What a commercial energy audit costs in 2026
Single-site audits run £1,500–£4,000. Multi-site ESOS programmes run £5,000–£25,000 and beyond. TM44 inspections start around £300. Here is what sits behind those ranges — and how to judge whether a cheap quote is a bargain or a brochure.
2026 price ranges by engagement type
| Engagement | Typical scope | Typical fee (ex VAT) |
|---|---|---|
| Single-site audit — small premises | Office, retail or light industrial under ~2,000 m²; one survey day | £1,500–£2,500 |
| Single-site audit — complex site | Manufacturing, cold storage, hospital-scale services; 2–3 survey days | £2,500–£4,000+ |
| ESOS Phase 4 programme | Group qualification, sampling plan, site audits, lead assessor sign-off, notification | £5,000–£25,000+ |
| SECR support | Data assembly, emissions calculation, intensity metric, disclosure drafting | £1,500–£6,000/yr |
| TM44 inspection | Statutory five-yearly air-conditioning inspection, lodged report | £300–£1,500 |
The four variables that move the fee
- Site count and sampling. ESOS permits representative sampling, so a 40-branch retailer does not pay for 40 surveys — the sampling design is where multi-site economics are won or lost.
- Data condition. Half-hourly meters and organised bills shorten analysis dramatically. Paper bills in a lever-arch file and unmetered landlord supplies lengthen it, and the quote will say so.
- Technical complexity. Compressed air, process heat, refrigeration and CHP each add survey time — and are usually where the biggest savings hide, so the extra fee tends to earn its keep.
- Deliverable depth. Compliance-minimum versus investment-grade. The difference in fee is real; the difference in usable output is larger. See what the full process includes.
Reading quotes like an auditor
Three questions expose the differences between quotes that look identical. How many days on site, and which sites? What data analysis is performed before the visit — specifically, is half-hourly data profiled? And are the recommended measures individually costed with stated assumptions, or expressed as percentage ranges? A quote that is vague on all three is priced to produce a document, not a result.
Context for the spend: an organisation qualifying for ESOS Phase 4 typically spends six or seven figures annually on energy. Against that, the gap between a £6,000 minimum-compliance exercise and a £12,000 investment-grade programme is noise if the better audit finds even one additional point of savings — and it usually finds several. The same logic applies at single-site scale: a £2,000 audit against a £100,000 energy spend needs to find 2% once to break even, against a typical finding of 10–25%.