Intelligent Octopus Go: rates, compatible chargers and is it worth it?

How Intelligent Octopus Go works

You link your car or charger to the Octopus app, set a “ready by” time between 4am and 11am and the charge you want. Octopus then schedules charging in the cheapest half-hours between plug-in and departure, using wholesale price signals. Octopus says that is usually when the grid is greener too.

Two things get the 7.6p rate:

• Every night, 23:30 to 05:30, for the whole home. A washing machine or dishwasher run in that window pays 7.6p.
• Up to six hours of smart car charging a day, at whatever time Octopus schedules it. If that falls outside the night window, the whole home also gets 7.6p while the car is charging.

Outside those periods you pay your regional day rate. If you need charge now, the “bump” (boost) button starts it immediately, billed at the day rate unless it happens to fall in the night window, and you can stop it from the app. Billing is in 30-minute blocks: a 10-minute charge bills a full half hour at the cheap rate for both car and home.

It only works at home. Away from home you pay the charger’s price, though Octopus gives 8% off Electroverse public charging.

The six-hour cap, and what it means

On 7 May 2026 Octopus announced a change to how the tariff bills. It splits car and home into four rates:

Octopus says over 80% of charging sessions take under six hours, so the cap is aimed at the rare long session. Charging time is what counts, not time plugged in. If you need seven hours, the first six are cheap and the last is billed at the day rate whenever it happens.

How much is six hours? It depends on how fast your charger delivers:

A typical 9,400-mile year averages 7.75 kWh a day, about an hour on a 7.4kW charger. The cap only bites if you charge very slowly, regularly drain a big battery, or boost. Octopus does not say how the allowance is shared between two cars on one account, so ask before relying on it.

Octopus also added a Charge Cap switch in the app, which stops the car before it reaches the day rate, and sends notifications if you are on course to exceed six hours. Ohme users choose Charging, then Prioritise, then Prioritise Savings; the default, Prioritise Target, can run past six hours at the day rate. BMW, Mini and Polestar apps cannot stop at six hours, so you must lower the target by hand when Octopus warns you.

Octopus’s own FAQ page still says it will apply the limit “in 2026”, while the May blog says it is rolling out. Check the Devices tab in your app to see whether your account has it.

Rates in October 2026

London has the lowest standing charge (42.29p), and North Wales, Merseyside and Cheshire the highest (66.74p, with the dearest day rate). Check your postcode on Octopus’s tariff page.

Octopus EV’s own page says the standard rate is 7.7p; Octopus’s API and tariff page both say 7.6p, so we use 7.6p. If VAT returns to 5% in April 2027 on the same pre-VAT price, 7.6p becomes 7.98p (our derivation).

Octopus says typical customers on the fixed tariff saved £771 between May 2025 and April 2026 compared with Flexible Octopus, and that 7.6p is “up to 70%” below the 26.32p cap average. The second claim recomputes (1 minus 7.6 divided by 26.32 is 71%), but it compares unit rates only and ignores the standing charge and the higher day rate.

Is it worth it?

Take a home using 2,500 kWh and a car covering 9,400 miles (2,829 kWh). At the average regional rates:

• Intelligent Octopus Go: £917.50 house at the day rate, £215.04 car and £198.34 standing charge, total £1,331.
• Standard tariff at the Ofgem cap: £1,603.
• With 30% of the house’s use moved into the night window: about £1,113, a £490 saving.

The break-even against the capped standard tariff is about 4,570 miles a year if none of your household use shifts. Our charging cost calculator shows the car side for your own mileage, and the cost-to-charge guide gives the arithmetic by battery size.

Intelligent Octopus Go or Octopus Go?

Octopus Go’s day rate is 1.4p lower in every region and the standing charges are identical. For a home with 2,500 kWh of daytime use, the two tariffs cost the same at about 6,100 miles a year if nothing moves to the night; below that, Octopus Go is cheaper. Shifting household use to the night moves the crossover lower. That is our arithmetic from Octopus’s regional rates.

Compatible cars and chargers

Octopus says Intelligent Octopus Go works with over 280 cars and selected chargers, and needs an iPhone on iOS 14 or later or an Android phone on version 7 or later. Cars fall into groups that decide how many you can add:

• Group 1, Universal: Ford and Tesla. Any number, fully combinable.
• Group 2, Conditional: Audi, BMW, Mini, CUPRA, Nissan, Porsche, SEAT, Skoda and Volkswagen. Several cars, but different brands.
• Group 3, Limited: Renault and Polestar. Only one car from this group per account.
• Group 4, Chargers: one charger integration per account, which cannot be mixed with any car integration.

The chargers we cover that Octopus lists as generally available are below.

Octopus also lists Wallbox Pulsar Max, Plus and Pro as generally available. Two others are live but still marked “testing”: Easee One (Easee says it is “not fully supported” and its own schedule must be off) and Zaptec Go 2. Octopus lists Pod’s Solo, the Tesla Wall Connector and every EO model as not available, though a Tesla can still join through the car. Octopus’s own chargers work with any EV. Andersen’s A3, A2, Quartz and Quartz Vision integrate, except older A2 units with serial numbers starting “22” and the three-phase A2.

Connecting through the car or the charger

Octopus prefers the car. A car integration reads the exact battery level, so Octopus can hit your target by your ready-by time. A charger integration only tops up by a relative amount, which is less precise. You can ask Octopus to connect through a compatible charger instead (Ohme says this takes about a working day), and you must not link both.

Charger integrations change how the charger behaves. With Ohme you manage schedules in the Ohme app and not the Octopus app. Hypervolt shows “Octopus mode” and runs in Boost during Octopus windows, so its solar modes are switched off. Indra’s app stops showing per-charge costs and its own schedules are disabled.

Gotchas

• Offline chargers. Ohme says that if the charger is offline when you plug in, it starts a Max charge billed at peak rates. Owners report Wi-Fi and 4G drop-outs on both Ohme and Hypervolt. Hypervolt keeps a stored schedule if it goes offline.
• Boost and bump charges. An hour’s boost at 7.4kW costs about £2.72 at the 36.70p average day rate, against about £0.56 at 7.6p.
• Home location. Octopus treats the car’s location when you signed up as “home”. If you onboarded away from home, smart charging may not start; disconnect and reconnect at home.
• Other schedules. Any schedule in the car or charger can override Octopus. Switch them off.
• Flexibility lock-in. Octopus enrols you in a flexibility service, so you cannot join another one (for example for a home battery) while you are on the tariff.
• Solar and batteries. Octopus bills what the smart meter imports and advises against solar-divert settings; blind a home battery to the car charger. Our solar guide covers the detail.
• In-home displays. Octopus says they cannot keep up with dynamic scheduling; use the app.
• One property. The tariff is linked to a single property and needs half-hourly meter readings.

The Octopus EV tariffs comparison sets Intelligent Octopus Go against Agile and the Power Pack, and the EV tariff comparison shows how it stacks up against EDF, E.ON and the rest.