Gas boiler alternatives: what are your options?

Most people start looking for gas boiler alternatives at an awkward moment. The boiler is making a noise it did not used to make, or the engineer has used the word "condemned", and suddenly there is a decision to make that will shape the next fifteen years of heating bills.

The lists you find are all much the same: seven or eight technologies, a paragraph each, and no way of telling which one is actually for you. So this one is organised around the two things that separate the options in practice — what they cost to run, and whether there is any public money behind them.

The short answer

There are nine realistic alternatives to a gas boiler in a UK home today: an air source heat pump, a ground source heat pump, an air-to-air heat pump, a biomass boiler, an electric boiler, storage heaters, infrared panels, a connection to a heat network, and a hybrid heat pump and boiler system.

Four of those attract a government grant, and the money is not spread evenly. An air source, ground source or water source heat pump gets £7,500 in England and Wales, rising to £9,000 if you are off the gas grid on oil or LPG. An air-to-air heat pump gets £2,500. A biomass boiler gets £5,000, but only if your home is rural and off the gas grid. Electric boilers, storage heaters, infrared panels and hybrid systems get nothing at all, and a heat network is a connection rather than a system you buy.

That is the whole comparison in one line: for most homes, an air source heat pump is the only alternative you can practically fit that carries £7,500 of public money and running costs that can land below what a gas boiler costs today.

What counts as a gas boiler alternative?

An alternative has to do two jobs your boiler currently does: heat the rooms, and heat the water. Some of the options below do both. Some only do one, and need a second system alongside them, which is a cost people often discover late.

It also has to work in your house as it stands, or with changes you are willing to make. A heat pump install is a whole-system upgrade rather than a like-for-like boiler swap — it usually brings a hot water cylinder, and sometimes pipework or larger radiators, because the system runs at a lower, steadier temperature. That is more work than dropping a new combi on the same brackets, and it is also where most of the comfort and efficiency gain comes from.

The nine alternatives, one by one

Air source heat pump (air-to-water). The mainstream choice, and the one most UK installs use. It takes heat from outside air and moves it into your existing wet system of radiators or underfloor pipes, plus a cylinder for hot water. It heats and cools if it is a reversible unit configured that way at install. Grant: £7,500, or £9,000 off the gas grid on oil or LPG. Does both jobs.

Ground source heat pump. Same principle, but the heat comes from pipes buried in the ground rather than from the air, which makes it more efficient and more stable in cold weather. It needs either a decent garden for a horizontal loop or a borehole, and it costs considerably more to install. Grant: £7,500, or £9,000 off the gas grid on oil or LPG. Does both jobs.

Air-to-air heat pump. Blows warm air through indoor units instead of heating water in radiators, and reverses to cool in summer. It is efficient and comparatively cheap to fit, and Nesta's research puts it as a viable option for almost all UK homes. The catch is that most air-to-air units do not heat your hot water, so you will need an immersion cylinder or another source alongside it. Be careful what you choose: keeping the old gas boiler on for hot water turns the installation into a hybrid, and hybrids are excluded from the grant. An immersion cylinder keeps you eligible. Grant: £2,500. Heats rooms only.

Biomass boiler. Burns wood pellets or logs in a wet system much like your gas boiler does. It suits large rural properties with somewhere to store fuel and someone willing to handle it. Grant: £5,000, but only for rural properties that are not connected to the gas grid. Does both jobs.

Electric boiler. Heats water with an element, feeds your existing radiators and cylinder, and needs no flue, no gas connection and no gas safety inspection. Simple to fit, compact, and the running cost is the problem: see the next section. Grant: none. Does both jobs.

Storage heaters. Charge overnight on a cheaper off-peak rate and release heat through the day. Modern high-heat-retention units are a long way better than the night storage heaters people remember, and they pair well with a time-of-use tariff. They do not heat your water. Grant: none. Heats rooms only.

Infrared panels. Warm surfaces and people directly rather than warming the air. They are useful in a single room, a conservatory or a garden office. They are electric resistance heating, so the running-cost maths below applies to them in full. Grant: none. Heats rooms only.

Heat network connection. Your home takes hot water from a shared local source through a heat interface unit, with no boiler, no flue and no cylinder to maintain. It is only an option if a network runs near you, which mostly means dense urban areas. Since 27 January 2026 heat networks in Great Britain have been regulated by Ofgem, which brought them under rules on billing, service standards, complaints handling and protections for vulnerable customers for the first time. Protections on how prices are set are following behind rather than already in force. Grant: not applicable. Does both jobs.

Hybrid heat pump and gas boiler. A small heat pump does the everyday heating and the existing boiler covers the coldest days and the hot water. It sounds like a sensible halfway house, and it is worth knowing that Ofgem excludes it: heat pumps installed alongside a separate fossil fuel boiler, and heat pumps with an integrated fossil fuel boiler, are both ineligible for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. Grant: none. Does both jobs.

A tenth option gets talked about and is not yet real. A hydrogen-ready boiler is a gas boiler that could in principle be converted if your local network were ever switched to hydrogen. No hydrogen boiler is commercially available to UK homeowners, and the government's strategic decision on hydrogen for home heating has not been published. Buying one today buys you a gas boiler.

