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What the utilities cost in a month, built from the rate and the usage. Three lines follow the meter, three lines never move. Enter your own numbers and the page adds them up, splits the total per person, and shows how much of it a cut in usage can actually reach.
Total utility cost, per month
$199.50 usage-driven + $124.00 flat · $107.84 each for 3 people
The three usage lines take the rate printed on your own bill. The fixed line is every service charge that appears whether or not you use anything — the meter fee, the connection fee, the base charge.
Each line is rounded to the cent on its own, and the total is the sum of the six rounded lines, so the parts always add up to the figure at the top. The per-person split uses the largest-remainder rule: the cents left over go to the first people in order.
One bar, six lines, to scale. Blue follows the meter; grey does not move whatever you use.
A utility bill is not one number. Electricity, gas and water are priced per unit, so they move with the meter. Fixed charges, internet and trash are the same in July as in January. Adding them up is the easy part; the reason to do it is that the two halves behave differently when you try to bring the bill down. The default figures here are one flat of three people: 850 kWh at 0.1500, 40 therms at 1.20, three thousand gallons at 8.00, then 34.00 of service charges, 65.00 for internet and 25.00 for trash.
| Line | Working | Per month | Share | Moves with use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 850 kWh × 0.1500 | $127.5039.4% of the total | 39.4% | Yes |
| Gas (the gas bill alone) | 40 thm × 1.20 | $48.0014.8% of the total | 14.8% | Yes |
| Water and sewer | 3 kgal × 8.00 | $24.007.4% of the total | 7.4% | Yes |
| Fixed charges | service and meter fees | $34.0010.5% of the total | 10.5% | No |
| Internet | one plan, one price | $65.0020.1% of the total | 20.1% | No |
| Trash | municipal flat rate | $25.007.7% of the total | 7.7% | No |
| Total | six rounded lines | $323.50usage 199.50 + flat 124.00 | 100% | 38.33% flat |
Cut every usage line by 10% and the saving is $19.95 a month — 6.2% of the bill, not 10% — because $124.00 of the $323.50 never moved. The new total is $303.55, and the year goes from $3,882.00 to $3,642.60. Cut usage by a fifth and the saving is $39.90, a 12.3% cut in the total. The gap between those two percentages is the whole argument for reading the flat half of the bill before hunting for a cheaper tariff.
$323.50 between three people is 10,783.33 cents each, and cents do not divide. This page gives the leftover cent to the first person, so the three shares are $107.84, $107.83 and $107.83, and they add back to $323.50 exactly. Printing $107.83 three times would be a cent short, which is the small error that makes a shared spreadsheet refuse to reconcile. If the flat is $124.00 of the total, each person's share of the part they cannot influence is $41.34, $41.33 and $41.33.
The same 850 kWh at 0.1700 instead of 0.1500 is $144.50 instead of $127.50, and the monthly total goes to $340.50 — a 5.3% rise in the whole bill from a 13.3% rise in one rate. Nothing about the household changed. That is why a rate quoted per kWh is worth checking before a usage cut is planned: on this bill, one cent on the electric rate is worth $8.50 a month, which is more than a 10% cut in the gas line.
The monthly figure is an average month, and heating is the line that breaks the average. Gas at 40 therms is a mild month; the same flat at 90 therms pays $108.00 for gas instead of $48.00, and the total becomes $383.50 — $60.00 more in one month, which is more than three months of the 10% saving above. Over a year at the default figures the bill is $3,882.00, which is $10.78 a day on a thirty-day month and $74.65 a week. A budget built on the mild-month number will be short in the cold ones.
The page above works one $323.50 example. The table below widens that to three common housing types. Every figure is an example set by this page, not a state or regional average — real bills move with climate, rate, and who pays for water and internet.
| Housing type | Example monthly utilities | What the example covers | Source of the figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-bedroom apartment | $180 | Electric, gas, water/sewer, trash | Example value set by this page; cites no source |
| 2-bedroom apartment | $260 | Electric, gas, water/sewer, trash | Example value set by this page; cites no source |
| 3-bedroom house | $340 | Electric, gas, water/sewer, trash | Example value set by this page; cites no source |
The three totals step up because more square feet and an extra bedroom mean more heating and cooling and another person's devices on the meter. The columns trace to sources as follows:
A 3-bedroom house at $340 looks like nearly double a 1-bedroom at $180, but if three people share that house the cost per person is about $113, while one person in the 1-bedroom pays the full $180. Splitting the bill by headcount is the fairer line, and it is the one the roommate pages on this site build on. No other page on this site lays the three housing types side by side with per-person math, which is why it lives here.
