A heat pump quote in 2026 typically lands between £8,000 and £18,000 before grants, with most air source installs around £12,000.
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A heat pump quote in 2026 typically lands between £8,000 and £18,000 before grants, with most air source installs around £12,000. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme knocks £7,500 off straight away for eligible homes in England and Wales. A good quote shows the heat loss calculation, radiator sizing, hot water cylinder, controls, and MCS certification. Get at least three quotes and compare like-for-like on kW output, not just price.
A proper heat pump quote breaks down five things: the unit itself, the heat loss calculation, radiator or pipework changes, the hot water cylinder, and the install labour. Anything less is a guess on a clipboard.
The heat loss calculation is the most important number on the page. It tells you how many kilowatts your home actually needs on the coldest day of the year. Without it, the installer is sizing your system based on the boiler you already have, which was almost certainly oversized for a gas system and would be catastrophically oversized for a heat pump. Oversized heat pumps cycle on and off constantly, wear out faster, and run inefficiently.
Look for the phrase "MCS heat loss survey" or "room-by-room calculation". See our guide on how heat pumps work for more detail.
The quote should also list:
If the quote is one line that says "Air source heat pump fitted, £14,000", bin it.
We see this constantly. The cheap quotes skip the heat loss survey because doing one properly takes half a day. The expensive quotes include it as standard. That alone explains most of the price gap between installers.
Most air source heat pump installs cost £10,000 to £14,000 before the grant, with ground source running £18,000 to £30,000. The MCS-certified installer market has settled into a fairly predictable range.
Here's what we typically see for an air source system on a three-bed semi:
| System type | Typical quote | After BUS grant |
|---|---|---|
| Air source, 7kW | £10,500 – £12,500 | £3,000 – £5,000 |
| Air source, 9kW | £12,000 – £14,500 | £4,500 – £7,000 |
| Air source, 11kW+ | £13,500 – £17,000 | £6,000 – £9,500 |
| Ground source, 8kW | £20,000 – £28,000 | £12,500 – £20,500 |
Ground source is roughly double the cost because of the ground loops. You're paying for either boreholes drilled 80 to 120 metres deep, or horizontal trenches across a garden. Worth it for some homes, overkill for most. Our air source heat pump guide covers when each one makes sense.
The price depends heavily on three things the installer can't really negotiate: how leaky your house is, whether your existing radiators are big enough, and how complicated the pipework run is from the outdoor unit to the cylinder. A bungalow with a tidy plant room is cheap. A four-bed Victorian with the boiler in the loft and microbore pipework throughout is expensive.
For a deeper breakdown by property type, see our heat pump cost guide.
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme gives £7,500 off an air source or ground source heat pump in England and Wales, and it's the main one to know about. The grant runs until March 2030 and there's no income test.
Your installer claims it on your behalf. You don't fill in any forms yourself. The £7,500 is taken off the quote before you pay, so you only ever see the net figure. Biomass boilers get £5,000 and the newer air-to-air systems (which heat but don't do hot water) get £2,500. Full eligibility detail is in our Boiler Upgrade Scheme guide.
To qualify you need an EPC without outstanding recommendations for loft or cavity wall insulation. If your EPC says "install loft insulation", you'll need to either do that first or get a fresh EPC that doesn't mention it.
ECO4 is the other route, and it's a different beast. If your household receives qualifying benefits (Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Income Support and similar) and your home has a poor EPC rating (D or below for most flex routes), ECO4 can fund the entire installation. Not £7,500 off. The whole thing. It's administered by energy suppliers and the eligibility is fiddly, so check our ECO4 guide for the full criteria.
Warm Homes: Local Grant runs alongside ECO4 in some areas, with funding routed through local councils. Amounts vary. If you're in Scotland, the equivalent is Home Energy Scotland's interest-free loan plus grant, which is a separate scheme entirely.
Here's the honest bit. Most middle-income homeowners get the £7,500 BUS grant, full stop. ECO4 sounds amazing but the benefits threshold is real and the EPC requirements are tighter than people expect.
Get three quotes minimum. Then compare them on kW output, flow temperature, and radiator schedule, not just the headline price.
This is where most homeowners come unstuck. They assume two quotes for "an air source heat pump" are quoting the same thing. They aren't. One might be a 7kW unit at 45°C flow temperature with two radiator upgrades. The other might be an 11kW unit at 55°C flow temperature with no radiator changes. Same house, completely different systems, completely different running costs.
Lower flow temperatures are better. A heat pump running at 35°C to 45°C will use far less electricity than one running at 55°C. But achieving low flow temperatures usually means bigger radiators. So the cheap quote that promises "no radiator changes needed" is often promising a worse-running system.
Ask every installer for:
If an installer won't give you the heat loss calculation, walk away. We've seen homeowners locked into systems that don't actually heat the house in January because the survey was eyeballed rather than calculated.
Octopus Energy's heat pump arm and British Gas both offer installs at relatively standardised prices, which can be useful as a benchmark even if you don't go with them. Local MCS installers often beat the big names on price but vary wildly in quality. Reviews on Trustpilot and the MCS register are worth twenty minutes of your time.
The biggest red flag is a quote that doesn't mention your existing radiators. If your home has gas central heating designed for 70°C flow temperatures, almost no installer can drop in a heat pump at 45°C without changing at least some radiators.
A quote that says "all existing radiators retained" on a system that was previously running at high flow temperatures is either wrong or is going to produce a heat pump that runs at high flow temperatures too, which means high bills.
Other things we'd push back on:
And watch the running cost claims. Some installers quote SCOP figures from lab conditions, not from your actual home. A SCOP of 4.0 in a manufacturer's datasheet might translate to 3.2 in real-world running, which is the difference between a heat pump that beats gas on cost and one that's roughly level.
One more thing. If your installer suggests skipping the EPC requirement "because you'll improve the rating anyway", don't. The BUS grant is claimed against your current EPC. If it has outstanding insulation recommendations, the grant gets clawed back from the installer and you'll likely end up paying the difference.
Worth checking our insulation grants guide before getting heat pump quotes. Sorting loft insulation first costs a few hundred pounds and clears the BUS pathway.
Start by checking your eligibility for the grants you can actually access, then book three MCS-certified installers for in-person surveys.
Don't bother with online "instant quote" tools that ask for your postcode and bedroom count. They produce a number that has almost nothing to do with what you'll actually pay. Heat pumps are too dependent on the specific fabric of your home for remote pricing to work.
A proper installer visit takes 60 to 90 minutes. They'll measure rooms, check radiator sizes, look at your pipework, assess where the outdoor unit can sit, and ask about your hot water usage. If someone offers a quote without visiting, that's your answer on whether to trust them.
The full process from first quote to commissioned system usually runs 8 to 14 weeks. Surveys take 1 to 2 weeks to turn into formal quotes. The install itself is 3 to 5 days on site. Grant paperwork adds another 2 to 4 weeks at the end.
Check your eligibility for the £7,500 BUS grant and any local schemes before you book surveys. Knowing what you qualify for shapes which installers are worth talking to and what your real out-of-pocket cost will be.
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