The short version: an exit fee is the price of breaking a fixed-term energy contract before it ends. Most bill-pay brands charge €50 per fuel; Yuno charges €100, Pinergy €150 ex VAT, and Community Power nothing. It never applies inside the 14-day cooling-off window, never at contract end, and rarely on a plan with no fixed term.
The maths matters more than the fee: the gap between a discounted year-1 rate and the standard rate it snaps to runs to hundreds of euro a year, so a €50 fee often pays for itself in weeks. The full decision — including whether to wait it out — is on switching mid-contract.
What is an energy exit fee and when does it apply?
Nearly every new-customer energy deal in Ireland is a trade. The supplier gives you a discount — typically a chunky percentage off unit rates for 12 months — and in exchange you promise to stay for the term. The exit fee (the T&Cs may call it a termination fee, early-exit fee or cancellation charge) is what you pay if you break that promise: leave for another supplier, or in some cases close the account, before the term is up.
Three boundaries define it, and all three work in your favour. First, the fee applies only inside a live fixed term — sign up in January on a 12-month plan and switch away in June, and it bites; switch the following February and it cannot. Second, the 14-day cooling-off window after signing is always free — change your mind in the first fortnight and you owe nothing, a right that gets its own page. Third, at contract end you owe nothing — which is precisely when the discount dies and the bill snaps to the standard rate, so the free exit and the best reason to use it arrive on the same day. That cliff is measured supplier by supplier on year 1 vs year 2.
One framing note before the table: matched.ie is not a CRU-accredited price-comparison site. We verify each supplier’s T&Cs and rank them ourselves; if you want a regulated comparator, the CRU publishes the accredited list at cru.ie.
How much is the exit fee at each Irish energy supplier?
Every figure below comes from the supplier’s own terms, checked the week of 28 August 2026 — exit fees move quietly, so treat any undated number you read elsewhere as a rumour. Worst case per fuel, steepest first:
| Supplier | Early-exit fee | Dual fuel, worst case | What the T&Cs say |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pinergy | €150 ex VAT, flat | n/a — electricity only | Steepest in the market: a flat €150 ex VAT early exit charge for residential connections (schedule effective from September 2025), and the T&Cs allow a separate meter removal charge inside the first 12 months. Verified on pinergy.ie this week. |
| Prepay Power | €11.25 × months left (elec, up to ~€135) · €50 gas | up to ~€185 | Electricity: €11.25 for every month (or part-month) left of the 12-month initial period — up to about €135 if you leave immediately after cooling-off. Gas: €50 cancellation fee. Both from the rate card checked 28 Aug 2026. |
| Yuno Energy | €100 flat per fuel | up to €200 | €100 termination fee per fuel if you leave after the 14-day cooling-off but before the 12-month initial period ends — or if you leave without giving 30 days notice. Dual fuel means two fuels, so up to €200. Checked in the product T&Cs on yunoenergy.ie on 28 Aug 2026. |
| SSE Airtricity | €50 discount plans · €100 fixed-rate, per fuel | €100–€200 | €50 per fuel on the standard discount plans and €100 per fuel on the fixed-rate plans (both per the current T&Cs, checked 28 Aug 2026). Dual fuel means two fees. No charge inside the cooling-off window. |
| Electric Ireland | €50 incl VAT, flat per fuel | €100 | €50 incl VAT per fuel if you leave a fixed-term plan early; nothing once the 12 months are up |
| Energia | €50 flat per fuel | €100 | €50 per fuel if you cancel after the 14-day cooling-off and before the fixed term ends (clause 13.4 of Energia’s domestic T&Cs) — €100 on dual fuel. Nothing to pay at contract end. |
| Flogas | €50 flat per fuel | €100 | €50 per fuel if you close the account within the first 12 months, outside the 14-day cooling-off period. The Standard Variable tariffs have no fixed term and no exit fee. |
| Bord Gáis Energy | €50, worded per contract | €50–€100 — confirm | €50 early-exit fee on 12-month fixed-term plans (the plan terms word it per contract — dual-fuel customers should confirm in their welcome pack). No fee at contract end or inside the 14-day cooling-off. |
| Community Power | €0 — no fixed term | n/a — electricity only | None. There is no fixed term and no exit fee — Community Power advertises €0 to leave, and we verified that on communitypower.ie this week. You still owe for the units you used up to your closing read. |
And as a picture — the gap between the friendliest and harshest contract to walk out of is the full €150:
Flat fee or remainder-of-term — what are the structures?
The euro amount is only half the story; how the fee is calculated changes when it hurts. Irish suppliers use three structures:
| Structure | How it works | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Flat per fuel | One fixed charge per fuel, the same at month 2 as at month 11. Simple, and it means a late-term exit is proportionally dearest — you pay full freight to skip only a few remaining weeks. | Electric Ireland, Energia, Flogas, Yuno, SSE Airtricity, Bord Gáis (per contract), Pinergy (flat, ex VAT) |
| Remainder of term | A monthly amount multiplied by the months (or part-months) left. Steep early, shrinking to almost nothing by month 11 — a countdown, not a wall. | Prepay Power electricity: €11.25 per remaining month, up to about €135 |
| No fee | No fixed term, so nothing to break. You pay for the units used to your closing read and walk. | Community Power; Flogas Standard Variable tariffs |
The structure should steer your timing. On a flat fee, the sum is the same whenever you jump, so jump as soon as the saving clears the fee. On a countdown like Prepay Power’s, waiting two more months genuinely shrinks the bill for leaving. And two traps hide in the flat category: Yuno’s €100 also fires if you leave after the term without giving 30 days’ notice, and Pinergy’s €150 is quoted ex VAT with a possible meter-removal charge on top inside the first 12 months.
