Cheapest way to heat a home in New England

How the ranking is calculated

A gallon of oil, a gallon of propane, a therm of gas and a kilowatt-hour of electricity all hold different amounts of energy, and the equipment that burns or uses them wastes different amounts of it. So the price on the bill can't be compared directly. Each price is converted in two steps.

Step 1: price per million BTU of fuel

The price is divided by how much heat energy the unit contains. A BTU (British thermal unit) is the heat needed to warm one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit; a million BTU is roughly what a New England house burns on a cold January day.

price per million BTU of fuel = price per unit ÷ BTU per unit × 1,000,000

These are the standard heat contents published in federal energy statistics. A cord is a stack of split wood 4 feet high, 4 feet deep and 8 feet long; the figure is for air-dried hardwood, and green or soft wood holds less. Natural gas prices are published per thousand cubic feet; they are converted to therms at 1,036 BTU per cubic foot (10.36 therms per thousand cubic feet).

Step 2: price per million BTU of heat in the house

No heating system turns all of its fuel into warmth in the rooms. The cost of fuel is divided by the share that ends up as useful heat.

price per million BTU of heat = price per million BTU of fuel ÷ system efficiency

The ranking sorts the fuels by that final figure, lowest first. The season cost is the same figure multiplied by 75 million BTU, about what a typical New England single-family home needs for a winter of space heating (roughly 640 gallons of oil in an 85% boiler). You can change every one of these assumptions in Match it to your house.

A worked example

Heating oil in Connecticut at the posted dealer average of $5.099 a gallon: $5.099 ÷ 138,500 × 1,000,000 = $36.82 per million BTU of fuel. In an 85% efficient boiler, $36.82 ÷ 0.85 = $43.31 per million BTU of heat. Over a 75 million BTU season that is about $3,248.

Which prices are used

• Heating oil, posted dealer average. The mean of the prices local delivery dealers post publicly, read every morning. This is the same figure shown on the dashboard. Vermont has no dealer listings, so it has only the survey figure.
• Heating oil, state survey average. The statewide residential average from the weekly government price survey, collected October through March. It includes full-service dealers and runs higher than the posted cash prices.
• Propane. The statewide residential average from the same weekly government survey, October through March.
• Natural gas. Monthly statewide residential prices from federal energy statistics, published about two to three months after the month they cover. Summer figures are inflated by fixed monthly charges spread over very little gas, so the ranking uses the median of the five most recent winter months (November through March) that have been published.
• Firewood. No agency publishes a regular firewood price for every New England state, so wood is the one fuel here that is not updated automatically. All six states use a single New England reference price, currently $385 a cord (Nov 2026), for seasoned mixed hardwood, cut, split and delivered. It is set from occasional state energy office surveys and the prices firewood dealers post, and is reviewed from time to time. Firewood prices vary a great deal by town, by how dry the wood is and by the time of year, and green wood bought in spring costs much less.
• Electricity. The latest monthly statewide average residential price from federal energy statistics, also published about two to three months behind. It is the all-in average: supply, delivery and fixed charges divided by kilowatt-hours sold.

Each row of the ranking shows the date or month its price is from. Oil and propane move week to week; gas and electricity rates change a few times a year, so their older dates matter less. Outside the October to March survey season the oil survey and propane rows keep their last surveyed price and say so.

What this does not include

• Your own rate. These are statewide averages. Your oil or propane dealer, your gas utility and your electric supplier may charge more or less, and electric rates differ between utilities within a state.
• Whether the fuel is available. Natural gas is only an option where there is a gas main in the street. Each state's summary also names the cheapest choice without it.
• Equipment and installation. Switching fuels means a new boiler, furnace or heat pump. This page compares running costs only, not the cost of converting or any rebates.
• Fixed charges you would pay anyway. The average electricity and gas prices include monthly customer charges. If you already have the service, adding heating load costs somewhat less per unit than the average.
• The work of burning wood. The firewood figure is the cost of the wood only. It does not count stacking, loading the boiler, cleaning it, or the cheaper wood you may cut yourself.
• Other fuels. Kerosene and wood pellets are not ranked because there is no regular published price for them in every state.
• Hot water, distribution losses and thermostat habits. Duct and pipe losses, a house's insulation and how warm you keep it change how much heat you need, not the order of the fuels.

Nothing here is a recommendation to buy a particular fuel or system. Get quotes for your own house before deciding. More on where the site's numbers come from is on the About page.