You’ve decided Octopus is probably where your export payments are going to land. The problem is the names. Outgoing Octopus, Outgoing Agile, Octopus Flux, Intelligent Octopus Flux. They sound like variations on the same thing. They aren’t. The right Octopus Energy SEG tariff for your setup depends on whether you’ve got a battery, what brand it is, and how hands-on you want to be.
This guide walks through each one plainly. By the end you’ll know which fits your setup and which doesn’t.
The four Octopus SEG tariffs at a glance
All of these fall under the Smart Export Guarantee, the government scheme that replaced the old Feed-in Tariff in January 2020. That’s the regulatory umbrella. The tariffs themselves vary a lot in how they pay you.
| Tariff | Rate structure | Battery required | Smart meter required | Octopus import required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outgoing Octopus | Flat rate (currently 12p/kWh) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Agile Outgoing | Half-hourly variable, tracks wholesale | No, but strongly recommended | Yes | Yes (Agile import) |
| Octopus Flux | Three-rate time-of-use | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Intelligent Octopus Flux | Three-rate time-of-use, battery auto-controlled | Yes (from eligible brand) | Yes | Yes |
One quick note before getting into the detail. Octopus also offers a basic “Octopus SEG” tariff at 4.1p per kWh. It’s the minimum they have to offer to comply with the SEG rules, and it’s the only one you can use if your electricity import is with another supplier. It’s not really competitive, so the rest of this guide focuses on the four proper tariffs above.
Update April 2026: Octopus Flux and Intelligent Octopus Flux are currently paused for new signups, with Octopus saying on their site that energy prices are “particularly volatile” and the tariffs will return when conditions settle.
Octopus Outgoing (12p per kWh)
This is the one most Octopus solar customers end up on, and it’s the simplest of the lot.
You get a flat rate for every unit you export, no matter when you export it. Since 1 March 2026 the rate has been 12p per kWh. Before that it was 15p, a level it had held since September 2022. The drop was Octopus’s first change to this tariff in nearly four years, and they’ve said it reflects lower wholesale prices plus the fact that export tariffs don’t benefit from the dynamic pricing that actually rewards the grid.
Even at 12p, it remains one of the more generous flat-rate export offers on the market. OVO pays something similar. British Gas and EDF sit lower. The basic SEG rates from other suppliers can be as low as 1p or 2p.
For a typical 4kWp system in the UK exporting around 1,800 kWh a year, that’s roughly £216 in annual export income on Outgoing at the current rate. More if you export more, less if you self-consume heavily. Figures like this move around with actual generation, household usage and local weather, so treat them as ballpark.
Who it’s for: anyone with solar and no battery who wants the predictable option. You get paid the same regardless of time of day, so you don’t need to think about it. Sign up, export, get paid.
What you need: MCS (or Flexi-Orb) certificate, a smart meter that can record exports, and an Octopus import tariff.
Agile Outgoing (changes every 30 mins)
Agile Outgoing pays a rate that changes every half hour, tracking wholesale electricity prices. Octopus publishes tomorrow’s rates each afternoon, usually around 4pm.
The average over the year from April 2025 to April 2026 was roughly 9.4p per kWh, so lower than Outgoing’s flat rate overall. That looks bad on paper. The point of Agile is that you’re not trying to match the average. You’re trying to hit the peaks. Winter evening price spikes can push the rate well above 20p, occasionally above 30p. If you’ve got a battery and can hold onto your exports until a peak window, the economics swing.
Without a battery, Agile Outgoing is hard to recommend. Solar generation peaks in the middle of sunny days, which is exactly when wholesale prices tend to be lowest (because every other solar home and solar farm is also exporting). You’d be exporting at the worst possible times.
With a battery, Agile is the tariff for people who like tinkering. You’re watching the app, shifting exports, chasing the windows that pay best. It rewards the effort.
Who it’s for: battery owners who want to manage the schedule themselves and don’t mind watching half-hourly prices.
What you need: solar, smart meter, MCS certificate, and you’ll be on the Agile import tariff too. You can’t have Agile Outgoing with a non-Agile import.
Octopus Flux
Flux is built around three time bands on both import and export rates:
Import:
- Off-peak (02:00-05:00): around 14p per kWh
- Day (all other hours): around 25p per kWh
- Peak (16:00-19:00): around 38p per kWh
Export:
- Off-peak (02:00-05:00): around 5p per kWh
- Day (all other hours): around 10p per kWh
- Peak (16:00-19:00): around 29p per kWh
The logic is: charge the battery cheaply overnight, use your solar during the day, export aggressively in the evening peak when everyone else is coming home and turning the oven on. Rates are set quarterly and vary by region.
