What is a retail electric provider?

They buy energy in the wholesale market, package it into retail plans with terms and prices, sell those plans to households and businesses, and bill you. They handle your account, your contract and your customer service.

They are certified by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and are bound by the customer protection rules that come with that certificate — including the requirement to give you an Electricity Facts Label, Terms of Service and Your Rights as a Customer before you enrol.

They do not own any wires, poles or meters, and they do not restore your power. An outage is your delivery utility's responsibility, and reporting one to your retailer usually just means being redirected.

They do not set the delivery portion of your bill, and on most fixed-rate plans they pass changes to it straight through.

They do not generate the electricity you use — some are affiliated with generators and some are not, and either way the power at your meter comes from the shared grid.

Because the barrier to entry is commercial rather than physical. A retailer needs certification, wholesale supply arrangements and a billing operation, not a power plant — so Texas has a large number of them competing for the same customers with the same underlying product.

That is good for price and difficult for comparison, which is roughly the situation this site exists to address. A larger list of offers is not the same as a clearer decision.

A retail electric provider holds the certificate and the contract: they are the company on your bill, and switching retailers is what you are actually doing when you shop.

A broker arranges service between you and a retailer. Brokers are registered with the same regulator and are subject to their own rules, and they are compensated by the retailers whose plans they present. This site operates as a registered broker, which is why its compensation disclosure is linked in the footer of every page rather than buried.

An aggregator combines customers to buy as a group. That is a different arrangement again, and it is not what a comparison site does.

None of the three is a utility. If somebody describes themselves as being "from the electric company" while selling you a plan, the description is wrong regardless of which of the three they are.

That they will give you the Electricity Facts Label, the Terms of Service and Your Rights as a Customer before enrolment rather than after. All three are required and all three are linked on every plan on this site.

That the plan is the one you think it is: the term, the early termination fee and the rate type on the label should match what you were shown. Where a marketing page and a label disagree, the label is the document that governs.