There is no single Smart Export Guarantee rate. Suppliers set their own, and in July 2026 the published rates run from 3p per kWh at the bottom to 18p per kWh at the top. Ofgem's only rule is that a SEG tariff must be above zero. Everything else, the rate, the contract length, the eligibility conditions, is down to the supplier you sign with.
That matters more than most solar quotes admit. On a 4.5kWp system exporting around 2,000 kWh a year, the difference between a 3p tariff and a 15p tariff is roughly £240 a year, every year, for the life of the panels. This page compares what the main suppliers are actually paying right now, and explains the conditions that separate the headline rates from the ones most people can get.
Export income only starts once the panels are on the roof and the install is MCS-certified. Get quotes from MCS-certified installers covering your area, then pick your SEG tariff.
Get My Free Quotes →What is the Smart Export Guarantee?
The Smart Export Guarantee is a government-backed scheme that obliges larger electricity suppliers to pay you for the renewable electricity you send back to the grid. It launched on 1 January 2020 and is administered by Ofgem.
Suppliers that have to offer a SEG tariff are called mandatory SEG Licensees. The threshold is 150,000 domestic electricity customers as at 31 December of the previous year, so the big names (Octopus, British Gas, E.ON Next, EDF, OVO, ScottishPower) are all in. Smaller suppliers can offer a tariff voluntarily, and some do.
Ofgem is clear about who decides the rate: "SEG Licensees determine the rate, contract length and other terms which SEG Generators will receive. SEG tariff rates must always be above zero." That single sentence is the whole reason a comparison page like this one needs to exist. Source: Ofgem, Smart Export Guarantee.
Current SEG rates compared (July 2026)
The best widely available rates sit between 12p and 18p per kWh, and every one of them requires you to be a customer of that supplier for something else. The rates below were taken from the suppliers' own live tariff pages on 13 July 2026. Export rates change often, so check the supplier's page before you sign.
| Supplier and tariff | Rate | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| EDF, Export Exclusive 12m V3 | 18p | You have to buy the solar panels or battery from EDF (enquiry and purchase after 2 March 2026) |
| E.ON Next, Next Export Premium v3 | 17.5p | Solar or battery installed by E.ON's own installation arm from 10 November 2025, system up to 15kW |
| Octopus, Prime Outgoing | 16p (4pm to 7pm), 9p rest of day | Only pays off if you have a battery and can shift export into the evening peak |
| EDF, Export 12m | 15p | Existing EDF residential electricity customers only, 1-year fixed |
| E.ON Next, Next Export Exclusive v3 | 13p | E.ON Next import customer, not on a time-of-use tariff, system up to 15kW |
| Octopus, Outgoing Octopus | 12p flat | You need to be an Octopus customer. Variable, so the rate can move |
| British Gas, Export Premium | 12p | British Gas supplies your electricity, system up to 15kW. Variable rate |
| E.ON Next, Next Flex Export v1 | 6p | Open to anyone, no import-tariff condition. Variable rate |
| EDF, SEG Export Variable Value | 5.6p | EDF electricity customers, variable |
| EDF SEG Export Variable / British Gas Export SEG | 3p | What you get if you are not that supplier's electricity customer |
Rates verified 13 July 2026 from Octopus Energy, E.ON Next, EDF and British Gas. Ofgem publishes the full list of SEG licensees, which is worth checking if your supplier is not one of the big names.
Octopus also runs Agile Outgoing, which tracks half-hourly day-ahead wholesale prices rather than paying a fixed number. It can beat every rate in the table on the right day and fall below them on the wrong one. It suits people with a battery and an appetite for watching prices, and almost nobody else.
Why the top rates are not really the top rates
Look down the "catch" column and the pattern is obvious: the 15p to 18p rates are sales incentives, not export tariffs. EDF pays 18p if you buy the kit from EDF. E.ON Next pays 17.5p if E.ON installed the system. Both are loss leaders wrapped around a solar sale, and the price of the installation is where that generosity gets recovered.
Before you take an 18p export rate as a reason to buy from a particular supplier, do the arithmetic. On 2,000 kWh of annual export, moving from a 12p tariff to an 18p tariff is worth about £120 a year. If the supplier's installation quote is £1,500 more than an independent MCS-certified installer's, that premium takes more than twelve years of extra export income to repay, and the export rate is only fixed for one year.
The honest way round this is to get your installation quotes and your export tariff decision separately. Compare installers on the install price, then compare SEG tariffs on the rate you can actually qualify for. Our guide to solar panel costs in the UK covers what a fair install price looks like at each system size.
How much will SEG actually pay you?
For a typical 4.5kWp system on a 12p tariff, expect somewhere around £200 to £250 a year, and treat any quote promising much more with suspicion. Here is the arithmetic behind that.
A well-oriented UK roof generates roughly 800 to 950 kWh per kWp per year, based on the MCS MIS 3002 calculation method (south coast at the top of that range, northern Scotland at the bottom). A 4.5kWp system, which the Energy Saving Trust puts at around £6,100 installed, therefore generates something like 3,600 to 4,300 kWh a year.
