Choosing between 12, 24 and 36 months

Twelve months fixes your rate for a year and then ends. It is the shortest term most retailers price competitively, and it puts you back in the market soonest — which is useful if prices fall and painful if they rise.

Twenty-four months halves how often you shop and doubles how long you are committed. Thirty-six months is the longest term commonly offered and is genuinely a long time to be unable to leave without paying a fee.

Fewer retailers publish thirty-six month products than twelve- or twenty-four-month ones, so the choice at that length is usually narrower. At some addresses the best-priced thirty-six month plan is the only one available at all.

Not "where are rates going" — nobody knows. The useful question is: how confident are you that you will be at this address, on this plan, for the whole term?

If you are renting on a twelve-month lease, a thirty-six month contract means either three renewals or an early termination fee. If you have just bought a house and are staying, the longer term removes two future shopping decisions and the risk of forgetting one.

A move is not automatically a cancellation. Most Texas retailers treat relocation differently from ending a contract early, and many will transfer the plan to a new address inside their service area — but the terms differ by retailer and the only way to know is to read the document before signing.

Every projected cost on this site is for the FIRST YEAR, whatever the contract length. That is deliberate: it is the only basis on which a one-year and a three-year plan can be compared like for like.

What that comparison cannot tell you is what years two and three would have cost on the shorter plan, because that depends on prices that do not exist yet. A longer term is a bet in both directions, and the honest framing is that you are buying certainty rather than savings.