How much does a heat pump cost in the UK?

An air source heat pump costs a median £12,826 installed in England and Wales (for grants paid July to September 2026), before the grant. Here is what moves the price, what the quote should include and which grants apply in each nation.

By the Heat Pump Report editorial team · Last updated: 30 October 2026 · Sources checked: 29 October 2026 · Reading time: 16 min

An air source heat pump costs a median £12,826 installed in England and Wales before any grant, going by the jobs whose grants were paid in July to September 2026. That is the middle of the prices MCS installers reported under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, VAT included; half the jobs cost between £10,717 and £15,461. In England and Wales, if your home qualifies, the installer takes the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant off the price, which leaves £5,326 at the median and, in our example home, about £1,826 more than a new gas boiler.

At a glance

Price. £12,826 median for an air source heat pump fitted in England and Wales, middle half £10,717–£15,461 (before the grant; grants paid July to September 2026).
Grant. £7,500 off the price in England and Wales if your home qualifies, or £9,000 in an off-gas-grid home replacing oil or LPG (applications properly made 21 July 2026 to 31 March 2027). Scotland and Northern Ireland differ.
VAT. 0% on a heat pump supplied and installed in your home until 31 March 2027, then 5%.
First step. In England and Wales your installer applies and the voucher should be issued before work starts; in Scotland you apply to Home Energy Scotland and wait for its written offer before any work.

What an air source heat pump costs installed

The prices on this page come from the government's Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics: the cost an MCS installer recorded on the MCS certificate for each finished job in England or Wales, covering the system, labour and VAT. The figure is meant to include the value of the grant, so read it as the price before the grant comes off. Before the figures are worked out, the statistics set aside the highest and lowest 10% of reported costs. These are reference points from real installations, not a quote for your home.

Measure	Air source, grants paid July–September 2026
Lower quartile	£10,717
Median	£12,826
Upper quartile	£15,461
Median size	8 kW

The median is the middle value: half the jobs cost less, half more. The quartiles mark out the middle half: a quarter of jobs cost less than £10,717 and a quarter more than £15,461. A quote well outside that band deserves a question about what is, or isn't, included.

Bigger heat pumps cost more, but not in proportion to their output: the price covers the whole job, not only the unit. Median prices by size, April 2025 to March 2026:

Heat pump size	Median price	Jobs
4–6 kW	£11,494	4,204
6–8 kW	£12,164	8,030
8–10 kW	£12,688	8,505
10–12 kW	£13,948	3,978
12–14 kW	£15,366	2,824
14–16 kW	£15,498	1,236

Median installed price, before the grant

£12,164£12,688£13,948£15,366£15,498£11,494

Heat pump size	Median price
4–6 kW	£11,494
6–8 kW	£12,164
8–10 kW	£12,688
10–12 kW	£13,948
12–14 kW	£15,366
14–16 kW	£15,498

Median installed price of air source heat pumps by size, Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics for England and Wales, April 2025 to March 2026, VAT included, before the grant.

A 14–16 kW unit cost a median £4,004 more than a 4–6 kW one, for roughly three times the output. So an undersized heat pump saves little, and an oversized one adds cost for no benefit. The right size comes from a room-by-room heat-loss survey. Under the MCS design standard MIS 3005-D, the installer works out each room's heat loss to BS EN 12831-1 and chooses a heat pump that covers all of it without the back-up electric heater.

Cost by house size

Floor area doesn't set the price on its own; heat loss does, and two houses of the same size can need quite different heat pumps. For a first estimate before a survey, MCS has a quick method that turns an Energy Performance Certificate into an indicative size. MCS's own worked example is a 145 m² house in rural Wales (postcode area CF) that uses 15,500 kWh a year for space heating. Spread over that area's 1,835 degree days, that is 352 W of heat loss for every degree between inside and outside; with 21 °C indoors and a design outdoor temperature of −3.1 °C (a 24.1 °C gap), 352 × 24.1 = 8,483 W, or 59 W per m². Call it an 8.5 kW heat pump, which falls in the 8–10 kW band above, with a median of £12,688.

MCS calls 0–30 W per m² very low heat loss and 120–150 W per m² very high. A larger detached house that needs 10–12 kW sits at a median of £13,948; a smaller, well-insulated home that needs 4–6 kW at £11,494. The survey decides the size. Whether your home suits a heat pump at all is covered in is my home suitable for a heat pump.