A typical day for a Flux household with a 4kWp system and a 5kWh battery might look like: battery fills from the grid between 2 and 5am at the off-peak rate, solar generation covers daytime household use and tops the battery back up, then at 4pm the battery starts discharging, covering evening demand and exporting the rest to the grid for the peak rate. Three hours later, the battery’s empty, the peak window closes, and the cycle resets.
As mentioned above, standard Flux is currently paused for new signups. If it reopens, the key practical point is that Flux works with any battery, not just specific brands. That’s the main reason someone would pick it over Intelligent Octopus Flux. You also have to manage the battery schedule yourself, usually through whatever app your inverter manufacturer provides.
Who it’s for: battery owners with hardware that Intelligent Flux doesn’t support, or people who want manual control. Only relevant right now if you’re already on it.
Intelligent Octopus Flux
Two rates: an off-peak rate that applies for most of the day, and a peak rate between 16:00 and 19:00. Import and export rates always match each other. That’s the core structure. No middle “day” band like standard Flux has.
- Peak (16:00 to 19:00): highest import and export rates of the day
- Off-peak (all other hours): lower rates for both import and export, with import priced below Octopus’s standard Flexible tariff, and export priced higher than their Outgoing Fixed price of 12p per kWh
The other defining feature of Intelligent Octopus Flux is that Octopus controls the battery directly through an integration with your hardware. You don’t schedule anything. They do it for you, using weather forecasts and grid conditions to decide when to charge and when to discharge.
Practically, a day looks like this. Overnight and through most of the day, the off-peak rate applies, and Octopus charges your battery from the grid and from solar when it’s cheapest and greenest. When the 16:00-19:00 peak window opens, the battery discharges aggressively, powering your home and exporting the rest to the grid. Because import and export rates match, any unit you export during peak earns the same as a unit you’d have paid to import. That symmetry is what makes the numbers work.
The trade-off is hardware compatibility. You need a battery Octopus can actually talk to. The list has grown over time and now includes GivEnergy, Enphase, SolarEdge, Tesla Powerwall, AlphaESS, Ecoflow, Fox ESS, Hanchu ESS, Huawei, Sigenergy and SunPower. Several of these are covered in our best home batteries for solar guide if you’re still choosing the right battery.
If your battery’s on that list, Intelligent Octopus Flux is usually the best option Octopus offers. Import rates are lower than standard Flux’s off-peak rate, export rates during peak are strong, and you don’t have to think about scheduling. Octopus has said that between June 2024 and May 2025, 34% of Intelligent Flux customers ended up earning more from exports than they paid for imports. The top 12% cleared their entire bill plus more than £300 in profit.
Who it’s for: people with a compatible battery who want the whole thing automated. If your battery’s on the list, this is almost certainly the right tariff.
What you need: solar, smart meter, MCS certificate, a compatible battery, and an Octopus import tariff. Once set up, Octopus controls the battery via the Octopus app, with a minimum charge state (usually 20%) so it still works as backup storage.
Which tariff for which setup
The short version:
- Solar, no battery: Outgoing Octopus. Simple, predictable, still competitive.
- Solar plus battery, battery not on the Intelligent Flux list: Agile Outgoing if you want to tinker. Standard Flux if it reopens.
- Solar plus a battery on the Intelligent Flux compatibility list: Intelligent Octopus Flux. Almost always the best option.
- Solar plus battery, don’t want Octopus for import: basic Octopus SEG at 4.1p. Not great, but available to non-Octopus customers.
If you’re somewhere between these, the question is usually whether you want to manage the battery schedule yourself. If yes, look at Flux or Agile Outgoing. If no, Intelligent Octopus Flux if your battery qualifies, Outgoing Octopus if it doesn’t.
Illustrative annual earnings comparison
Rough figures for a 4kWp south-facing system in the UK generating around 3,500 kWh per year, with a 5kWh battery where relevant. These are ballpark illustrations and will vary considerably with your actual setup.
| Tariff | Assumed export pattern | Illustrative annual export income |
|---|---|---|
| Outgoing Octopus (no battery) | 1,800 kWh exported at 12p | ~£216 |
| Octopus Flux (with battery) | 1,400 kWh exported, weighted toward peak window | ~£280 to £380 |
| Intelligent Octopus Flux (with battery) | 1,400 kWh exported, optimised by Octopus | ~£350 to £450+ |
Add the import savings from battery self-consumption on top. The total picture for a well-set-up Intelligent Flux home can be several hundred pounds a year better than the equivalent Outgoing customer, which is why batteries change the calculation so much. Octopus’s own case studies quote figures as high as £1,000+ per year when combining savings and export income, though these assume quite specific setups.
