We Priced the Same Hydro Bill in 14 GTA Cities, Toronto to Brampton

Take one meter reading and price it city by city across the Greater Toronto Area. The bills do not match.

At 700 kWh a month on time-of-use prices, the bill is $145.11 in Toronto and $127.38 in Brampton. So $145.11 minus $127.38 is $17.73 a month. Times 12, that is $212.76 a year for the same power.

The power is not the reason. Electricity costs $89.26 in both cities, because the Ontario Energy Board sets one price for the whole province. The gap is all in delivery, which is what your local utility charges to move the power to your meter.

The same 700 kWh, priced in 14 GTA cities

Eight distributors serve these cities, and between them they file eleven separate rate schedules. Each is a Tariff of Rates and Charges approved by the Board, and that filing is the legal price list. Every delivery figure here comes from the current one.

Time-of-use means the price changes with the hour of day. Tiered means one price up to a monthly threshold and a higher price above it. The 400 kWh column is a smaller home, roughly a condo unit.

Dollars a month, all in, on the summer rate period. Each figure is one usage level priced through one tariff.

Toronto is dearest at both usage levels and Brampton cheapest at both. The order in between moves. At 700 kWh Mississauga is $130.77 against Vaughan's $130.21, a difference of $0.56 (130.77 minus 130.21). At 400 kWh it flips, to $86.78 against $88.11. Mississauga has the lower flat charge and the higher per kWh rate, so the two swap places.

Why bills differ when the rates are the same

Your bill has three priced parts, then a rebate and tax.

Electricity is the power you used. The Board sets this price province-wide under the Regulated Price Plan. Since November 1, 2025 the time-of-use prices have been 9.8 cents off-peak, 15.7 cents mid-peak and 20.3 cents on-peak. Tiered is 12.0 cents up to the threshold and 14.2 cents above it. None of that changes across a city line.

Delivery is your local utility's charge for the wires, poles and meters. Toronto Hydro calls it "the cost of delivering electricity from the generator to Toronto Hydro, and then to your home or business". This is the line that differs, and it has a flat part and a per kWh part. The service charge is a flat monthly amount you pay even at zero use. The per kWh part is mostly retail transmission, what it costs to move power across the province's high voltage grid. Rate riders sit on top: small time-limited add-ons or credits the Board approves so a utility can settle a past account. Some are per month, some per kWh.

Regulatory charges cover province-wide items such as running the wholesale market. They come to just over half a cent per kWh here.

Then the Ontario Electricity Rebate, a provincial credit applied straight to your bill, takes 23.5% off the subtotal and HST adds 13%. That rebate rose from 13.1% on November 1, 2025, so an older guide will understate it. Both are percentages of the same number, so the total is always the subtotal times 0.895.

The fixed part is most of the story

Ontario residential distribution is fully fixed. There is no per kWh distribution rate in the residential class, so a utility recovers its own wires costs through the flat monthly charge alone.

That has a plain result: the biggest part of your delivery charge does not shrink at all when you use less. Toronto Hydro has a service charge of $51.18 a month, the highest here. Six rate riders then apply, four of them credits, and together they take $2.32 off. So 51.18 minus 2.32 is $48.86. You pay that $48.86 in a 3,000 kWh month and in a 200 kWh month.

Brampton's fixed side is $30.80: a $29.93 service charge plus $0.87 in rate riders and the smart meter charge. That leaves $18.06 between the two cities in flat charges alone (48.86 minus 30.80), and it never moves.

Why a condo feels it hardest

Because the flat charge does not move, a small bill carries almost as much delivery as a large one. The gap between cities barely shrinks in dollars. It grows as a share of the bill.

At 700 kWh, Toronto is $145.11 and Brampton is $127.38, a gap of $17.73. Drop to 400 kWh and Toronto is $101.75 against Brampton's $84.70. That gap is $101.75 minus $84.70, or $17.05. The dollars fell by 68 cents. The share went the other way: 17.73 divided by 127.38 is 13.9%, while 17.05 divided by 84.70 is 20.1%.

So your city matters more, not less, if you use little power. A one bedroom condo pays nearly as much delivery as a house on the same street using almost twice the power, with a much smaller electricity line to carry it.

One company, two prices

Alectra Utilities serves Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham and Richmond Hill, and it does not charge them the same. It was built from mergers, and still bills each old utility's territory as its own rate zone at its own approved rates.