Ground source heat pump cost and other types

Air source heat pumps account for 94,545 of the 96,611 grants paid in England and Wales to the end of September 2026. Other types cost very differently:

Type	Median price	BUS grant	Notes
Air source (air-to-water)	£12,826	£7,500; £9,000 off-gas replacing oil or LPG, to 31 March 2027	grants paid July–September 2026; median size 8 kW
Ground source	£34,630	£7,500; £9,000 off-gas replacing oil or LPG, to 31 March 2027	grants paid July–September 2026; median size 15 kW
Air-to-air	no official median	£2,500	heats rooms by air; no radiators or hot water
Hybrid (with a boiler)	no official median	none	not eligible for the grant

A ground source job includes a ground loop in boreholes or trenches as well as the heat pump, and its prices spread widely: the middle half of jobs with grants paid in July to September 2026 ran from £22,348 to £53,345. The median rose from £27,232 for grants paid in April to June 2026, but that quarter's median system was 10.5 kW against 15 kW, and only 1,603 ground-source grants have been paid in total, so one quarter's jump is not a price trend. What a ground loop involves is in ground source heat pumps.

Air-to-air heat pumps have been eligible for a £2,500 grant since 28 April 2026, but the statistics give no air-to-air prices.

What the price includes

The median is a whole-job price that the statistics don't split into parts. For the Boiler Upgrade Scheme in England and Wales, Ofgem's guidance requires an itemised quote showing the total before the grant, the grant and what you pay after it. Beyond those three lines, ask for each part of the job to be priced separately:

Heat pump. Outdoor unit and indoor unit or controls, with make, model and size in kW.
Hot water. A cylinder, if you have a combi boiler now.
Pipework and radiators. Any radiators the heat-loss survey says must be bigger.
Electrics. The heat pump's circuit and any consumer unit change.
Base. The base or brackets for the outdoor unit and the condensate drain.
The old system. Removing the old boiler and dealing with the gas supply. For the Boiler Upgrade Scheme the old gas, oil or LPG heating has to be fully replaced, not kept as a backup; if you cook on gas, ask your installer whether the gas supply can stay.
Handover. Commissioning, the MCS certificate and your documents.

Cutaway of a two-storey house with an outdoor heat pump unit, an indoor unit beside a hot-water cylinder, underfloor heating downstairs and radiators upstairs — The whole system a quote should price: the outdoor unit, the indoor unit and cylinder, and the pipes to the radiators or underfloor heating.

Check a cheap-looking quote line by line: work it leaves out still has to be paid for if it turns out to be needed. How the job runs from survey to switch-on is in heat pump installation.

Extra costs in older and combi homes

What an older house adds depends on what is already there:

A hot-water cylinder. A heat pump heats your hot water into a stored cylinder, so a combi home needs space for one. In England, fitting an unvented cylinder is notifiable building work: building control must be told before work starts, unless the installer is registered with a competent person scheme for unvented systems and self-certifies it.
Radiators. In England, when a whole wet heating system is replaced (the heat source, the radiators and the pipework), Building Regulations guidance says the new system should be designed to run at a flow temperature of 55 °C or lower. Radiators sized for a hotter boiler may need to be larger in some rooms; the survey shows which.
Electrical work. Ask for the heat pump's electrical supply to be priced, and whether your consumer unit needs changing.
The gas supply. Ask the quote to say what happens to the gas supply and who pays for any work on it, and, if you want to keep a gas hob, raise it with your installer before you sign.

Two cutaway rooms side by side: on the left a wall-hung gas boiler with its flue and gas meter, on the right a hot-water cylinder, an indoor control unit and an outdoor heat pump unit — Replacing a wall-hung combi boiler: the heat pump adds an outdoor unit and a hot-water cylinder, so the quote has to cover space and pipework the boiler never needed.

What you pay after the grant

What is left depends on where you live:

Nation	Support	At the median
England and Wales	Boiler Upgrade Scheme: £7,500; £9,000 for off-gas-grid homes replacing oil or LPG (applications properly made 21 July 2026 to 31 March 2027)	£5,326, or £3,826 off-gas
Scotland	Home Energy Scotland: grant up to £7,500, plus £1,500 for eligible remote rural, island and off-gas rural homes, and an optional interest-free loan up to £7,500	set by your written offer
Northern Ireland	No Boiler Upgrade Scheme and no grant open to all homeowners; some lower-income owner-occupiers can get a fully funded heat pump through NISEP schemes	depends on the scheme

In England and Wales your installer applies to Ofgem, Ofgem decides, and the installer takes the grant off your bill: you never receive the money yourself. Who may qualify is in heat pump grants, and the Scottish grant and loan in Home Energy Scotland grants and loans.

Get the voucher before the work starts

Ofgem emails you to confirm consent once your installer applies, and you need to reply within 14 days. Ofgem can accept an application made up to 120 days after the heat pump is commissioned, but it warns this carries extra risk and no guarantee of payment. Agree a start date once the voucher is issued. In Scotland, don't start any work until Home Energy Scotland's written offer arrives: it won't fund work already done.

Every heat pump price here already reflects VAT at 0%: a heat pump supplied and installed in your home is zero-rated until 31 March 2027, then 5%. If the price before VAT stayed the same, the £12,826 median would become £13,467. A heat pump bought without installation is standard-rated.

