Heating and cooling cost in Austin, TX

What does it cost to heat and cool a home in Austin?

A planning year in Austin costs about $560 to heat the example home with gas, about $620 to heat it with a heat pump, and about $1,040 to cool it. These are not install prices and they are not your utility bill. They exist so a furnace quote and a heat-pump quote can be read next to a year of energy, instead of next to a brochure. The example home is about 1,850 square feet, built around 1994. a mix of 1970s ranches and newer slab houses, fast growth at the edge

The arithmetic, in the open

Gas therms equal heating degree days times square feet times 0.00012. For this house that is 1,680 times 1,850 times 0.00012, about 373 therms. Therms are priced at $1.50 a therm, which you can change in the bar. Wellholt does not have a Austin gas tariff, so it will not invent one. Heat-pump kilowatt-hours take those therms, convert at 29.3 kilowatt-hours per therm, and divide by 2.6, a planning efficiency, not a nameplate. That is about 4,203 kilowatt-hours, priced at the city’s 14.8¢. Cooling kilowatt-hours equal cooling degree days times square feet times 0.0012, about 7,060 kilowatt-hours at the same rate. A tighter house, a worse house, or a different thermostat will not match this. The low column is 85 percent of the planning year. The high column is 120 percent for heat and 125 percent for cooling, a stand-in for a harder weather year, not a repair.

Why Austin is not a national bill

The national reference year is about 4,000 heating degree days and 1,400 cooling degree days. Austin is zone 2A, with 1,680 and 3,180. Electricity at 14.8¢ is below the 16.8¢ reference, and it hits the heat pump and the cooling line. It does not hit the gas line, because gas uses $1.50 a therm from the bar instead of a made-up local tariff. Austin Energy serves much of the city with a rate structure that is not the Texas retail-plan average. The planning rate is a blend.

How to use this next to a quote

A ducted heat pump in Austin costs more to install than a gas furnace. The furnace page has those stickers. This page only has the year after. If gas heat is $560 and heat-pump heat is $620, the difference is $60 a year, in favor of gas on energy alone. That comparison ignores the cooling the heat pump also does, which is the $1,040 line, and it ignores maintenance. Do not divide an install gap by this difference and call it a payback unless both houses are the one you live in. Austin's labor factor has climbed toward national as the trades got busy, and the climate is a long humid cooling season. New subdivisions at the edge do not match older central houses with little insulation. Permits are enforced more often than in smaller Texas cities. The range assumes a permitted like-for-like job.

What this will not do

It will not read your meter. It will not apply a time-of-use rate, a gas utility’s winter slope, or a budget-billing plan that hides the summer. It will not tell a renter to replace a furnace. A renter can use it to understand why a cheap rent in a hot city is not a cheap year, and why a cold city with a low electric rate is a different problem from a cold city with a high one. Set your own square footage before you treat 1,850 as your house.

Reviewed 2026-09-01. Planning model: IECC climate zone, degree-day normals, a metro labor factor, and a residential rate used only for operating-cost context. Installed costs start from published national ranges and scale the labor share. Rents are planning medians, not listings. Reviewed 2026-09-01. If a salesperson quotes a yearly savings with no degree days and no rate, ask them to write both down next to these. The planning year here is gas $560, heat pump $620, cooling $1,040, for about 1,850 square feet in Austin.