In the Brampton zone the fixed delivery is $30.80 a month. In the PowerStream zone, which covers Vaughan, Markham and Richmond Hill, it is $35.48. The service charge there is $34.43, and five capital rate riders and the smart meter charge add $1.05, so 34.43 plus 1.05 is $35.48. One company, and $4.68 a month between two of its own cities (35.48 minus 30.80).

Mississauga sits in the Enersource zone. Its service charge is $29.86, the lowest of the eleven. Four leftover capital riders and the smart meter charge add $1.33, so 29.86 plus 1.33 is $31.19. The lowest service charge is not the lowest bill.

How we worked out the numbers

This is arithmetic, not a survey. Nobody was asked what they pay. We took one usage figure and ran it through each tariff.

The 700 kWh comes from the regulator. The OEB's bill calculator uses it as the default and says why: "the bill totals are based on 700 kWh per month. This is the monthly consumption for the typical residential customer." The split of that power is the calculator's own default too: 64% off-peak, 18% mid-peak, 18% on-peak. That is why its Toronto electricity lines read 448 kWh, 126 kWh and 126 kWh.

One more input is the loss factor. Some power is lost as heat in the wires between the grid and your meter, and each tariff sets a number for it. Toronto Hydro's is 1.0295. So 700 x 1.0295 = 720.65 kWh has to be bought for 700 to reach you, and the per kWh charges apply to that larger figure.

Here is Toronto, end to end, at 700 kWh on time-of-use in the summer period.

Every line is rounded to the cent, so a column can look a penny out.

That $0.02401 is Toronto Hydro's four per kWh delivery lines added together. Two are transmission: $0.01346 for network service and $0.00895 for line and transformation connection. Two are riders, at $0.00112 and $0.00048. So 0.01346 plus 0.00895 plus 0.00112 plus 0.00048 is $0.02401. A fifth line is marked "Applicable only for Non-RPP Customers" and is left out, because everyone priced here is on the Regulated Price Plan.

Both scenarios use the summer period, May 1 to October 31. Time-of-use prices are the same in winter and only the hours move, so those columns hold all year. The tiered column does not. The residential tier threshold is 600 kWh in summer and 1,000 kWh in winter, so a 700 kWh winter tiered bill is lower.

The regulator's own calculator disagrees with six of these tariffs

The Board publishes a residential bill calculator that does this same job. We checked our arithmetic against it at both usage levels. Five of the eleven rate schedules match to within five cents. Six do not, and in every case our figure is the one taken from the current approved tariff.

Toronto is the case that reaches the most people. The calculator shows a Toronto delivery charge of $71.46 and a total of $147.48. The tariff gives $68.80 and $145.11, so 147.48 minus 145.11 is $2.37 the calculator adds. Toronto Hydro's tariff effective January 1, 2026 carries three Change in Useful Life credits: $1.41, $0.34 and $0.99. Added up, 1.41 plus 0.34 plus 0.99 is $2.74 a month off the flat charge, and the calculator does not appear to apply them.

Burlington runs the other way. The calculator shows $130.89 and the tariff gives $135.52, so 135.52 minus 130.89 is $4.63 the calculator leaves off. Burlington Hydro filed a full cost of service application in April 2025 instead of the usual annual update, and its approved service charge is $36.74.

The other four are the same story, all of them late-dated filings. Elexicon's rate order for Ajax, Pickering and Whitby was issued February 5, 2026. Newmarket-Tay's was revised on March 6, 2026, and Oshawa's was issued on July 7, 2026. The calculator is still the best free tool for this. Just check the tariff date when the number matters.

What you can actually change

You cannot pick your distributor. Your address decides that, and the delivery rate comes with it.

You can pick your price plan. On the Regulated Price Plan you choose between time-of-use and tiered, and you switch by asking your utility. At 700 kWh in summer, tiered came out lower in every city in the table. In Toronto it is $142.63 against $145.11, a saving of $2.48 (145.11 minus 142.63). The other cities land between two and three dollars. That follows from the 64/18/18 usage split; a household running almost everything overnight and at weekends would see the reverse.

A third plan, Ultra-Low Overnight, is priced at 3.9 cents overnight and 39.1 cents on-peak. It is not in the table. Its result turns on how much load you can push into the middle of the night, which is not comparable between homes.