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Heat Pump vs Gas Cost Calculator Ontario (2026): Your Rates, Your House, Gas, Propane, Oil or Electric Against a Cold-Climate Heat Pump, With the Break-Even COP and the 15-Year Number
Heating, Cooling & VentilationFree Calculator
Heat Pump or Gas? Put In Your Own Bills and Rates and Get the Answer for Your House, Not Somebody Else’s.
Gas, propane, oil or electric baseboard against a cold-climate heat pump, all-electric or dual fuel. Yearly heating cost, the break-even COP, and fifteen years with the equipment in. No email address required.
The honest answer to “will a heat pump save me money” is “it depends on four numbers”, and all four are on your bills or in this box: what a cubic metre of gas or a litre of propane costs you all-in, what a kilowatt-hour costs you all-in, how efficient the furnace is, and how efficient the heat pump really is over a whole Ontario winter. On propane, oil and baseboard the heat pump wins almost everywhere. On natural gas it is close, and the house decides it.
Step-by-step
Heat Pump vs Your Current Fuel (Ontario)
1
What heats the house now
Electric baseboard is 100% efficient and still the dearest heat in Ontario. That is not a contradiction; it is the price of a kilowatt-hour.
Your Enbridge bills add up the year. Take off about 250 m3 if the water heater is gas too.
Rough planning numbers: kWh of delivered heat per sq ft per year in Simcoe County. Your bills are better than any table.
2
Your rates, all-in
Bill total (less the monthly customer charge) divided by cubic metres. About $0.40 to $0.50 for most Enbridge customers.
From your last delivery invoice, tank rental not included. Prices vary a lot by supplier and contract.
From your last delivery.
Hydro bill total divided by kWh, after the rebate and with HST. Most Ontario houses land at 15 to 18 cents.
3
The heat pump
The brochure COP is measured at 8.3 C. At minus 25 it is closer to 1.5 to 2. Seasonal is the average that matters.
Backup electric strips run at COP 1. Dual fuel burns your current fuel on the coldest days.
Cold-climate, ducted, 3 tons on existing ducts: $9,000 to $18,000. What moves it.
Furnace plus central AC on existing ducts: $6,500 to $12,500. Put 0 if nothing needs replacing yet.
Leave it at 0 until a participating contractor has pre-approval. The rules.
4
Where is the house?
Sets the installed-price adjustment, the heating degree-days and the winter design temperature.
Used only to tell you whether the house is in our direct service area. Not stored.
Enter a postal code to see service coverage.
BuildersOntario.com
Heating Cost, Both Ways
Illustrative Ontario comparison
| Line | Amount |
|---|
Heat pump saves per year$0
Example only. Heating energy only: no cooling, no maintenance, no interest, no future price changes. Delivered heat is your fuel use times its energy content (gas 10.4 kWh per cubic metre, propane 7.08 per litre, oil 10.6 per litre) times the efficiency you chose. Installed prices are planning ranges from published Ontario price guides checked October 2026, and real quotes for the same job vary widely. This is not a quote, not engineering, and not a heat-loss calculation.
Request a Real Quotation
Your fuel, your use and the system you lean toward become a written scope an HVAC contractor can quote without guessing: the tonnage comes from a heat loss, the model from the cold-climate list, and the backup is spelled out. It goes straight to our inbox, and a copy comes back to you; reply to that copy with photos of the furnace label, the outdoor AC unit label and the electrical panel, and a year of gas or propane bills if you have them.
What this calculator does, and what it will not do!
It turns your fuel into delivered heat, prices that heat two ways, and shows where the two lines cross. The break-even COP is the most useful number on the page: it tells you how good the heat pump has to be, over a whole winter, to match what you pay now. Below that number, gas wins; above it, the heat pump does.
It does not size anything. The tonnage, the backup and whether the ducts can carry a heat pump’s airflow come from a room-by-room heat loss and a look at the ducts, which this box cannot do. It also leaves out cooling, which a heat pump does for free in the sense that you were going to buy an air conditioner anyway.
A rule of thumb: on gas at $0.45 a cubic metre through a 95% furnace, heat costs about 4.6 cents a delivered kWh. At 16 cents a kWh a heat pump needs a seasonal COP of about 3.5 to match it, which is a very good unit in a tight house. On propane at $0.90 a litre the same heat costs 13.4 cents and a heat pump needs a COP of about 1.2. That is why the propane houses around here are the easy call and the gas houses are the argument.
