Contact Energy review

Contact Energy is the largest electricity retailer in New Zealand by customer numbers and one of the country's major generators. It is listed on the NZX, and it is one of the few retailers that will sell a household electricity, piped gas, broadband and mobile on a single account.

What Contact Energy actually offers

The residential plan range is built around when you use power. The headline plans are Good Nights, Good Weekends and Good Charge, alongside a Basic plan and a Broadband Bundle.

The "Good" plans each hand you a block of free or discounted electricity at a predictable time — overnight, or across the weekend, with Good Charge aimed at households charging an electric vehicle. The trade-off is the usual one for time-based plans: rates outside the free window are what you pay the rest of the time, so the plan is a saving only if your household genuinely uses power inside it.

Contact's plans page states no fixed contract and no fixed term on its residential plans, and a $50 sign-up credit was advertised when we checked on 27 July 2026. Promotional credits move around, so treat that figure as a snapshot rather than a standing feature.

Piped natural gas is available, which matters more than it sounds. A large share of North Island homes have mains gas, and splitting power and gas across two retailers is usually both more expensive and more admin than keeping them together.

Who it suits

Contact suits dual-fuel households. If you have gas hot water or gas heating, being able to put both fuels with one retailer is a genuine practical advantage, and only some of the companies we compare can do it.

It also suits households that want everything in one place. Power, gas, broadband and mobile on one account and one bill is a real convenience, and it is a short list of retailers who can offer all four.

And it suits people with predictable off-peak habits. If you can reliably push laundry, hot water and vehicle charging into the free window, the Good plans are designed for exactly that.

What to watch

Scale has a service cost. Contact is a large organisation serving a very large customer base. That brings a proper 24/7 operation and an app that works, but it also means you are dealing with a call centre rather than someone who knows your account.

Check which plan you are actually on. The range is broad, and the plans differ in structure rather than only in price. A free-nights plan and a flat plan cannot be compared by looking at one number. The special terms for each plan are published as separate documents on Contact's site, and they are worth the five minutes.

Sign-up credits are promotional. They are typically tied to conditions and they change. Confirm what is on offer at the time you join rather than relying on a figure you read on a comparison site — including this one.

How Contact Energy compares

Against the other big generator-retailers, Contact's clearest differentiators are the breadth of what it sells and the structured off-peak plans. Genesis and Mercury also do gas and bundles; Meridian does not sell gas.

Against independents like Electric Kiwi and Powershop, Contact trades some sharpness for coverage — it can be the whole utility relationship rather than just the power bill.

As with every company we list, we do not yet show what Contact's power actually costs. Rates depend on your network region, your user type and your meter, and we are collecting rate files from the companies rather than estimating them. Compare on what is verifiable for now, and confirm the numbers with Contact before you sign anything.