How Octopus SEG rates compare to other suppliers
Honestly, Octopus is one of the better export tariff providers, but they’re not automatically the best for every setup. Export tariff income is only one part of the wider solar economics picture, but for most solar households it’s a meaningful contributor.
For flat-rate exports, OVO currently matches or beats Outgoing Octopus in some tariffs. E.ON and Good Energy also have reasonable offers. If you’re not already an Octopus import customer and don’t want to switch, their basic SEG at 4.1p is worse than quite a few alternatives. For the wider supplier comparison, our best solar export tariff guide covers what each major supplier currently pays.
For time-of-use and battery-optimised tariffs, Octopus is hard to beat. Intelligent Flux in particular has set the benchmark that others are slowly catching up to. Citizens Advice keeps a general overview of the SEG landscape if you want to see the wider market context.
If you end up not going with Octopus for whatever reason, the underlying logic still applies. Flat vs variable. Battery vs no battery. Self-manage vs automated. Those three axes define almost every export tariff on the market.
Do you need to be an Octopus import customer?
Mostly yes. Here’s the specific position:
- Outgoing Octopus, Agile Outgoing, Octopus Flux, Intelligent Octopus Flux: all require you to buy your electricity from Octopus. You can’t just take the export tariff on its own.
- Basic Octopus SEG (4.1p): this is the only one you can have as an export-only arrangement while staying with another supplier for import.
So if you want the good rates, Octopus wants all of your business, not just the export side.
How to switch to an Octopus SEG tariff
Practical steps, roughly in order:
- Check you have the paperwork. You’ll need an MCS certificate (or Flexi-Orb) for your solar installation, and your DNO will need to have been notified. Your installer should have handled the DNO notification when the system went in.
- Get a smart meter with export capability. Most SMETS2 meters handle this, and certain SMETS1 meters (Secure brand) also work. Octopus will fit one free if you don’t have one.
- Switch your import to Octopus. For any of the four proper SEG tariffs, you need to be with Octopus for electricity supply first. If you’re not already, this is usually a 2-3 week process.
- Apply for the export tariff. Through your Octopus online account. You’ll need to upload the MCS certificate and confirm the DNO notification.
- Wait for the export MPAN. If you don’t already have an export Meter Point Administration Number, Octopus can apply for one for you. This adds time.
- For Intelligent Flux specifically: once you’re set up, you connect your battery through the Octopus app, which pairs with your battery manufacturer’s account.
Expect the full process to take four to eight weeks end to end. Sometimes faster if your paperwork’s in order and you already have a smart meter. Sometimes longer if the MPAN application drags.
FAQ
Do I need a battery for Intelligent Octopus Flux?
Yes, and it has to be from an eligible manufacturer. Without a battery Octopus can’t control the charging and discharging, which is the whole point of the tariff.
Can I switch between Octopus export tariffs?
Yes, and there are no exit fees. You can move between Outgoing, Agile Outgoing, Flux and Intelligent Flux as your setup changes. There is usually a 30-day cooldown if you leave a smart tariff and want to rejoin.
Do I have to be an Octopus import customer?
For all the good export tariffs, yes. Only the basic 4.1p Octopus SEG is available to non-Octopus import customers.
How often do Octopus SEG rates change?
Outgoing Octopus barely ever changes. It held at 15p from September 2022 to March 2026 before dropping to 12p. Agile Outgoing changes every 30 minutes. Flux and Intelligent Flux change quarterly, in line with the price cap.
Is Octopus Agile Outgoing worth it without a battery?
Probably not. Most of your export will happen in sunny afternoons when wholesale prices are low, because that’s when every other solar home is also exporting. You’d earn more on the flat-rate Outgoing tariff.
What happens if Octopus Flux reopens?
Existing Flux customers are unaffected. New signups are paused, but Octopus has said the tariff will return. If your battery isn’t on the Intelligent Flux list, Flux is worth watching for.
Conclusion
Most solar homes in the UK without a battery are best off on Outgoing Octopus. It’s simple, the rate’s still strong at 12p, and there’s nothing to manage.
If you’ve got a battery, check whether it’s on the Intelligent Octopus Flux compatibility list. If it is, that’s almost certainly your tariff. If it isn’t, Agile Outgoing is worth a look if you like being hands-on. Flux will likely return for those who prefer the manual time-of-use structure with any battery.
Octopus isn’t the right call for every setup, but for most UK solar and battery homes they’re competitive or best-in-class. The tariff names are a mess, but the logic underneath is straightforward once you’ve got the framework.
