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Wholesale Electricity Price Today and Tomorrow

Today's and tomorrow's wholesale electricity prices per quarter hour for 16 European zones, with the cheapest hours, the daily average and negative prices.

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Run the washing machine now or wait until early afternoon? On a dynamic-price contract, the answer is in the day-ahead market price: every quarter hour gets its price the day before, in a European auction that closes at noon Central European Time. This page shows those prices for the zone you pick, in that zone's local time, in €/MWh or c€/kWh, along with their source: SMARD, the platform run by Germany's Federal Network Agency, or OMIE for Spain and Portugal. These are wholesale prices, before taxes, network charges and the supplier's margin: not the price per kWh on your bill, but the signal that shows when electricity is cheapest.

How to use it

  1. Pick your zone under “Bidding zone”: the eight “Main markets” come first and the eight others follow under “Other zones”. The tool starts on Germany / Luxembourg, or on the last zone you chose in this browser.
  2. Under “Day”, stay on “Today” or switch to “Tomorrow”: that button stays grayed out until tomorrow's prices are online, and the line below the buttons tells you where they stand. Changing zone takes you back to “Today”.
  3. Set “Unit” to €/MWh, the market's own unit, or to c€/kWh to think per kilowatt-hour, then “Step” to 15 min for every quarter hour or to 1 h for hourly averages.
  4. Read “Key figures for the day”: “Now” is the current slot's price, “Average”, “Low” and “High” sum up the day, and “Cheapest hour” and “Cheapest 3 h” show the cheapest windows with their times; for today, those windows start from the current slot.
  5. Scan the “Price per quarter-hour” chart: the current slot stands out in orange, a negative price drops below the zero line in green, and the sentence under the chart repeats the average, the low and the high with their times.
  6. If an error message appears instead of the figures, click “Try again”; otherwise the tool retries on its own every two minutes while the tab stays in the foreground.

How the tool gets these prices and works with them

In the European day-ahead market coupling, known as SDAC, the auction closes at noon Central European Time on the day before delivery. It sets one price per quarter hour for each bidding zone, and results are published from 12:55 onwards. The tool takes those prices for sixteen zones: fourteen from SMARD, including France, Germany-Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and northern Italy, and two from OMIE, the Iberian market operator, for Spain and Portugal. Times are the zone's own, so Portugal runs one hour behind Spain, and the status line gives the offset, such as UTC+2.

Your browser contacts neither SMARD nor OMIE: it asks OneKitly for today's and tomorrow's prices in the chosen zone. Before 12:55 on the day before, our server answers that they aren't published yet, without asking anyone. After that, it reads SMARD's weekly file or OMIE's daily file, keeps what it read for half an hour for SMARD and six hours for OMIE, and reads SMARD again straight away, at most once a minute, when a quarter hour that is already out is still missing from its copy. A missing price stays a gap in the grid: nothing is guessed, and a source outage produces an error message, never stand-in figures.

The key figures are worked out in your browser. The average covers the published slots, and the low and the high point to the first slot that reaches each extreme. “Cheapest hour” and “Cheapest 3 h” look for four or twelve consecutive quarter hours, all published, with the lowest average price, so they can start mid-hour, at 12:15 for instance; at the 1 h step, the tool first averages each hour and only works with whole hours. A tab left open in the foreground asks for tomorrow's prices again at 12:55, then every three minutes until they arrive, and moves to the next day at midnight; “Now” follows the clock without a new request.

When the market price is worth a look

  • Scheduling the washing machine, dishwasher or tumble dryer on a dynamic-price contract: “Cheapest 3 h” gives the window where a two- or three-hour cycle costs least, and “Tomorrow” lets you set a delayed start the evening before.
  • Charging an electric car at home: compare night and midday at a glance on the chart, then aim for the “Cheapest 3 h” window; to put a figure on the charge itself, the EV charging cost calculator takes over.
  • Keeping an eye on a market-indexed contract: each evening, check tomorrow's “Average” and “High” under “Tomorrow” to decide whether heavy use is worth moving.
  • Seeing for yourself the negative prices people talk about: the chart draws them in green below the zero line, and the sentence under it counts the slots affected.
  • Recording the day's benchmark for work, in an energy purchasing log or a report: the average in €/MWh, the delivery day and the time the source was read are all on the same page.
  • Comparing neighboring markets by switching zone, France and Belgium or Spain and Portugal, to see whether the same quarter hour costs the same on both sides.