Our example home: price, grant and boiler compared

Our example home is a 1970s semi-detached house in England with 97 m² of floor space (the average for a semi in the English Housing Survey), radiators and a working gas combi boiler due for replacement. It uses 9,500 kWh of gas a year, Ofgem's typical medium use, and we assume the boiler turns 85% of that into heat. It is an illustration, not a forecast for your home, and the median is for a typical 8 kW job, not a survey of this house.

Step	Calculation	Result
Installed price	median, grants paid July–September 2026	£12,826
Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant	deducted by the installer if the home qualifies	−£7,500
You pay for the heat pump	£12,826 − £7,500	£5,326
New gas boiler instead	government estimate, VAT included	about £3,500
Extra upfront for the heat pump	£5,326 − £3,500	£1,826

Upfront cost for our example home

Option	Heat pump	Gas boiler
Heat pump before the grant	£12,826
Heat pump after the £7,500 grant	£5,326
New gas boiler		£3,500

Our example home in England: median installed heat pump price for grants paid in July to September 2026, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant, and the government's estimate for a new gas boiler.

The median doesn't record whether a job included a cylinder, so make sure a quote for a combi home like this one does. We use a SCOP of 2.8, close to the 2.78 median measured across 428 air source heat pumps in the government-funded Electrification of Heat trial; SCOP, the heat delivered for each unit of electricity over a year, is explained in heat pump efficiency. Running costs decide whether the £1,826 comes back, and against a new boiler the margin is thin at these prices:

Heat needed: 9,500 kWh of gas × 85% = 8,075 kWh a year.
Heat pump: 8,075 kWh ÷ SCOP 2.5 / 2.8 / 3.1 = 3,230 / 2,884 / 2,605 kWh × 26.32p = £850 / £759 / £686 a year.
New gas boiler: at 93%, the MCS figure for a new boiler, 8,075 ÷ 0.93 = 8,683 kWh × 7.97p = £692 a year, so the break-even SCOP is 0.93 × 26.32 ÷ 7.97 = 3.07 if you keep the gas supply. Disconnecting it also saves the £108 a year gas standing charge and lowers the break-even to 2.66.

Rates are the Ofgem price cap, GB average, direct debit, 1 October to 31 December 2026; the electricity standing charge is left out. With flat prices, the gas disconnected and a new boiler at 93%, the £1,826 would take about 44 years to come back at SCOP 2.8 and about 16 years at SCOP 3.1; at SCOP 2.5, or with the gas kept, there is no meaningful payback at these prices. In Great Britain electricity carries no VAT until 31 March 2027 and gas 5%; the result also depends on the house, the installation and the tariff. The full arithmetic is in heat pump running costs, and the wider comparison in heat pump vs gas boiler.

Heat pump against a new gas boiler

20 years, constant prices

our central case

Where the heat pump stands each year

Below the line: the extra cost still to earn back. Above it: the lead over the boiler.

Still to earn back
Ahead of the boiler

The sums

Example home, 8,075 kWh of heat a year, SCOP 2.8

Extra cost back: not within 20 years
Saving a year: £41
Extra cost after the grant: £1,826

Heat pump installedafter the £7,500 grant: £5,326
New gas boiler installed: £3,500
Heat pump a year2,884 kWh of electricity: £759
Gas boiler a yearwith the gas standing charge: £800
After 20 yearsheat pump against the boiler: -£1,006

Example semi-detached house from the 1970s (our assumption), 97 m², 9,500 kWh of gas a year, 8,075 kWh of it useful heat at 85% efficiency for the old boiler (our assumption); a new gas boiler at 93% would burn 8,683 kWh. Installed prices (heat pump: median Boiler Upgrade Scheme installation, July to September 2026, before the grant; gas boiler: DESNZ estimate): air source heat pump £12,826, gas boiler £3,500. Boiler Upgrade Scheme: £7,500 off the heat pump installer’s invoice. The scheme covers England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own support. Gas includes its standing charge, which ends with the gas supply; the electricity standing charge is paid either way. Constant prices over 20 years, without servicing.

Heat pump against a new gas boiler in the example house over 20 years: price after the grant plus energy costs, at constant prices.

Grant £7,500, extra cost £1,826. Gas costs £800 a year, electricity for the heat pump £759: £41 saved. The extra cost does not come back within 20 years. After 20 years: gas boiler £19,500, heat pump £20,506.

