Baltic Basket · method

How we work · Back to the figures

How we work out Home heating

Everything on this page is generated from the module itself, so it cannot say one thing here and another on the front page.

Built from the data file published on 2026-10-18 00:40 UTC.

What this measures

Heat is priced by each provider separately, and the approved tariffs differ several times over. A national average is not the price on your bill.

This is a price, measured in EUR/MWh.

One figure stands for the whole country.

The figure on the front page is: District heating, national average.

The figure on the front page is: District heating, middle approved maximum.

  • National average retail price of heat energy, VAT included.
  • The median of the maximum prices approved for each heating network area, with VAT added.
  • Every change says which periods it compares.
  • Heat is seasonal: comparing one month with the one before mostly shows the season changing, not the tariff.
  • Monthly since January 2005, the full series the statistics office publishes. The euro changeover on 1 January 2014 is marked as a join; the earlier values were restated from lats at the fixed rate.
  • Irregular. Dated copies of the regulator's own price list recovered from the Internet Archive, 2020 to 2023, then our own weekly readings from August 2026. The gap between them is listed and nothing in it is filled in. Each point carries the VAT rate of its own date.

What it does not measure

  • A national average is not your price. It is what the whole country paid on average; your supplier, your town and your day will differ.
  • This figure covers a whole period that has already ended. It is not the price today.

Where the numbers come from

Statistics Latvia PCC010m — average retail price of heat energy, EUR per MWh, monthly, VAT includeddata.stat.gov.lvOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2026-10-08 · not verified: the stat.gov.lv terms page could not be retrieved by fetch (JS-rendered); the data.gov.lv registry lists CSB datasets as CC0 1.0
Public Utilities Commission of Latvia — approved district-heating tariff by network area, EUR per MWh, excluding VAT (the regulator's own tariff map, served from infogram.com)infogram.comOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2026-10-15 · Public Utilities Commission of Latvia, regulatory decisions
Latvijas Vestnesis — full text of each tariff decision; used to tell a fixed approved tariff from one indexed to the monthly gas pricevestnesis.lvOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Official publisher of the Republic of Latvia
Estonian Competition Authority — approved maximum heat prices for end consumers by network area, EUR per MWh, excluding VAT (this week's file; earlier register dates are under ee_konkurentsiamet_caps_archive)konkurentsiamet.eeOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2026-10-15 · Estonian Competition Authority public register
Estonian Competition Authority — the same approved-maximum register as dated PDF files it published 2020-2023, delivered by the Internet Archive (web.archive.org); one dated copy per point, listed belowweb.archive.orgOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2023-11-20 · Estonian Competition Authority public register; archived copy
Eurostat HICP monthly (prc_hicp_minr, CP0455 heat energy) — an index, not a priceec.europa.euOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2026-10-16 · CC-BY-4.0 (European Commission reuse policy)
Public Utilities Commission of Latvia — register of regulated services (via data.gov.lv); counts suppliers, carries no tariffsdata.gov.lvOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · CC0 1.0 (data.gov.lv)
Statistics Estonia KE08 — average cost of heat consumed by ENTERPRISES, EUR per MWh, annual, excluding VAT (not a household price)andmed.stat.eeOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · CC BY-SA 4.0 (Statistics Estonia, stated on each table page)
Estonian Competition Authority — review of price regulation outcomes (June 2025), table 3: mean approved heat price CAP of ten network areas, EUR per MWh, annual 2005-2023, excluding VATkonkurentsiamet.eeOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2025-06 · Estonian Competition Authority public report
Utilitas — the supplier's own price page: for each of its network areas BOTH the approved ceiling (piirhind) and the price actually charged for the month (müügihind), EUR per MWh, VAT included (+km) as publishedutilitas.eeOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2026-08-31 · not stated — permission requested
AB Kauno energija — the supplier's own monthly regulated heat price for households (Kaunas city and district, Jurbarkas), ct/kWh with and without VAT as published; one supplier, not Lithuaniakaunoenergija.ltOfficial source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2026-10-01 · AB Kauno energija public tariff notice
Lietuvos silumos tiekeju asociacija (LSTA) — the association's own spreadsheet of EVERY member supplier's monthly heat price, ct/kWh with VAT and the VAT amount beside it; Vilnius and Klaipeda included. A compilation of the regulator-approved prices, not an independent measurement, and it ends at 2023-10lsta.ltSecondary source · We read it 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC · Source published 2023-10-31 · not stated — permission requested
What the kinds of source mean
  • Official — a statistics office, a regulator, or the exchange where the price was actually set.
  • Secondary — published by a company. Useful, named, but not official statistics.