Which alternatives actually get a grant?

This is the part most comparisons skip, and it is the part that moves the number on your bill.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is open to property owners in England and Wales, including landlords and second homes. Grant values as they stand: £7,500 for an air source, ground source or water source heat pump; £2,500 for an air-to-air heat pump; £5,000 for a biomass boiler in a rural off-gas-grid property. From 21 July 2026 to 31 March 2027, eligible off-gas-grid homes on oil or LPG can get £9,000 towards an air source or ground source heat pump.

Three details that catch people out:

• You do not apply and you never handle the money. Your installer applies and takes the grant off the quoted price before you pay anything. Since 28 April 2026 they are required to pass the full amount on as an upfront discount.

• Electric heating counts as a qualifying starting point. If your home runs on storage heaters or an electric boiler today, with no heat pump, you are eligible for the grant in the same way a gas household is. Most "alternatives to a gas boiler" articles assume you have gas and never mention this.

• Insulation is not a condition. You do not need to insulate first to qualify, though your installer may well suggest it.

• One grant per property, and the clock runs. The installation has to be commissioned within 120 days of the application, so this is not something to apply for and sit on.

• Biomass carries extra conditions beyond being rural and off grid: the boiler needs an emissions certificate, and self-build properties are excluded.

Scotland runs its own scheme. The Home Energy Scotland Grant and Loan offers up to £15,000 for an air source or ground source heat pump, made up of a £7,500 grant and an interest-free loan of up to £7,500, rising to £16,500 with the extra £1,500 grant for qualifying rural properties. It applies to your only or main home, so second homes and rental properties are out, and a replacement heat pump gets the loan without the grant.

Northern Ireland has no direct equivalent. The Boiler Replacement Scheme there has closed, and support now runs through area-based energy grants. NI Energy Advice is the place to start.

There is more detail in our guide to heat pump grants and our walkthrough of heat pump grant eligibility.

What does each alternative have to beat on running costs?

Six of the nine run on electricity. Biomass runs on wood, a hybrid still burns gas for part of the year, and a heat network sells you heat on its own tariff. So for most of the list, the question that decides the running cost is the price of a unit of electricity against a unit of gas, and how much heat each option gets out of that unit.

Under Ofgem's price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026, the average direct debit customer pays 26.32p per kWh for electricity and 7.97p per kWh for gas. That is a ratio of about 3.3 to 1. It was about 3.6 to 1 over the summer, though Ofgem warns the two periods cannot be compared directly: most of the narrowing is the temporary removal of VAT from domestic electricity, which runs from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027 and is due to end there. On a like-for-like basis before VAT the ratio moved much less, from about 3.6 to about 3.5.

There is a second number worth having. Standing charges under the same cap are 54.83p a day for electricity and 29.68p a day for gas. A household that goes fully electric and disconnects the gas supply stops paying the gas standing charge, which is worth roughly £108 a year on its own.

Here is what that means for each type of alternative.

Electric resistance heating — electric boilers, storage heaters, infrared panels. These are close to 100% efficient, which sounds excellent and is the trap. One unit of electricity gives you one unit of heat, so heat costs you 26.32p per kWh. A gas boiler running at 85% turns 7.97p of gas into a kWh of heat for about 9.38p. On a flat tariff, resistance heating costs roughly 2.8 times what your gas boiler costs to run. A good off-peak tariff narrows that considerably for storage heaters, which is exactly why they are usually sold with one, but the underlying arithmetic does not change.

Heat pumps. A heat pump does not make heat, it moves it, so one unit of electricity delivers three or four units of heat. At today's cap, a heat pump has to reach a seasonal efficiency of about 2.8 to match an 85% gas boiler, or about 3.0 to match a 90% one. Energy Systems Catapult's Electrification of Heat trial, reporting in 2023 and 2024, measured a median seasonal performance factor of about 2.8 across the air source heat pumps it monitored, and well-designed systems run comfortably above that. So a heat pump on a standard tariff is around break-even to better against gas, and clearly better on a heat pump tariff, where the electricity rate is the thing doing the work. Our guide to how heat pumps work explains where the extra units come from.

Biomass. Runs on the price of wood pellets rather than gas or electricity, which moves on its own cycle and depends heavily on delivery access and storage.

Heat networks. You pay the network's tariff, not the price cap. Ofgem regulation now gives you protections on how you are billed and how complaints are handled, which you did not have before 2026. Protections on how the price itself is set are still coming.

What all of that comes down to: the design and the tariff matter more than the badge on the box. A poorly designed heat pump on the wrong tariff can cost more than the boiler it replaced. A well-designed one on the right tariff costs less. We go through the head-to-head in heat pumps versus gas boilers.

Do I have to replace my gas boiler?

No. There is no legal deadline requiring you to remove a working gas boiler from an existing home, and the government's Warm Homes Plan sets no phase-out date for them. You can service it, repair it, and replace it with another gas boiler when it fails.