When can I leave my energy contract for free?
More often than the fine print’s tone suggests. Run down this list before you accept that a fee is owed at all:
- Inside the first 14 days. Cooling-off makes any new contract free to cancel — 30 days for some doorstep and off-premises sign-ups. No fee, no reason required. Details on the cooling-off guide.
- On or after the contract end date. The term is served; the fee has nothing to attach to. This is also the day your discount vanishes, so it is the single best switching day of your year.
- On a plan with no fixed term. Standard and variable tariffs you drift onto after a deal lapses generally have no term and no fee — being free to leave is their one virtue, because their rates are the dearest on the market.
- If the supplier waives it. Ask. A supplier fighting to keep you may drop the fee or produce an unadvertised retention rate — either beats paying list price to stay quiet.
- Possibly, if you are moving house. Several suppliers treat a genuine change of address differently from a switch — see below, and confirm your own supplier’s wording before you budget for the fee.
Do I pay two exit fees on a dual fuel contract?
Usually, yes. Most suppliers word the fee per fuel, and a dual fuel bundle is two fuels — so breaking an Energia dual deal mid-term costs €100, an SSE Airtricity fixed-rate dual up to €200, and a Yuno dual up to €200. The exception that proves the rule is Bord Gáis Energy, whose plan terms word the €50 per contract — dual customers should confirm in the welcome pack whether that means one fee or two, because the difference is a €50 note.
Factor this in before you bundle, not after: a dual discount that saves €40 a year but doubles your exit exposure is a worse deal than it looks. The unbundling maths lives on the dual fuel guide, and the ranking on best dual fuel deals shows exit fees per fuel for exactly this reason. Renters should weigh exit exposure heaviest of anyone — a landlord’s notice does not wait for month 12, which is why best energy for renters ranks on exit-fee exposure first and price second.
Do I pay an exit fee if I am moving house?
Often not — but this is the one corner of exit-fee land where no single answer covers all nine suppliers. A house move is not the same event as a switch: you are not defecting to a competitor, the account at the old address is closing because you no longer live there. Several suppliers therefore waive the early-exit fee on a genuine change of address, or let you bring the plan with you to the new address with the term intact — in which case no exit has happened at all. Others apply the fee regardless of the reason the account closed.
Because the treatment genuinely varies by brand and by plan, we will not print a nine-row table that would be guesswork: ring your supplier before you move and ask specifically whether closing the account for a change of address triggers the fee, and whether transferring the plan avoids it. Get the answer in writing. The wider procedure — final reads, closing bills, who to tell and when — is covered step by step on moving house, and what happens on the incoming side of the door, where the previous occupant’s supplier inherits you by default, is on change of occupancy.
Is it worth paying the exit fee to switch?
Here is the sum, and it takes five minutes. You need three numbers: what your current plan will cost over the next 12 months, what the best new deal costs in year 1, and your exit fee.
| Step | Formula | Worked example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Annual gap | current annual cost − new deal year-1 cost | Energia standard-rate electricity vs its own discounted rate at typical usage: €2,075 − €1,538 ≈ €537/yr |
| 2. Monthly saving | annual gap ÷ 12 | €537 ÷ 12 ≈ €44.75/month |
| 3. Payback time | exit fee ÷ monthly saving | €50 ÷ €44.75 ≈ 1.1 months — about five weeks |
| 4. Net saving | annual gap × (months left ÷ 12) − fee | 6 months left: €537 × 0.5 − €50 ≈ €219 ahead |
Read step 3 again, because it is the whole page in one line: at a €537-a-year gap — the real, verified distance between Energia’s discounted and standard 24-hour electricity rates this week — a €50 fee is repaid in about five weeks. Every week after that is money you kept. The sum scales with the fee: Yuno’s €100 takes roughly ten weeks to claw back at the same gap; Pinergy’s €150 about fifteen. Dual fuel doubles both sides — on Flogas’s dual plan the discount-to-standard gap is about €909 a year at typical usage, so even two €50 fees are recovered inside seven weeks.
The fee wins the argument only in two honest cases: the term is nearly over (step 4 goes negative when few months remain — at €44.75 a month, a €50 fee stops paying once you are inside your final five or six weeks anyway), or the gap is genuinely small because your current deal is still competitive. In the first case, set a reminder and jump the day the term ends. In the second, congratulations — re-run the sum at month 11 like everyone else. The full decision tree, retention calls included, is on switching mid-contract.
The trap this page exists to spring: staying on a bad year-2 standard rate to “avoid” a €50 fee. The fee is visible, one-off and small; the standard rate is invisible, monthly and large. At the gaps we verified this week, avoiding €50 by staying put costs roughly €45 every month — you are not avoiding a fee, you are paying it again and again with a different name on it.
Where to next?
- Switching mid-contract — the full decision: pay, wait, or negotiate.
- The cooling-off period — your free 14 days (sometimes 30) to un-sign anything.
- Year 1 vs year 2 prices — the cliff that makes the fee worth paying, supplier by supplier.
- Best energy for renters — ranked on exit-fee exposure first, because tenancies end mid-term.
- How to switch supplier — the mechanics, once the maths says go.
- Best energy in Ireland — where to actually jump to, with year-1 and year-2 cost side by side.