How often it arrives, and what we do when it is late

The source publishes once a month.

A fresh figure is normally about 40 day(s) old when it reaches us, because statistics describe a period that has already ended.

The figure now on the site describes 2026-09-30 and is 18 day(s) old.

Past twice that age the module is marked as old automatically. It cannot mark itself as fresh — we compute the age from the date the data describes.

If a fetch fails, the last good figure stays up with its original date, the module is marked as not updated, and it visibly ages until the source publishes again. An old number never gets today's date.

We last ran this module at 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC.

Taxes

VAT is already in the figure.

CountryVAT rateIn the figure?Basis
Latvia12%Yes—
Estonia24%Yes—

Units and conversions

Unit: EUR/MWh.

Latvia — History: 261 readings, from 2005-01-31 to 2026-09-30.

Estonia — History: 19 readings, from 2020-09-01 to 2026-10-15.

7 gap(s) in the history. Each one is listed in the data and none is filled in.

Country by country

CountryCoverageWhy
LatviaCovered—
LithuaniaNo data—
EstoniaCovered—

What this figure cannot tell you

  • These two numbers are not the same kind of thing. Latvia's is the national average retail price of heat that households actually paid. Estonia's is the middle of the maximum prices the regulator approved for each heating network area — a ceiling, not a bill: the law allows heat to be sold below the cap, and some utilities do. It is also unweighted, one figure per area however small. Both are euro per megawatt-hour with VAT, so they sit on one row, but a difference between them is not by itself a difference in what people paid.
  • This list of gaps covers all countries together. A gap here does not mean this particular country is missing that month — the per-country detail says which is.

