Heating Fuel Cost per MMBtu Compared

On the EIA’s winter 2026-27 average prices, the fuel itself costs about $12.97 per million Btu (MMBtu) for natural gas, $27.56 for propane, $37.98 for heating oil and $53.43 for resistance electricity. Once equipment losses are counted, a gas furnace delivers heat for about $13.66 to $16.22, an oil furnace at the federal minimum for about $45.76, and an electric heat pump for somewhere between $17.81 (a seasonal coefficient of performance, COP, of 3.0, the best case) and $24.31 (a COP of 2.2, the federal minimum rating).

A price per gallon cannot settle a decision between oil, a heat pump and propane, because a gallon of oil, a gallon of propane, a thousand cubic feet of gas and a kilowatthour hold different amounts of heat. What settles it is the price at which the ranking flips for a given pair of appliances, and those break-even prices are worked out below, beside a regional table, with every efficiency stated so a reader can swap in their own. The per-fuel background is in this site’s explainers for heating oil, propane and the natural gas bill.

The prices, and the conversion that puts them on one scale

The inputs come from the EIA’s Winter Fuels Outlook 2026-27, released October 6, 2026 and checked October 23, 2026. It gives a season-average residential price for each of the four common heating fuels, covering November through March, in nominal dollars. The conversion factors are the EIA’s published Btu equivalents for each fuel. The only arithmetic is division: price per unit divided by MMBtu per unit.

Two points about Table 1 before moving on. First, the price column is a forecast average for the heating season, not today’s quote. The EIA’s weekly retail survey, which runs from October through March, showed U.S. residential heating oil at $6.19 a gallon and propane at $2.689 for the week of October 19, 2026. At those weekly prices, oil is $44.69 per MMBtu and propane $29.40. The season-average oil price in Table 1 is below the October 19 quote because the EIA’s monthly path has heating oil starting the winter at $5.79 in November and easing to $4.84 by March. Use whichever basis matches the question you are asking, and do not mix the two in one comparison. The gap is large enough to matter: the week of October 19 puts oil $6.71 per MMBtu above the season average, a 17.7 percent difference, while propane is $1.85 above, 6.7 percent. Oil moves about two and a half times as much as propane between the two bases, which is why the oil-versus-propane break-even later on this page is the one most sensitive to the date.

Second, the factors are rounded national values. Natural gas heat content varies by supplier and month, and the EIA gave a 2025 national average of about 1,037 Btu per cubic foot in a separate FAQ, one Btu away from the 1,036 used here. A 0.1 percent difference does not move any ranking on this page, but your gas bill may state its own factor, and the gas units guide shows how to use it.

Fuel price is not heat cost: efficiency comes next

Table 1 prices the fuel at the tank or meter. What a household buys is warm rooms, and every system loses some of the fuel on the way. Combustion equipment is rated by Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE), the ratio of annual heat output to annual fuel energy consumed. A heat pump is rated by seasonal performance. Electric resistance heaters turn essentially all of their electricity into heat, so their efficiency is 1.0 and nothing more is gained by dividing.

The federal floors for new equipment, from 10 CFR 430.32 as published on eCFR and checked October 22, 2026, are 83.0 percent AFUE for a non-weatherized oil-fired furnace, 80.0 percent for a non-weatherized gas furnace (the current standard, before the December 18, 2028 date in the same section), 86 percent for an oil-fired hot-water boiler made on or after January 15, 2021, and 84 percent for a gas-fired hot-water boiler made on or after the same date. These are legal minimums for new units, not what is installed in the average house. Older furnaces can sit below them and condensing models sit well above, so treat the efficiencies in this page as stated inputs and replace them with the number on your own equipment label.

For heat pumps, the same section of the regulation sets a minimum of 7.5 HSPF2 for split-system units made on or after January 1, 2023. HSPF2 is seasonal heat output in Btu divided by electricity input in watthours. Dividing 7.5 by 3.412 Btu per watthour gives a seasonal COP of 2.20. That conversion is this page’s arithmetic, not a figure published by the agency, and it ignores differences in how the test conditions are set. At the other end, ENERGY STAR states that a properly installed air source heat pump can deliver up to three times more heat energy than the electrical energy it consumes, and that cold-climate models are tested down to 5 degrees Fahrenheit. A COP of 3.0 is therefore the upper bound used here.

