Montana (MT) electricity and natural gas rates
Electricity
14.99¢
per kWh
Natural gas
$1.20
per therm
Gas and electricity in the same unit
A therm is 29.3 kilowatt hours of energy, so Montana's gas works out at 4.08¢ per kWh against 14.99¢ for electricity.
That compares the energy you buy, not the heat you get. A furnace throws away a fifth of every therm up the flue, while a heat pump delivers two to three times the heat in a kilowatt hour — so the cheaper unit here is not automatically the cheaper way to heat a house.
Residential sector, US Energy Information Administration, 2026-07. Updated monthly.
How Montana compares
At 14.99¢ per kWh, Montana is below the national average of 19.26¢, making it the 14th cheapest of the 51 states we track.
What a typical Montana household uses
Electricity a month
829 kWh
Bill a month
$115
Households in Montana use about as much electricity as the national average and pay 24% less than average. Light use and a below-average rate together, which is the cheapest position a state can be in. The climate pulls the other way here: 7,500 heating degree days against 500 cooling ones, so how a home is heated matters more than how it is cooled.
More on this: the average electric bill in Montana, including how far it swings between seasons.
Averaged over twelve months across 574,002 residential accounts in Montana. Source: EIA.
What this means for heating
Montana sees around 170 freezing nights a year. Whether a heat pump beats a furnace here depends on the gap between those two prices above — not on the equipment.
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