What has changed applies to new homes. The Future Homes Standard updates to Part L of the Building Regulations for England were published in March 2026 and come into force on 24 March 2027, with transitional arrangements running a further twelve months. New homes built to that standard will use heat pumps, heat networks or other low carbon systems rather than gas boilers.

So the timing is yours. The reason to think about it now is the money on the table: £7,500 today against no grant at all for a replacement gas boiler, and a £9,000 uplift for off-grid homes that expires on 31 March 2027.

Will I need planning permission?

Usually not. Most heat pump installations in England fall under permitted development, provided the unit meets the size, siting and noise conditions, and from 28 May 2026 the noise assessment has to be done under MCS 020(a).

Where your home sits matters separately from the unit itself. Permitted development does not apply at all inside the curtilage of a listed building or a scheduled monument, extra siting rules apply in conservation areas and World Heritage sites, and a council can remove permitted development rights locally with an Article 4 direction.

Where an application is needed, the odds are better than the reputation suggests. Nesta analysed nearly 20,000 heat pump planning applications from 260 council websites across Great Britain, published on 2 September 2026. Across the residential applications, more than 80% were approved, including 80% of the applications for buildings with a listed status. Nesta's point was that households have spent up to £8 million over ten years on applications and sound tests for a process that approves the overwhelming majority of them.

Your installer should tell you at survey which category your home falls into. It is a question worth asking early rather than late.

How do I narrow it down for my home?

Five questions get most households to an answer.

1. Are you on the gas grid? If you are off grid on oil or LPG, the £9,000 uplift and the running-cost gap both point hard at a heat pump. Our guide to replacing an oil boiler covers that case.

2. Do you have a wet system? Radiators and pipework already in place favour an air source heat pump, a ground source heat pump, an electric boiler or a biomass boiler. No wet system, and air-to-air or storage heaters come into range.

3. Is there somewhere to put a cylinder? This is the question that most often reshapes the answer. If there is nowhere at all, air-to-air plus a separate source of hot water starts to make sense.

4. Is there outdoor space, and what is next to it? A heat pump needs a sensible position with airflow and a reasonable distance from a neighbour's window.

5. What is your electricity tariff? Every electric option lives or dies on this. If you are on a standard flat rate and have no intention of moving, take the resistance-heating figures above seriously.

If the answers point at a heat pump, the next question is usually whether your particular house is suitable, and that needs a heat loss survey rather than a guess. You can see what a heat pump would look like for your home in a couple of minutes without a survey, and if you want the cost spread rather than paid upfront, the Heat Pump Plan bundles the system with servicing and maintenance for the full term. There is more on both at heat pump finance.

Find out where your home stands

The list narrows quickly once it is applied to an actual house. Get an instant estimate to see what a heat pump would mean for yours, or read more about heat pumps first. If your boiler is already on borrowed time, start with replacing your boiler.

We are MCS certified, we apply for the grant on your behalf and take it off the price before you pay, and we stay with the system after it is in.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best alternative to a gas boiler in the UK?
For most homes on the gas grid, an air source heat pump. It is the only option that heats rooms and water, works with your existing radiators, attracts the full £7,500 grant, and can run at or below the cost of a gas boiler. Homes without a wet system or without space for a cylinder should look at air-to-air. Rural off-grid homes with fuel storage should also price a biomass boiler.

Is an electric boiler cheaper to run than gas?
No. An electric boiler is close to 100% efficient, but electricity costs about 3.3 times what gas costs per unit under Ofgem's October 2026 cap, so heating with one costs roughly 2.8 times as much as an 85%-efficient gas boiler on a flat tariff. Its advantages are the install, the lack of a flue and the lack of a gas safety check, not the running cost.

Can I get a grant for anything other than a heat pump?
Only a biomass boiler, at £5,000, and only if your property is rural, off the gas grid and not a self-build, with an emissions certificate for the boiler. Electric boilers, storage heaters, infrared panels, hybrid systems and hydrogen-ready boilers get nothing from the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

Are hybrid heat pump and boiler systems eligible for the grant?
No. Ofgem excludes heat pumps installed alongside a separate fossil fuel boiler and heat pumps with an integrated fossil fuel boiler. If you want the grant, the heat pump has to be sized to meet the whole of the property's space heating need.

Should I wait for hydrogen boilers?
There is nothing to wait for yet. No hydrogen boiler is on sale to UK homeowners, and the government has not published its strategic decision on hydrogen for home heating. A hydrogen-ready boiler bought today is a gas boiler with a possible future conversion attached to it.

Will a heat pump work in an old house?
Nesta's survey of more than 2,500 heat pump owners, published in 2023, found that among those who had a heat pump installed while already living in the home, 81% were as satisfied or more satisfied than with their previous heating system. The figure was 83% among owners of Victorian or older properties. Age matters less than design. A proper heat loss survey is what tells you.

Do heat pumps work in winter?
Yes. They run well below freezing, though efficiency falls as it gets colder. We cover this in detail in how heat pumps work in winter.

Can any of these cool my home in summer?
Air-to-air heat pumps reverse to cool as standard, and air source heat pumps can be configured to cool at install if the system is compatible. See can a heat pump cool your home.