What the module itself flags

  • A national average heat tariff is not what any household pays: heat is sold per supplier and per network area, and the approved prices differ several-fold.
  • Headline figures are VAT-inclusive on every card. Latvia's source series already includes the reduced 12% household heat rate (PVN likums, section 42); Estonia's source is before VAT and 24% is added once. Both bases are shown side by side.
  • Latvia: 63 companies are registered to sell heat to end users, each with its own approved tariff — one national average stands for all of them.
  • Latvia: 199 network areas, from 60.76 to 163 EUR/MWh excluding VAT — 2.68 times between the cheapest and the dearest. The national average on the card is one number for all of them.
  • The tariff differs inside a single company too: Valmieras ūdens SIA charges 2.14 times more in one of its areas than in another. A figure keyed on the company alone is wrong for those customers.
  • 5 rows in the regulator's map do not state whether the figure includes VAT. They are treated as excluding it, like every other row, and flagged rather than assumed silently.
  • 68 Latvian tariff decisions are PDFs on the regulator's own site, which does not answer from either network we tried. Those areas carry their approved tariff, but whether it is fixed or gas-indexed is unchecked rather than assumed.
  • Latvia's per-area history was recovered from the Internet Archive: 28 dated versions of the regulator's map, the oldest from 2020-01-01. The map is revised irregularly; the gaps are named and nothing between them is filled in.
  • Estonia's register history was recovered from the Internet Archive: 13 dated copies of the regulator's own price list, the oldest from 2020-09-01 — the same table and the same median as today's reading. Between the last copy and our first own reading there is a real gap; nothing in it is filled in, and each point carries the VAT rate of its own date.
  • Estonia has two longer annual series, and neither is a household price: the statistics office's average cost of heat paid by enterprises (from 1999) and the regulator's mean approved cap for the ten largest network areas (from 2005). Both exclude VAT and both are shown as what they are, beside the register median, not joined to it.
  • Estonia's figure is an approved ceiling, not a price. The law allows heat to be sold below the approved maximum, and utilities do: one sold at 83.18 EUR/MWh against an 87.51 cap, another at 62.41 against 64.69. Narva sells at its cap and says so.
  • In 2026-08 the price Utilitas charged equalled the approved ceiling exactly in every one of its network areas except Rapla. Utilitas is 4.8% of the register's areas, not Estonia.
  • 3 area(s) already carry an approved ceiling that starts later. It is not this month's figure.
  • Enterprises paid 74.89 EUR/MWh on average in 2025; the register's median ceiling on 2026-10-15 was 82.32. Both exclude VAT, but the -9.03% gap is between a year and a day, not between two prices.
  • Estonia's approved maximums are not all of the same age: 90 were decided within the last year and 5 are more than five years old. The lowest of them dates from 2011, so the bottom of the range is not a current figure.
  • Estonia's middle figure describes rural Estonia rather than where people live. SW Energia OÜ alone runs 30% of the network areas, and four of the five largest sit below the middle. The regulator's file carries no volumes, so a weighted average cannot be derived from it.
  • Estonia: 168 network areas, from 54.43 to 138 EUR/MWh before VAT — 2.53 times between the cheapest and the dearest. The card shows the median, not the mean.
  • Estonia: 29 network areas have a separately approved new price that the register has not yet moved into the current column. The file gives the date each price was decided, but not the date any of them starts to apply. Without that date a price cannot be placed in time, so these figures stay out of the headline.
  • Lithuania has no free machine-readable district-heating price. The regulator's site answers with a refusal behind bot protection that we do not work around; the open-data portal's three heating datasets each cover one municipality, are written as prose inside the file, and the newest is from 2021; and the statistics series is rounded to two decimals, giving four distinct values across fourteen months. Lithuania is therefore shown as no data, and no Latvian or Estonian number is copied into it.
  • Lithuania: one supplier is read. AB Kauno energija publishes its own regulated monthly price back to 2012-01, with and without VAT; in 2026-10 it charged 87.6 EUR/MWh including VAT. That is Kaunas, not Lithuania, and it is not put on the card as a national figure.
  • Lithuania has a price history after all, and Vilnius and Klaipeda are in it. The heat suppliers’ association published a monthly table of every supplier’s approved price; across 140 months to 2023-10 the middle supplier charged 87.4 EUR/MWh including VAT, 49 suppliers in the last month. It is a compilation of the regulator’s decisions, not an independent measurement, it counts Vilnius the same as the smallest town, and it stops 36 months ago. Lithuania still has no figure on the card.
  • Vilnius and Klaipeda, the two largest cities, cannot be reached: one utility's site refuses connections, the other asks not to be crawled. An average of the rest would be provincial Lithuania under a national name, and it would read high because the missing cities are among the cheapest.
  • A commercial Lithuanian tariff aggregator does publish a national figure at usable precision, but it is unlicensed, states no method, and takes its own data from the same protected regulator. An unverifiable number is not better than an empty panel, so it is left out.
  • Lithuania's reduced 9% VAT on heating was abolished on 1 January 2026. December use billed in January was still charged at 9%, January bills at 21%. The same change applies to firewood and wood fuel.
  • Latvia's series runs back to 2005, before the euro. The statistics office restated the earlier values from lats at the fixed rate.
  • The heat price index for all three countries runs monthly from 1996-01. It is an index with 2015 = 100, not a price, and for Lithuania it is the only national heat series here.
  • Month-on-month change is named with its window. Heat is seasonal: a summer tariff and a winter tariff are not the same thing, so the season-to-season figure (October to April) is the comparable one.
  • Source ee_ka_review_2025 did not load on this run; stored values keep their own older dates.
  • Source ee_utilitas did not load on this run; stored values keep their own older dates.
  • This is an approved maximum, not a price. Estonian law lets heat be sold below the approved cap, and some utilities do.

The data itself

The same figures, machine-readable:

Everything the front page draws from, in one file:

Where this module stands right now

ok

Up to date.

2026-09-30 · 18 d · 2026-10-17 05:25 UTC