OVO Energy EV Tariffs: A Complete Guide to Charge Anytime in 2026

Electric vehicle ownership in the UK continues to climb, and with it, demand for energy tariffs that make home charging genuinely affordable. While many of the big suppliers have built their EV offerings around a simple cheap overnight window, OVO Energy has taken a different route entirely. Its EV charging product, Charge Anytime, is built around monthly subscription plans and round-the-clock smart charging rather than a fixed off-peak period.

This guide explains exactly how OVO's EV tariff works in 2026, what it costs, how it compares with rivals such as Octopus and E.ON Next, and who is likely to get the most value from it.

1. What is OVO Charge Anytime?

Charge Anytime is OVO Energy's dedicated EV charging product. Rather than replacing your household electricity tariff, it sits alongside it as an add-on specifically for the energy used to charge your car. When you add a Charge Anytime monthly plan to your home tariff, your home energy rate stays the same, but your EV charging is billed separately at one fixed monthly cost covering both home and public charging miles.

This is a fundamentally different model from the "two-rate" overnight tariffs offered by most other major suppliers. Unlike the fixed overnight window tariffs offered by Octopus, E.ON, and British Gas, OVO operates a different model: monthly plans with bundled mileage allowances, or a pay-as-you-go smart charging rate available at any time of day.

The product uses Kaluza's smart charging technology to schedule your car's charging sessions for the cheapest and greenest moments on the grid, whenever those happen to occur, rather than locking you into a single overnight slot.

2. How Charge Anytime works

There are currently two ways to use Charge Anytime: a fixed monthly plan, or a pay-as-you-go rate.

The monthly plans

OVO's EV charging plans allow drivers to cover their monthly home and public charging needs for a single flat monthly payment. There are two tiers available.

Standard Monthly Plan – costs £27.50 a month. This plan is built around a customer driving 8,400 miles a year using home charging, plus 600 miles a year on the road using public charging networks, with mileage calculated at an efficiency of 4 miles per kWh. In practical terms, that works out at roughly 700 miles of home charging allowance each month.

Premium Monthly Plan – costs £37.50 a month. This is aimed at higher-mileage drivers, with the plan built around 12,000 miles a year of home charging plus 600 miles a year of public charging, again calculated at 4 miles per kWh. That equates to around 1,000 miles of home charging allowance per month.

Both plans bundle in a public charging element. A voucher of £120 or £240 (depending on the plan) is added to your public charging account in the OVO Charge app, allowing you to charge at over 400,000 public charge points across Europe via major networks including Osprey, MFG, InstaVolt, TotalEnergies, Allego, FastNed and Ionity.

It's worth understanding what happens at the edges of your allowance. Any mileage used up to your plan's cap is credited at your home tariff rate, but mileage over the cap is not credited – effectively meaning you'll pay your normal home tariff rate for anything above your plan's allowance, and the same home tariff rate also applies to any "boost charging".

The pay-as-you-go rate

If you'd rather not commit to a monthly plan, OVO also offers a PAYG rate for smart-scheduled charging. This applies to electricity consumed through the Charge Anytime system outside of a monthly plan, and can be used at any time of day rather than being restricted to an overnight window.

However, this rate has changed substantially over the past couple of years, and it's important to know where it currently stands.

3. How the PAYG rate has changed

Charge Anytime's pay-as-you-go rate has had a fairly dramatic journey. Back in late 2023, OVO made headlines by cutting the rate to 7p per kWh. OVO reduced its Charge Anytime rate by 30%, from 10p to 7p per kWh, describing it at the time as the cheapest home EV charging plan on the market and pointing out that this worked out at less than 3p per mile.

That low rate didn't last. On 4 November 2025, the pay-as-you-go rate increased from 7p per kWh to 14p per kWh. Some customers who signed up through manufacturer partnerships retained the older, lower rate for a while longer, but that grace period is now ending too. Customers who had a partnership rate of 7p per kWh through schemes such as the OVO–Volkswagen Group tie-up will move onto the standard Charge Anytime pay-as-you-go rate of 14p per kWh from 1 April 2026.

The upshot is that, as things stand in 2026, anyone using Charge Anytime on a pure pay-as-you-go basis is paying roughly double what they were paying just a year or so ago for the equivalent electricity.

4. Eligibility and compatibility requirements

As with most smart EV tariffs, you can't simply sign up for Charge Anytime without the right setup at home. To charge cheaper and greener with Charge Anytime, you need a compatible smart EV or a compatible EV charger installed at home (you don't need both), along with a smart meter set up for half-hourly reads, and you need to be an OVO customer for your electricity.

In other words, the bare minimum requirements are:

• A smart meter capable of half-hourly readings, with data sharing enabled
• Either a compatible electric vehicle that can communicate directly with OVO's systems, or a compatible smart charger
• An active OVO Energy electricity account for your home

Because compatible vehicle and charger lists are updated fairly regularly as new models reach the market, it's worth checking the current list on OVO's website even if your setup wasn't supported previously.

5. How does Charge Anytime compare with other EV tariffs?

This is really where the conversation gets interesting, because OVO's approach is structurally different from most of its rivals, and that has a big effect on value for money depending on how you drive.

The clearest like-for-like comparison is on the effective pence-per-kWh cost of home charging. For pure home charging cost per unit, the Charge Anytime PAYG rate of 14p per kWh is nearly double that of Octopus Intelligent Go (8p per kWh) or E.ON Next Drive Smart (8p per kWh).

Independent reviewers have reached similar conclusions when assessing the product against the wider market. The 14p per kWh effective charging rate is the highest among the major suppliers' EV tariffs, with rivals typically offering between 6.5p and 9.5p per kWh.