Read down the right-hand column. Natural gas is the least expensive combustion fuel at either efficiency, with the 80 percent furnace at $16.22 and the 95 percent unit at $13.66. Propane sits in the high twenties to mid thirties. Oil, at the federal floors, lands between $44.16 and $45.76. Straight resistance heating is the most expensive way to heat on these averages at $53.43. The heat pump rows are where the table gets interesting: at the floor COP the heat costs $24.31, which undercuts both oil and propane at the same averages, and at a COP of 3.0 it costs $17.81, which is within reach of a modest gas furnace.

Your region is not the national average

Table 2 mixes oil households in the Northeast with gas households everywhere. The EIA publishes regional prices for gas, propane and electricity, which lets the same arithmetic run for the region where nearly all heating oil is burned. Of the 4.134 million U.S. households that heat mainly with oil in 2026, 3.388 million, about 82 percent, are in the Northeast (EIA household table). The national oil price is therefore close to a Northeast price, and Table 3 uses it as one.

The Northeast ranking tells a different story from the national one. Electricity there averages 26.19 cents a kilowatthour, so resistance heat comes to $76.76 per MMBtu, but a heat pump at COP 3.0 delivers at $25.59, below a 95 percent propane furnace at $37.75 and well below an oil furnace at $45.76. Natural gas is still the cheapest in those figures, but it is not available on every street. In the places where it is, the difference between the gas price and the electricity price is what matters; where there is no gas main, the practical comparison is oil, propane and a heat pump.

The break-even prices that flip the ranking

A table of today’s averages goes stale. A break-even price keeps working because it says which input has to change, and by how much, for two systems to cost the same. Each of the following is arithmetic on the Table 2 inputs, not a prediction of where prices will go.

A heat pump beats oil at either COP long before it beats gas: against an 83 percent oil furnace the electricity price would have to reach 34.3 to 46.8 cents per kWh before the two cost the same, well above both the national 18.23 and the Northeast 26.19. Against a 95 percent gas furnace the room is narrow, which is why the gas row is where regional electricity and gas prices matter most.

• Heat pump versus a 95 percent gas furnace. At $13.44 per Mcf, delivered gas heat costs $13.66 per MMBtu. A heat pump at COP 3.0 matches it when electricity is 14.0 cents per kWh; at COP 2.2 it takes 10.2 cents. The winter average is 18.23 cents, so on these averages gas wins in both cases.
• Oil versus propane. With propane at $2.52 a gallon and a 95 percent furnace, an 83 percent oil furnace breaks even at an oil price of $3.33 a gallon. Run it the other way: with oil at $5.26 and an 83 percent furnace, a 95 percent propane furnace breaks even at a propane price of $3.98 a gallon, above both the $2.52 national average and the $3.28 Northeast average, so on these inputs oil only wins when propane is expensive.
• Efficiency as a price. Moving an oil system from 83 to 86 percent AFUE lowers the delivered cost by 3.5 percent, the same as a 3.5 percent cut in the oil price. Efficiency and price are interchangeable in this arithmetic, which is why a small fuel price move can change the ranking only when two systems were already close.

The EIA’s month-by-month path has heating oil falling 16 percent from November to March, while gas moves only 4 percent. The oil-to-gas multiple narrows from about 3.4 to 3.0, so a household that fills its tank in November pays a different relative price than one that fills in March, even on the EIA’s own forecast.

One house, eight ways to heat it

To put the gaps in dollars, hold the house constant. The EIA expects the average oil-heated household to use 402 gallons from November through March. At 138,500 Btu a gallon, that is 55.7 MMBtu of oil; at an 83 percent furnace, 46.2 MMBtu reaches the rooms. That number is a stand-in for a heat load, not a measurement of any particular home, and it includes the small share of oil used for other purposes. The table asks what it would cost to deliver the same heat with each system at the same winter prices.

The first row is a useful check on the method: 402 gallons at $5.26 is $2,115, the EIA’s own average expenditure for oil-heated homes. Every other row uses the same heat load and the same price source. A 95 percent gas furnace comes in around $631, a propane furnace near $1,340, and a heat pump between $823 and $1,123. Resistance heat is the outlier at $2,469.

