Is gas cheaper than electricity in the USA?

A state's price covers the twelve months ending with the latest month EIA has published.

• Electricity is what households paid divided by what they bought over those months (residential revenue ÷ residential sales), in cents per kWh. Where EIA's file lacks a month of revenue or sales for a state (2 states today), the plain mean of the twelve monthly prices is used instead.
• Natural gas is each month's residential price weighted by the volume sold that month, converted from dollars per thousand cubic feet to dollars per therm with the state's own heat content.
• Propane and heating oil are the plain mean of EIA's weekly residential prices over the last complete heating season (Oct 2025–Mar 2026). EIA surveys them only in those months, publishes no volumes, and covers 38 states for propane and 21 for heating oil.
• US figures use EIA's national series under the same rules. They are not an average of the states.

EIA withholds some months for some states. A state with a withheld gas month in the twelve uses its last complete calendar year instead, and its row says which year. That is 18 of the 51 today.

One million BTU is 293.08 kWh, 10 therms, 10.93 gallons of propane or 7.22 gallons of heating oil. The ratio is the electricity price per million BTU divided by the gas price per million BTU.

The EIA average is the published price, fixed monthly charge included. Every headline number, count and map uses it.

The estimated per-therm rate takes the fixed charge out. It is our estimate, not a published price. A gas bill is modelled as a fixed charge per customer plus a rate per therm; then the month's average price rises as the volume sold falls. Fitting a straight line to the monthly price against one divided by the monthly volume, over the 36 months to Jul 2026, gives the per-therm rate as the line's intercept.

The estimate is dropped when fewer than 24 of the 36 months have data, when the line explains less than half of the variation in the price, when it implies a negative fixed charge or a rate that is not positive, or when it comes out above the EIA average. Today it holds in 42 of the 51 states. Where it does not, tables show a dash and pages use the EIA average for that state and say so in its row.

Electricity has the same bias in principle, since fixed charges are inside its average too. It has not been measured, so there is no second electricity figure.

A price is rounded once, as stored: cents per kWh to two decimals, dollars per therm to four, dollars per gallon to three. Every cost on a page is computed from those stored prices and from the energy figures in that page's method block, so anyone can redo a row with a calculator. Tables print gas to three decimals; the downloadable files hold the fourth.

The "Updated" date on a page moves only when one of its numbers changes.