The arithmetic, so you can check it
| Fuel | Energy per unit | Example price | Cents per delivered kWh |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural gas, 95% furnace | 10.4 kWh per m3 | $0.45 per m3 | 4.6 |
| Natural gas, 80% furnace | 10.4 kWh per m3 | $0.45 per m3 | 5.4 |
| Propane, 95% furnace | 7.08 kWh per L | $0.90 per L | 13.4 |
| Heating oil, 80% furnace | 10.6 kWh per L | $1.60 per L | 18.9 |
| Electric baseboard | 1 kWh per kWh | $0.16 per kWh | 16.0 |
| Heat pump, seasonal COP 2.5 | 2.5 kWh of heat per kWh | $0.16 per kWh | 6.4 |
| Heat pump, seasonal COP 3.2 | 3.2 kWh of heat per kWh | $0.16 per kWh | 5.0 |
Ontario electricity supply prices from November 1, 2026: time-of-use 9.1, 14.6 and 18.9 cents; ultra-low overnight 3.7 cents. Delivery, regulatory charges and HST roughly double the supply price, which is why 15 to 18 cents all-in is the honest number. Gas price is the example used on the gas vs heat pump operating cost page. Propane and oil prices vary by supplier; use your own invoice.
Why the installed prices are all over the map: the contractors and published price guides we checked for this page quoted a cold-climate ducted heat pump anywhere from about $4,500 (a marketplace figure with good existing ducts) to $18,000 and up (a heat pump price guide), with a national guide in between at $7,000 to $12,000. The difference is mostly what is included: the air handler, the electrical, the line set, removing the old unit, the rebate paperwork, and whether the model is truly cold-climate. Budget $13,000 for 3 tons on existing ducts, and get two or three quotes on the same written scope.
Where homeowners go wrong
- Using the brochure COP. The COP on the spec sheet is measured at 8.3 C. The number that pays the bill is the season average, 2.2 to 3.0 for a cold-climate unit in southern Ontario. What happens at minus 25.
- Using the gas commodity price. The commodity is about a third of the bill. Divide the whole bill, less the fixed monthly charge, by the cubic metres.
- Forgetting the backup. A heat pump that is too small for the house spends January on electric strips at COP 1, and that is the most expensive heat there is. Size it from a heat loss. The sizing mistakes.
- Counting a rebate before pre-approval. Installations done before approval are not eligible. Enter it as zero until it is confirmed in writing.
- Comparing a leaky house. The cheapest kilowatt-hour is the one the house does not lose. Air sealing and attic insulation first, then the equipment, one size smaller. Why that order.
Questions people ask
Is a heat pump cheaper to run than natural gas in Ontario?
Sometimes. At about $0.45 a cubic metre and 16 cents a kWh, gas through a 95% furnace costs about 4.6 cents per delivered kWh and a heat pump at a seasonal COP of 2.5 costs about 6.4 cents, so gas is cheaper to run. At a COP of 3.2 the gap narrows to under half a cent. Against propane, oil or baseboard, the heat pump is far cheaper.
What is a good seasonal COP in Ontario?
For a cold-climate air-source heat pump in southern Ontario, 2.2 to 3.0 over a whole heating season, depending on the unit, the house and how much the backup runs. A tight house with a correctly sized variable-speed unit sits at the top of that range.
Does dual fuel save money?
On natural gas it usually does, because the controls let the heat pump run in mild weather when it is cheapest and switch to the furnace when the outdoor temperature drops below the economic balance point, usually somewhere between minus 5 and minus 15 at recent rates. Dual fuel explained.
Should I disconnect the gas if I get a heat pump?
Only if nothing else in the house burns gas. The monthly customer charge, about $28, is paid whether you burn a cubic metre or not, so a house that keeps a gas stove keeps paying it. Taking the meter out saves about $336 a year.
How accurate is the house-size estimate?
Rough. It uses planning numbers for delivered heat per square foot by age of house, scaled for the region. A year of fuel bills is much better, and a CSA F280 heat loss is better again; it is the number every piece of equipment should be sized from. Why you need one.
Got quotes already?
The $99 HVAC quote review puts up to three heat pump or furnace quotes on one grid: the model numbers checked against the cold-climate list, the capacity at your design temperature, what each one left out, and the questions to ask before you sign. If you are still choosing a system, the system comparison calculator prices five whole-house setups side by side.