You will not export all of it. Whatever your house uses at the moment the panels are producing gets used first, and that is the electricity that saves you the most, because you avoid paying the import rate on it. Export is what is left over. Without a battery, a household that is out all day exports a large share of a summer afternoon's output. A household with someone home, a heat pump, or an EV on charge exports far less.
Worked example: 4,000 kWh generated, half of it exported (2,000 kWh), at 12p per kWh gives £240 a year. On a 3p tariff the same export earns £60. On EDF's 18p install-with-us tariff it earns £360. Your own split between self-use and export is the number that moves this most, which is why self-consumption, not the export rate, is the main lever on payback.
EST uses "around 12p for every unit that you don't use yourself" as its SEG anchor, and puts solar payback at roughly 9 to 12 years across the UK with export income included. That 12p is a sensible number to sanity-check an installer's projection against.
What you need to qualify for SEG
Three things: an eligible installation, an MCS certificate (or Flexi-Orb), and a smart meter that records export every half hour.
An eligible system in Great Britain. Solar PV, wind, hydro, anaerobic digestion, or micro-CHP, up to 5MW (50kW for micro-CHP). Ofgem's scheme covers England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is not in the SEG, so if your home is in NI you need to ask NIE Networks and your supplier what export arrangement is available to you.
MCS certification. MCS is not a legal licence to install solar, but suppliers ask for the MCS certificate when you apply for a SEG tariff, and without it your application stops there. Flexi-Orb certification is accepted by some suppliers, including E.ON Next and British Gas. This is the single strongest practical reason to use an MCS-certified installer even though nothing in law forces you to.
A smart meter reading export half-hourly. Most SMETS2 meters and many SMETS1 meters do this. Your installer also has to notify the network operator under G98 or G99, and suppliers will ask for that DNO paperwork as part of the application.
One quirk worth knowing: your SEG supplier does not have to be the company that supplies your electricity. You can import from one and export with another. The catch, as the table shows, is that the good rates are usually reserved for the supplier's own import customers, so splitting them often costs you money.
SEG is not the Feed-in Tariff
The Feed-in Tariff closed to new applicants from 1 April 2019, and it is not coming back. Ofgem's FiT page states it plainly. If you are reading an article that talks about generation payments as well as export payments, it is out of date or it is about somebody's legacy FiT contract.
The difference in practice: FiT paid you for every unit you generated, whether you used it or exported it, and it was index-linked for 20 to 25 years. SEG pays only for units you export, at a rate your supplier can change, usually on a one-year contract. It is a smaller and less certain benefit, which is why the economics of solar in 2026 lean so much harder on avoiding import costs than on export income.
Existing FiT generators can keep their contract. Some suppliers let you keep FiT generation payments while opting out of FiT export and taking a SEG export tariff instead, and if your FiT export is being deemed rather than metered while you actually export more than the deemed amount, the switch can pay. Ofgem's FiT guidance says a generator can change the decision to opt in or out of FiT export payments only once every 12 months, so this is not a switch you can reverse on a whim, and suppliers including EDF state that once you move to metered export you will not go back to deemed payments. Ask your FiT licensee what your specific contract allows before you opt out of anything.
Are SEG payments taxable?
For most households, no. HMRC exempts income from the sale of electricity generated by a microgeneration system at your home where you do not intend to generate significantly more than the property consumes. E.ON Next's published guidance summarises HMRC's position as a householder who does not intend to generate more than 20% in excess of their own domestic needs being unlikely to be treated as "significantly exceeding" it.
Businesses are different. SEG payments count as trading income for a business, and a VAT-registered business will have VAT added to its export payments. If you are exporting at commercial scale or you are not sure which side of the line you fall on, take your own tax advice rather than a solar installer's word for it.
How to pick the right SEG tariff
Start from what your system can actually do, not from the biggest number on the page.
No battery, panels only. A flat rate is the right answer. Your export happens in the middle of the day, which is exactly when a peak-shaped tariff pays you least. Octopus Outgoing at 12p or British Gas Export Premium at 12p are the reference points to beat, and both want your import business.
Panels plus a battery. Now a peak-shaped tariff is worth modelling. Octopus Prime pays 16p between 4pm and 7pm and 9p the rest of the day, so it wins if you can hold your export back and dump it into that three-hour window, and loses if you cannot. Sunny midday export at 9p is worse than 12p flat.
You are still choosing an installer. Do not let the export rate pick your installer. Get independent quotes, check MCS certification, then choose the tariff. Our guide on what solar panels cost in the UK sets out what a competitive install price looks like before any export incentive is folded in.
Check the rate again in a year. Most of these tariffs are 12-month fixed or variable. E.ON dropped one of its export rates from 16.5p to 6p, which tells you how quickly a good deal can stop being one. Diary a review for the month before your term ends.