Worked examples from real trading days

Every figure below comes from the tool's own functions applied to SMARD and OMIE responses recorded for its tests, and is written the way the screen shows it in English. The cheapest windows cover the whole day, as in the “Tomorrow” view; under “Today”, they start from the current slot.

  • France, Tuesday, September 15, 2026, 15 min step: “Average” 170.63 €/MWh, or 17.063 c€/kWh; “Low” 35.67 €/MWh (1:45 – 2:00 PM); “High” 287.04 €/MWh (6:45 – 7:00 PM); “Cheapest hour” 38.39 €/MWh (1:00 – 2:00 PM); “Cheapest 3 h” 47.44 €/MWh, or 4.744 c€/kWh (12:15 – 3:15 PM). At the 1 h step, the high becomes 258.26 €/MWh (7:00 – 8:00 PM) and the cheapest 3 h move to 1:00 – 4:00 PM, at 47.81 €/MWh.
  • Spain, Monday, September 14, 2026, 15 min step: “Average” 177.44 €/MWh, or 17.744 c€/kWh; “Low” 40.53 €/MWh (12:30 – 12:45 PM); “High” 300.00 €/MWh (7:45 – 8:00 PM), the first of five quarter hours at that price before 9:15 PM; “Cheapest hour” 43.43 €/MWh (12:00 – 1:00 PM); “Cheapest 3 h” 46.28 €/MWh, or 4.628 c€/kWh (11:30 AM – 2:30 PM).
  • Negative prices, Sunday, September 13, 2026: in Spain, 21 quarter hours in a row went below zero, from 11:00 AM to 4:15 PM, with a “Low” of -0.50 €/MWh, or -0.050 c€/kWh (12:15 – 12:30 PM), and the sentence under the chart counts 21 slots with a negative price. Portugal had only 15: from 12:45 to 1:00 PM Madrid time, 11:45 AM – 12:00 PM in Lisbon, Spain stood at -0.16 €/MWh and Portugal at 0.00 €/MWh.
  • Clock changes: Sunday, March 29, 2026, has 92 slots in France and in Spain alike, and the 1 h chart only 23 bars. That day, Spain ran 42 negative quarter hours in a row, down to -10.00 €/MWh (3:30 – 3:45 PM), for an “Average” of 0.18 €/MWh. On Sunday, October 26, 2025, Germany-Luxembourg and Spain had 100 slots, or 25 hours.

What these prices won't tell you

  • This is a wholesale price: taxes, network charges and the supplier's margin come on top, so the price per kWh on your bill is a different number, even on a dynamic contract that follows this market. No regulated or retail tariff is shown.
  • Tomorrow's prices reach the sources only after the auction: on September 14 and 15, 2026, SMARD's files were updated between about 1:30 PM and 3:10 PM Central European Time, depending on the zone. Until then, “Tomorrow” stays grayed out, even once the auction is over.
  • In Portugal, the last hour of the day, 11 PM to midnight, is midnight to 1 AM in Spain: it comes from the next day's auction, so until that auction is published the tool shows 92 of 96 slots.
  • Sixteen zones only. For Italy, that means the North zone: GME, which publishes the national PUN index, forbids commercial use of its prices without its written consent. Switzerland, which isn't coupled to the European market, isn't included, and neither are the United Kingdom or Finland.
  • A correction a source publishes afterwards doesn't show up at once: our server only rereads SMARD's file after half an hour and OMIE's after six hours, and an open tab doesn't ask again for a complete day before midnight.
  • Nothing beyond tomorrow and nothing before today: the tool makes no forecast and keeps no history, so yesterday's prices, or those of any past date, can't be viewed.

