The first question householders ask when looking into upgrading their heating system with a heat pump, is how much it will cost. This is no surprise. Even with government subsidies such as the current Boiler Upgrade Scheme, an air source heat pump is an expensive purchase. For information providers like heat pump installers, tradespeople hubs, or decarbonisation advocates, providing personalised cost information is all but impossible. It’s important though. Our consumer research showed that, without cost information up front, many householders are discouraged and stop exploring heat pump adoption.

A large number of factors influence cost, which until now made it challenging to estimate without detailed information about a building or even a site visit. However, a rich dataset exists that contains information about past heat pump installations including the hardware installed, the kind of home it’s installed into and the amount paid. This is held on the MCS database, which has information on every installation that has received a government grant.

In 2022, we created a tool that uses data from the MCS database to give householders an estimation of the price of a heat pump installation in their own home. We’re now using usage data and user feedback to release a new version of the tool that

• improves the usability, relevance and accuracy of the tool
• enables it to be easily integrated with partners’ own web pages and tools

While this work is ongoing, we recommend visiting the Get a Heat Pump website for more information of heat pump installation costs.