery size and local solar generation, but a well-sized setup can cover much of the battery cost through Flux over a few years.

Who it doesn’t suit: Households with solar but no battery — you’d be better on Agile with an export tariff, or Intelligent Octopus Go if you have an EV to absorb surplus. Flux’s value is specifically in the battery charge/discharge optimisation.

Octopus Tracker

Tracker is the transparent tariff for people who want to understand what they’re actually paying. The unit rate changes monthly, based on wholesale prices plus a fixed margin. Octopus publishes the formula — there’s no ambiguity about why the rate changed.

Who it suits: Households that want exposure to wholesale prices when they’re low (Tracker can be significantly cheaper than the standard variable rate during low-demand periods) but don’t want half-hourly variability. Also useful as a reference point for comparing against other tariffs.

Switching and Compatibility

All of these tariffs require a smart meter (SMETS2 or SMETS1 in communication with the network). If you don’t have one, Octopus will arrange installation — it’s free and takes about an hour.

Switching between tariffs is straightforward through the Octopus app with no exit fees. The practical recommendation: if you have an EV, start with Intelligent Octopus Go. If you add solar and a battery, switch to Flux. If your household has genuinely flexible usage and you want to optimise further, try Agile — but only if you’re willing to monitor it.