Variable or fixed electricity contract? The answer depends on your situation.
The choice is less about what the electricity price will do and more about how your business looks — and how much variation your budget can take.
The question is usually framed wrongly
Variable or fixed is the question everyone asks, and it can't be answered in general terms. It isn't about what the electricity price will do — it's about how your business looks and how much variation your budget can absorb.
A company with even consumption around the clock and healthy margins has entirely different conditions from one with production peaks and squeezed profitability. The same contract can be right for one and wrong for the other in the same month.
What actually decides the choice
| Contract type | Suits you when | The risk |
|---|---|---|
| Variable | You can absorb swings and want to follow the market over time | Individual months can get expensive |
| Fixed | Budget certainty matters more than the lowest possible average price | You pay a premium for the security |
| Mix | You want to secure a base volume and leave the rest variable | Requires someone to follow it up |
Over longer periods variable has historically been cheaper on average, but that says nothing about how any single winter turns out.
The grid fee nobody negotiates
An electricity bill consists of two parts: the supply, where you choose the provider, and the grid fee, which you can't negotiate because the grid owner is a monopoly in your area.
But the grid fee can often be influenced anyway, because it's based partly on your subscribed capacity and your peak loads. If the business has changed since the subscription was set, you may be paying for capacity you no longer use. It's one of the most common and most overlooked items in the whole category.
Look at your highest measured load over the past twelve months and compare it with what you subscribe to. If the subscription sits well above the peak, you're paying for headroom you don't need — and it can be lowered without negotiating with anyone.
What you can do yourself
- Find out whether you have variable, fixed or a mix — surprisingly many don't know, especially if the contract has renewed automatically.
- Check when the contract expires. Electricity contracts are often tied for one to three years and renew silently.
- Separate supply and grid fee on the invoice and see what share is which.
- Compare subscribed capacity against actual peak load.
What takes more work is judging whether the margin you pay on the supply side is reasonable. The margin is what the provider earns, it's rarely stated clearly, and it varies more than most people think between contracts of the same type.
Last reviewed 3 August 2026. The figures are based on negotiated contracts and quotes gathered for Swedish companies with 20–100 employees. They are typical ranges, not guarantees — your cost depends on volume, contract length and the requirements you set. We update them when we see the market has moved.
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