You cannot switch, so nobody sells you a comparison. Here is what every company charges anyway.
Water £309 plus sewerage £330. In force from 1 April 2026.
Source: Water UK
Put in your annual water and sewerage bill. It is worked out in your browser and sent nowhere.
Compared against the England and Wales average. Your own company average is often the fairer test, and it is in the table below.
What you pay here depends on where you live. Put your postcode in and we will show your area's figure rather than the national one.
Below: what is changing, what you could be paying, and what you might be owed. The longer detail stays folded until you want it.
Routinely unclaimed. We do not administer any of these and take nothing for pointing at them.
Caps your bill at the company's average household bill. Average saving £325 a year. 260,800 households on it.
You need a meter, a means tested benefit, and either a medical condition requiring extra water or three or more children under 19 in full time education.
Discounts from roughly 20% to 99%, set by each company. 1.96 million customers, average reduction £190.
Income based. Thresholds vary by company, typically £17,000 to £30,000 household income. Severn Trent's Big Difference Scheme goes up to £411 off below £24,454.
Rebates water lost through a leak on your own supply pipe, and can adjust sewerage charges too.
Metered customers. Largely discretionary and the policies differ by company. Typically you must repair within 30 days of finding it.
Knowing what a bill should cost is no use if you cannot afford it. None of this costs anything and none of it goes through us.
It is illegal to disconnect a household for non payment of water. Anyone telling you otherwise is wrong.
Every company has one, they are all different, and reductions run from about £120 to over £400 a year. It is a postcode lottery, but the discount is real.
Caps your bill at the company average, saving about £325 a year. You need a meter, a means tested benefit, and either a medical need for extra water or three or more children under 19.
Companies will spread the bill, and will usually rebate water lost to a leak on your own supply pipe if you fix it promptly.
The independent consumer body for water. Free, and it takes up complaints against companies on your behalf.
The things that stop the headline figure being misread.
Already dated. Nothing here is a forecast.
WaterSure reform takes effect. Income cap £25,745, eligibility extended to PIP, DLA and Attendance Allowance, automatic enrolment replaces application. About 53,000 more households.
The full published figures, for anyone who wants to check our working or find their own line.
Combined water and sewerage. Water UK publishes the combined figure only, so the split by company is not available from a primary source.
Scroll sideways to see every column
| Company | Combined bill | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southern Water | £759 | +£55 | 8% |
| South West Water | £740 | +£39 | 6% |
| Wessex Water | £695 | +£17 | 3% |
| Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water | £683 | +£31 | 5% |
| Anglian Water | £674 | +£44 | 7% |
| United Utilities | £660 | +£57 | 9% |
| Thames Water | £658 | +£3 | 0.4% |
| Yorkshire Water | £636 | +£34 | 6% |
| Hafren Dyfrdwy | £635 | +£54 | 9% |
| Severn Trent Water | £587 | +£52 | 10% |
| Northumbrian Water | £535 | +£31 | 6% |
These figures are the water element alone. Your sewerage is billed separately by the regional wastewater company on top, so your total bill is higher than the number shown. Two names on older lists have gone: Bournemouth Water transferred its licence to South West Water in 2016 and was dissolved in 2024, and Essex and Suffolk is a trading name of Northumbrian rather than a separate company.
Scroll sideways to see every column
| Company | Water element | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essex and Suffolk Water | £333 | +£15 | 5% |
| South East Water | £324 | +£21 | 7% |
| Affinity Water, South East | £294 | +£3 | 1% |
| Affinity Water, East | £280 | +£1 | 0.4% |
| Affinity Water, Central | £266 | +£31 | 13% |
| Bristol Water | £264 | +£29 | 12% |
| SES Water | £257 | +£26 | 11% |
| South Staffs Water | £230 | +£6 | 2% |
| South Staffs, Cambridge region | £210 | +£7 | 3% |
| Portsmouth Water | £162 | +£13 | 8% |
Anglian, Northumbrian, South East, Southern and Wessex disputed Ofwat's price review settlement. The CMA raised their allowed return from 4.03% to 4.20% and awarded £463m of additional revenue, about 17% of what they asked for. Expect roughly 2.2% on those customers' bills across the five year period. The five serve about seven million households.
Source: CMA
The income cap rises to £25,745 and eligibility extends to people receiving PIP, DLA or Attendance Allowance, bringing in about 53,000 more households. The medical practitioner's note is dropped for unlisted conditions and automatic enrolment replaces the application. A new single occupier cap is introduced. About 53,000 single households save an extra £100 and about 130,000 multi occupant households save around £26.
Source: gov.uk
The average household bill in England and Wales for 2026/27 is £639, made up of £309 for water and £330 for sewerage, up 5.4%. Southern Water is dearest at £759 and Northumbrian cheapest at £535, a £224 spread for a service nobody can switch away from. Severn Trent took the largest rise among the big companies at 10%; Thames took 0.4%.
Source: Water UK
A New Vision for Water confirms support stays company by company, with an average £640m a year available for low income customers to 2030 and an industry commitment to address water poverty by that date. It also proposes abolishing Ofwat in favour of a single integrated regulator, with no date set. Campaigners at CCW and Independent Age continue to press for one national scheme.
Do not assume a national scheme exists. What you get depends entirely on which company happens to serve your postcode.
Source: Defra
Water UK publishes a combined figure per company. The split between water and sewerage by company is not available from a primary source, only the national split of £309 and £330.
Ofwat's own website refused every automated request while this page was built. The Ofwat material here comes from the official press mirror, the CMA and gov.uk rather than from Ofwat directly.
There is no published year by year bill path for 2026/27 to 2029/30. Only the start and end points of the price review are official. Anything showing a year by year trajectory is somebody's projection.
Water company boundaries follow river catchments, not postcodes. Where we match a postcode to a company we say so is approximate, and where an area is split between two companies we show both rather than guess.
Bristol Water applied in 2022 to merge its licence into South West Water and we could not confirm whether that completed. It still bills under its own name.
Tell us which bills you care about and we will email you when one of them changes, with the figure, the date it starts and a link to the regulator that set it. Free, no account, one click to stop.
Email alerts are not running yet. We would rather say that than take your address and send you nothing. Until they are, the change log carries every dated change the day we find it, and you can bookmark it or follow it in a reader.