What drives the price and how to keep it down

The middle half of air source jobs spans £4,744. Some of that comes with the house; these points are in your hands:

Size matched to heat loss. Ask for the room-by-room result and the kW it leads to.
The same scope. Compare totals only when quotes cover the same items.
Grant and VAT dates. In England and Wales the £9,000 grant for off-gas-grid homes replacing oil or LPG covers applications properly made by 31 March 2027, and 0% VAT on installed heat pumps also ends on 31 March 2027. At 5% VAT from 1 April 2027 the median would be £641 higher if the price before VAT stayed the same.
Deposits. For the Boiler Upgrade Scheme your installer must be MCS-certified and belong to an approved consumer code such as RECC or HIES; ask which, and what is due when. RECC members may take at most 25% as a deposit.

None of these dates is a legal deadline: there is no ban on keeping or repairing a gas boiler in an existing home.

Checklist: the price lines your quote should show

Before you sign

The total before the grant, the grant itself and what you pay after it, as three separate lines.
Each part of the job priced separately, as in the list above, so two quotes cover the same scope.
The make, model and size in kW, matched to the room-by-room heat-loss result.
VAT shown at 0% on the supply and installation, which applies until 31 March 2027 (5% from 1 April 2027).
The deposit, any stage payments and the consumer code that protects them.
For the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, the voucher issued before work starts; in Scotland, Home Energy Scotland's written offer.

How to set two quotes side by side and which warning signs to look for is in choosing an MCS installer.

Figures that change

What	Value	Applies
Air source heat pump, installed	median £12,826; lower to upper quartile £10,717–£15,461	grants paid July–September 2026, England and Wales, before the grant
Air source median by size	£11,494 (4–6 kW) to £15,498 (14–16 kW)	April 2025 to March 2026, England and Wales, before the grant
Ground source heat pump, installed	median £34,630; lower to upper quartile £22,348–£53,345	grants paid July–September 2026, England and Wales, before the grant
New gas boiler, government estimate	about £3,500, VAT included	DESNZ, Boiler Upgrade Scheme business case 2026
Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant	£7,500 air source or ground source; £2,500 air-to-air	England and Wales; air-to-air from 28 April 2026
Off-gas grant	£9,000	England and Wales; oil or LPG homes off the gas grid, applications properly made 21 July 2026 to 31 March 2027
Home Energy Scotland	grant up to £7,500 (+£1,500 eligible rural and island homes), interest-free loan up to £7,500	Scotland, 2026/27, budget-limited
VAT on installed heat pumps	0%, then 5%	0% until 31 March 2027
Electricity unit rate	26.32p/kWh	price cap, GB average, direct debit, 1 October to 31 December 2026, no VAT in Great Britain
Gas unit rate	7.97p/kWh	same period, 5% VAT included

How we worked this out

Our example home (1970s gas semi, 97 m², 9,500 kWh of gas, 85% for the existing boiler as our assumption, 93% for a new one per MCS) uses the median for grants paid July–September 2026 and the government's boiler estimate (VAT included); paybacks assume flat prices; heat pump prices carry 0% VAT until 31 March 2027, come before the grant, and leave out servicing, finance and gas disconnection. More in our editorial method.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to install or fit a heat pump in the UK?

Installation isn't priced separately in the statistics: the £12,826 median for grants paid in July to September 2026 in England and Wales is for the finished job, with the system, labour and VAT inside it. The most common size band in 2025/26, 8–10 kW with 8,505 jobs, had a median of £12,688, and the bands ran from £11,494 (4–6 kW) to £15,498 (14–16 kW).

What does a heat pump cost after the £7,500 grant in England and Wales?

At the median, £12,826 − £7,500 = £5,326 in England and Wales if your home qualifies. For an off-gas-grid home in England and Wales replacing oil or LPG, the £9,000 grant for applications properly made by 31 March 2027 leaves £3,826. If your home qualifies, the installer takes the grant off your invoice; you don't receive it as money. Scotland and Northern Ireland run different schemes.

How much does a ground source heat pump cost in the UK?

A median £34,630 before the grant in England and Wales, for grants paid in July to September 2026, with the middle half of jobs between £22,348 and £53,345. On top of the heat pump, the job includes a ground loop in boreholes or trenches. The grant is the same £7,500 in England and Wales if your home qualifies.

Why do heat pump quotes vary so much?

Houses differ in heat loss, radiators and space for a cylinder, quotes differ in what they include, and installers price differently. A low total can leave out a cylinder, radiators or electrical work that you will pay for later. Compare quotes item by item before comparing totals.

Are heat pumps getting cheaper?

In cash terms the median barely moved: £12,860 for grants paid in July to September 2022 and £12,826 for those paid in July to September 2026. After inflation, the government's statistics put the 2026 median 14% below 2022, though the mix of heat pump sizes has also shifted towards smaller units.

Can I buy a heat pump and fit it myself?

You can buy one, but a heat pump supplied without installation is standard-rated for VAT, while 0% VAT applies only to supply and installation together until 31 March 2027. Both the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and Home Energy Scotland require an MCS-certified installer. Connecting it to your heating, hot water and electrics is work for qualified installers, and in England an unvented cylinder is notifiable building work.