That said, the comparison isn't entirely one-sided, and the same review highlights some genuine advantages to OVO's approach:

• It works as an EV-only add-on, so there's no need to switch your whole household energy supply away from OVO.
• The smart dispatch scheduling automatically finds cheap charging slots, and the product stays on your existing OVO tariff, avoiding any disruption to your household billing.
• OVO's Plan Zero option includes carbon offsetting and tree planting, and the product is compatible with a growing range of smart chargers and EVs.

But the same source is candid about the trade-offs:

• The 14p per kWh rate is the highest in the comparison.
• It uses a monthly subscription model starting from £27.50 a month rather than a straightforward per-unit rate, and the EV-only pricing means household appliances don't benefit from any cheaper overnight rate.
• Overall cost depends heavily on your individual usage and your existing OVO home tariff.

The overall verdict from independent comparisons tends to be fairly consistent. Charge Anytime is convenient but not the most cost-efficient option – it removes the friction of switching supplier and fits neatly within the OVO ecosystem, but the effective charging rate makes it substantially more expensive than whole-home alternatives from Octopus, E.ON Next, EDF and So Energy. The general recommendation is that existing OVO customers who want smart EV charging without switching supplier may find it a workable option, but for everyone else, switching to a specialist whole-home EV tariff is likely to save significantly more money each year.

For context on where Charge Anytime sits against the rest of the market, one widely referenced EV tariff comparison notes that leading suppliers offering EV-friendly tariffs include British Gas, E.ON, Good Energy, OVO and Octopus, and that for households able to make the switch, these tariffs are a very cheap way of charging an electric car or van, with rates starting well under 10p per kWh. The same guide points out that the OVO PAYG option in particular is best suited to EV owners who are low electricity users in the home and who use their car infrequently, since each plan requires a compatible electric car or van plus charger, and the low rate applies only to your EV – you can't use the cheaper electricity for any other household appliances, unlike some rival suppliers' tariffs.

6. Should you switch your home tariff to get a cheaper EV rate instead?

Given that Charge Anytime's PAYG rate currently sits well above the cheapest whole-home EV tariffs, many drivers will want to weigh up whether switching their entire energy supply to a specialist EV tariff makes more sense than staying with OVO and adding Charge Anytime.

The two-rate, whole-home model offered by suppliers such as Octopus, E.ON Next, EDF and So Energy typically works by giving you a several-hour overnight window (often somewhere between five and seven hours) during which all your household electricity, not just your car charging, is billed at a much lower rate – frequently in the 6.5p to 9.5p per kWh range. The trade-off is a higher daytime rate, and the requirement to actively shift your car charging and any other heavy appliance use into that overnight window.

By contrast, Charge Anytime's appeal is flexibility and simplicity: your home tariff doesn't change at all, your car can charge at any time the smart system decides is cheapest, and you get a predictable flat monthly cost (on the plan options) plus a public charging allowance thrown in. For drivers who charge relatively infrequently, who value the bundled public charging credit, or who simply don't want the hassle of switching their whole household supply, that convenience may be worth the higher effective per-kWh cost. For higher-mileage drivers doing most of their charging at home, however, the maths increasingly favours a switch to a whole-home overnight tariff from a rival supplier.

7. How to sign up for Charge Anytime

If you decide Charge Anytime is right for you, the process is straightforward:

1. Check compatibility – confirm your EV model or home charger is on OVO's compatibility list, and that your smart meter is set up for half-hourly reads.
2. Be (or become) an OVO customer – Charge Anytime is only available as an add-on to an existing OVO electricity account.
3. Choose your plan – decide between the Standard Monthly Plan (£27.50/month), the Premium Monthly Plan (£37.50/month), or the pay-as-you-go rate (14p/kWh).
4. Download the OVO Charge app – this is where you connect your EV or charger, set your charging preferences, and access your public charging credit.
5. Let the smart scheduling do its work – once connected, OVO's Kaluza-powered system will schedule your charging sessions for the cheapest and greenest available periods.

8. Frequently asked questions

Does Charge Anytime require me to switch my electricity supplier?
You need to be an OVO Energy customer for your home electricity, since Charge Anytime is sold as an add-on rather than a standalone tariff.

Can I use the cheap rate for charging at any time of day?
Yes – this is one of the key differences from rival overnight tariffs. OVO's smart scheduling looks for cheaper grid periods potentially at any time of day, not just overnight.

What happens if I go over my plan's mileage allowance?
Mileage over your plan's cap won't be credited at the discounted rate, meaning you'll effectively pay your normal home tariff rate for any charging beyond your allowance, as well as for any "boost charging".

Is the pay-as-you-go rate still competitive?
Not really, compared with rival whole-home EV tariffs. The current 14p per kWh PAYG rate is nearly double the roughly 8p per kWh on offer from Octopus Intelligent Go or E.ON Next Drive Smart. It can still work out cheaper than charging at a standard variable rate or on the public network, but it's no longer the bargain it once was.

Does my household get any benefit from cheaper electricity overnight?
No. Unlike two-rate whole-home tariffs, Charge Anytime's pricing is EV-only, so your household appliances don't benefit from a cheaper overnight rate.

Who is Charge Anytime best suited to?
Existing OVO customers who want the convenience of smart EV charging without switching supplier, particularly those who value the bundled public charging credit and predictable monthly cost. It tends to suit EV owners who are relatively low electricity users at home and who don't charge especially frequently. Higher-mileage drivers doing most of their charging at home are likely to find a whole-home overnight EV tariff from another supplier considerably cheaper.

Tariffs, rates and plan details change relatively frequently. Always check OVO Energy's current published terms before signing up, and use an independent comparison tool to see how Charge Anytime stacks up against other EV tariffs for your specific postcode and driving pattern.