Methodology, sources and calculations for the United Kingdom

Where UK data comes from

Great Britain does not publish a central public register of every appliance model with its energy label data, so the UK dataset is assembled from government and public sources, suppliers’ own published documents, and retail and manufacturer product listings, with the provenance of every value recorded:

1. Discovery. Models are found in public UK retail and manufacturer product listings, which give us a model identifier, brand and category. A listing alone never creates a page.
2. Product information sheet. For each model we fetch the supplier’s product information sheet, the document suppliers must make available under the energy labelling regulations (retained EU delegated regulations 2019/2014, 2019/2016, 2019/2017, 2019/2013 and 2023/2534 as applied in Great Britain). We extract its parameters with fixed rules, keep the text, and keep a copy of the document itself so you can read it on the product page. A model without a verified sheet stays unpublished.
3. GB validation. The extracted fields are checked against the GOV.UK “Create an energy label” API schema (v1.1) for the category. Where they pass, the official-style GB label is rendered from those fields through the same API and cached; we never render a label from uncertain data.
4. Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland follows the EU energy labelling framework, so its record is the model’s entry in EPREL, the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling. Where a model is matched, the EPREL record is shown as the NI record. Matching needs EPREL’s public API key; until it is configured, NI records are linked only where the EPREL identifier is known.
5. Retailer data. Retailer specification tables and price/availability are recorded as observations and used only for cross-checks and availability notes, never as the source of an official figure.

Current UK database: 2,196 models from 35 brands with a verified product information sheet, last checked 3 October 2026. It is not a complete list of appliances sold in the UK and we do not describe it as one.

Great Britain and Northern Ireland

The consumer site is one UK site. Underneath, each model can carry two regulatory records: GB (England, Scotland and Wales, GB energy label) and NI (EU label via EPREL). For the categories covered here the label methodology is currently the same in both, so the figures are normally identical; the records are kept separate so that any divergence (for example the rescaled tumble dryer label) is shown, not blurred. A region toggle appears in the “Energy label and sources” section of each product page.

Label figures and what they mean

• Washing machines and dishwashers: energy in kWh per 100 eco programme cycles, water in litres per cycle, both at the regulation’s weighted mix of full and partial loads. Where a sheet lists rated, half and quarter loads separately, the weighted value is 3:2:2 (Annex IV, 2019/2014).
• Tumble dryers: kWh per 100 eco drying cycles on the rescaled (2023/2534) label; older sheets state kWh a year on 160 cycles. The two regimes are benchmarked separately and the regime is shown on each page.
• Fridges and freezers: kWh a year at standard test conditions, with total, fridge and freezer volumes from the compartment table.
• TVs: kWh per 1,000 hours of on-mode viewing for SDR content, and HDR where supported.

Running cost

Estimated cost = kWh at your usage × your electricity price. 26.32p/kWh is the Ofgem price cap average electricity unit rate for direct debit customers in England, Scotland and Wales, 1 October to 31 December 2026. Northern Ireland tariffs are set separately. Change it to the rate on your bill. Water for washing machines and dishwashers = litres per cycle × cycles × your metered water and sewerage price (£4/m³ default; £0 if unmetered or in Northern Ireland, where households are not charged for domestic water). Usage defaults (4 washes, 5 dishwasher cycles and 3 dryer loads a week, 4 TV hours a day) are assumptions you can change; the site remembers them for the UK only. Every product page shows the official figure, your assumptions and the arithmetic separately.

Comparable models and percentiles

A model’s cohort is every documented UK model of the same type and size group (for example 6 kg and under, 7 kg, 8 kg, 9 kg, 10 kg, 11 kg and over for washing machines), compared on the label figure. “Uses less energy than 70% of comparable models” refers to our current UK dataset, not the whole market. No percentile is shown for cohorts under five models. Similar models and comparison pages are restricted to UK products; an Australian or New Zealand model is never suggested as an alternative.

The same model in other countries

Where a UK model identifier exactly matches a model in the Australian or New Zealand register (same brand and category), it is treated as the same product and the pages are linked. Where it differs only by a regional suffix (for example GB, UK, EU, AU), we record a regional variant relationship and show it as related, but do not merge the products or copy figures between them.

What we do not do

We do not test appliances, write reviews, estimate figures a supplier has not published, or generate a GB label from retailer data. Missing fields are shown as missing. Retailer prices are observations, not offers.