Privacy

Browser, and a server for one feature

For prices, your browser only talks to OneKitly, sending nothing but the zone and day you chose. Our server reads the public prices from the Bundesnetzagentur (SMARD) or from OMIE: those services see our server, never your IP address. The server records nothing about your visit; all it caches are the price files, which are the same for everyone. The key figures are calculated in your browser, and the last zone you picked stays in this browser only, in the allin_tools entry of local storage. The site's usage measurement records the page path, the language, the screen type and a random identifier tied to the tab, plus the fact that a zone or day was changed, that a price was shown or that loading failed, never a zone or a price. Only clicking the source link takes you to SMARD or OMIE.

Frequently asked questions

Why isn't this the price on my electricity bill?

Because it's the wholesale price set on the market the previous day, excluding taxes, network charges and the supplier's margin. Dynamic-price contracts follow these prices, but all those components still come on top, and no regulated or retail tariff is shown here. To estimate a bill, use the price per kWh stated in your own contract.

What time are tomorrow's electricity prices published?

The auction closes at noon Central European Time and its results are published from 12:55 onwards. SMARD and OMIE post them later: on September 14 and 15, 2026, SMARD's files were updated between about 1:30 PM and 3:10 PM, depending on the zone. Meanwhile, the line under the buttons says the auction is done but the source hasn't posted the prices yet, and a tab in the foreground checks again every three minutes until “Tomorrow” can be clicked.

What does a negative electricity price mean?

That at that moment production exceeds demand, often thanks to sun or wind, so the seller pays to deliver. On Sunday, September 13, 2026, Spain had 21 quarter hours below zero, down to -0.50 €/MWh, and the tool draws them in green below the zero line. On a dynamic-price contract those slots become the cheapest of the day, but taxes and network charges still apply even when the wholesale price is negative.

Why 96 prices a day rather than 24?

Since delivery on October 1, 2025, the European day-ahead market has set one price per quarter hour: 96 a day, 92 on the day clocks go forward and 100 when they go back. In France, the last hour of September 30, 2025, was 75.73 €/MWh across all four quarter hours, while on October 1 the first quarter hour was 102.08 €/MWh and the last of that hour 61.25. The 1 h step averages each hour.

Why does Portugal show 92 of 96 slots published?

Because the Portuguese day doesn't match the market day, which runs on Central European Time: from 11 PM to midnight in Lisbon, it's already the next day in Madrid. Those four quarter hours come from the following auction, published at 12:55 Central European Time, 11:55 AM in Lisbon in summer. On the morning of Sunday, September 13, 2026, the “Average” covered 92 prices, 117.94 €/MWh, and later all 96, 122.04 €/MWh.

Why does Italy only have the North zone, and no PUN?

Because GME, which publishes the PUN, Italy's national index, forbids commercial use of its prices without its written consent. So the tool shows the North zone, the only one published under an open license, by SMARD, and the “Good to know” note under the chart says so. A zone price isn't the PUN: if your contract is indexed to the PUN, this figure doesn't stand in for it. Switzerland is missing too, for another reason: it isn't coupled to the European market.

How do I convert €/MWh to c€/kWh?

Divide by ten: 1 €/MWh equals 0.1 c€/kWh, since a megawatt-hour holds 1,000 kilowatt-hours and a euro 100 cents. France's average for September 15, 2026, 170.63 €/MWh, therefore reads 17.063 c€/kWh once you pick c€/kWh under “Unit”. The tool keeps three decimals in c€/kWh and two in €/MWh, so no digit from the source is lost, and it never writes -0.00.

Does the price change during the day?

Not once it's published: each quarter hour keeps the price the auction set the day before, and the tool doesn't follow intraday markets. What moves is your place in the day: “Now” steps to the next slot with the clock, without a new request, and “Cheapest hour” and “Cheapest 3 h” only consider the slots still ahead. If the cheapest window has already passed, the tool shows the best one among those left.

Further reading

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