Do not read the gas row as a savings estimate for a house that heats with oil today. The EIA’s own natural gas average, about $640 for 48 Mcf, describes homes that already use gas, which are on average different in size and climate. The gas row here prices the oil-heated house’s load at gas prices and stops there: no hookup, no new furnace, no customer charge. A gas main may not exist on the street, and equipment and connection costs belong in any real comparison. This page does not give installation costs because none were verified against a primary source today.

What a per-MMBtu table cannot see

Fixed charges and service

Natural gas and electric bills carry a monthly customer charge that does not change with usage. Delivered fuels often carry minimum-delivery or will-call premiums, and a propane tank may be leased with a fee. An oil burner needs an annual service visit. None of these is in the EIA’s per-unit prices, and in a small house they can move the ranking. If you heat a small apartment with 20 MMBtu of heat load, a fixed charge of a few dollars a month matters more than a 10 percent difference in fuel price.

Price lags and volatility

The fuels do not reprice on the same schedule. Wholesale changes in heating oil and propane reach the retail price within about four to six weeks, according to the text of the Winter Fuels Outlook, because those markets are not rate regulated. Natural gas and electricity retail prices follow wholesale prices with a lag set by utility regulation, a pattern the EIA documented in a 2023 Today in Energy article, and the purchased gas adjustment guide walks through one such true-up with real filings. The practical result is that a delivered fuel can look cheap in the shoulder season and expensive in January, while a regulated fuel changes more slowly and in steps.

Weather and the size of the load

A colder winter raises the number of MMBtu every system has to deliver. The EIA measures that with heating degree days, and its Northeast base case this winter is 4,331, 12 percent below last winter. A 10 percent swing in load moves every row of Table 4 by 10 percent, so it changes dollars but not the ranking. Weather affects the ranking only through prices, because cold spells can lift spot fuel prices when inventories are low.

Heat pump limits in cold weather

A seasonal COP is an average. On the coldest nights an air source heat pump works harder and may need backup heat, and the backup often runs at resistance rates. ENERGY STAR’s cold-climate designation requires third-party verified performance down to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is why the label matters in northern states. A house with an oversized oil boiler already feeding radiators also has a different retrofit path from a house with ducts. The efficiency numbers in Table 2 are the start of the decision, not the end.

Equipment prices, installation labor and incentives are real inputs that this page leaves out, because it checked no primary source for them. Put written quotes beside the annual fuel savings in Table 4 before deciding.

Data and sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Winter Fuels Outlook 2026-27, released October 6, 2026, checked October 23, 2026 (U.S. and Northeast season-average prices for natural gas $13.44 and $16.12 per Mcf, propane $2.52 and $3.28 per gallon, electricity 18.23 and 26.19 cents per kWh, heating oil $5.26 per gallon and 402 gallons; heating oil households 4.134 million, 3.388 million in the Northeast; Northeast heating degree days 4,331). EIA, Today in Energy, October 7, 2026, checked October 23, 2026 (heating oil expenditures up 21 percent, natural gas down 9 percent). EIA, British thermal units, checked October 23, 2026 (1,036 Btu per cubic foot of natural gas, 138,500 Btu per gallon of heating oil, 91,452 Btu per gallon of propane, 3,412 Btu per kWh, 100,000 Btu per therm). EIA, FAQ on natural gas heat content, checked October 23, 2026 (about 1,037 Btu per cubic foot, 2025). EIA, Heating Oil and Propane Update, week of October 19, 2026, checked October 23, 2026 ($6.190 and $2.689 per gallon). U.S. eCFR, 10 CFR 430.32, checked October 23, 2026 (minimum AFUE for oil furnaces, gas furnaces and oil and gas boilers, and 7.5 HSPF2 for split-system heat pumps). ENERGY STAR, air source heat pumps, checked October 23, 2026 (up to three times more heat energy than electrical energy consumed; cold climate units tested to 5 degrees Fahrenheit). Per-MMBtu costs, break-even prices, the COP derived from HSPF2 and the same-load table are this page’s arithmetic on those inputs.