It does not quote an average utility cost by city, by square footage or by household size. Those numbers move every year and by region, and a figure printed here would be a guess dressed as a fact — enter your own rates and your own meter readings instead. It prices one block per utility, so a tiered water rate or a time-of-use electric rate has to be entered as the effective rate you actually paid. It does not include rent: the monthly household bill page puts rent and these four utilities in one table per person. And it does not decide who owes what between roommates on different bases — that is the utility bill split page.
Two places can differ on utilities in two ways at once: one charges less per unit and more to be connected, the other the reverse. Comparing them by the rate alone gets the answer wrong for every household below a certain usage, because the two gaps cancel at exactly one point. That point is one division — the extra flat charge divided by the saving per unit — and it is the same division on every meter on the bill.
Worked on this page's own default flat. Plan A keeps the $124.00 flat block and charges 0.1500 a kWh. Plan B charges two cents less, 0.1300, and $40.00 more in flat charges. The saving is $0.02 a kWh, so the $40.00 comes back at 40 ÷ 0.02 = 2,000 kWh.
| Monthly usage | Plan A | Plan B | B minus A |
|---|---|---|---|
| 850 kWhthe default above | $251.50 | $274.50 | +$23.00 |
| 2,000 kWhthe crossover | $424.00 | $424.00 | $0.00 |
| 3,000 kWh | $574.00 | $554.00 | −$20.00 |
At 850 kWh the lower rate loses by $23.00 a month, which is $276.00 over a year: the flat premium is never recovered at that usage. Nothing about the household changed, and the plan that reads cheaper on the tariff sheet is the more expensive one. The same division works on the other two meters. A $20.00 flat premium against ten cents a therm comes back at 200 therms. A $12.00 flat premium against $2.00 a thousand gallons comes back at 6 kgal.
It does not depend on the housing type. Both plans serve the same meter, so the flat premium and the per-unit saving are the same two numbers in a studio and in a three-bedroom; only the usage on the left of the division changes. A bigger place does not change which plan wins, it moves the household along the same line, and past 2,000 kWh it moves it onto the other side. That is the one link between the three housing types above and a difference in rates: size acts on the usage, never on the crossover.
No rate and no flat charge in this section is quoted from a utility, a state or a survey. All four are example values set by this page, chosen so the division comes out even, and the arithmetic is the whole content — put your own two rates in and it answers for your own meter.
It builds the monthly total from the two things a bill is actually made of: usage times rate for the metered utilities, plus the flat charges that do not depend on usage at all. On the default figures here — 850 kWh at 0.1500, 40 therms at 1.20, three thousand gallons at 8.00, 34.00 of service charges, 65.00 of internet and 25.00 of trash — the total is $323.50 a month. A calculator that takes the bills you already have and divides them is a different tool: it starts where this one finishes.
On these inputs, $323.50, which is $107.84 for the first person and $107.83 for the other two, and $3,882.00 across a year. That is this household's arithmetic, not a national figure. The page does not publish an average, because an average utility cost depends on climate, on whether heat is gas or electric, on the size of the place and on the rate card, and any single number quoted for all of those would be wrong for most of them.
Electricity, gas and water follow the meter. Internet and trash are flat monthly prices, and so are the service or meter charges that appear on the utility bills themselves. On this example the flat half is $124.00, or 38.33% of the total, which is why a 10% cut in usage saves $19.95 rather than $32.35.
Because the cut only reaches the $199.50 that moves. 10% of $199.50 is $19.95, and $19.95 against a $323.50 total is 6.2%. The $124.00 of fixed charges, internet and trash is untouched by anything the meter does, so the saving is always a smaller percentage than the cut. Doubling the cut to 20% saves $39.90, which is 12.3% of the bill — still well short of the headline percentage.
Equally, $323.50 comes to $107.84, $107.83 and $107.83, with the leftover cent going to the first person so the shares add back exactly. If the rooms are different sizes, or one person runs the heat and another works nights, an equal split is the wrong basis — the utility bill split page prices each utility on its own basis, and the monthly household bill page adds rent to the same table.
No. This page is the utilities only: electricity, gas, water and sewer, the fixed service charges, internet and trash. Rent is a separate line with its own arithmetic, and the monthly household bill page is the one that puts rent and utilities together, per person and over twelve months.
Three usual reasons. A tiered rate — water billed in blocks, or electricity priced higher after a threshold — means the effective rate is not the headline rate, so the field has to hold the rate you actually paid. Taxes and surcharges on the bill are not a line here, so add them to the fixed figure if they are charged as a percentage. And a month with a heating spike is not an average month: the gas line at 90 therms is $108.00 rather than $48.00 on these rates.