Utility bills, ARERA: prices higher in the open market than under the ‘major tutela’ scheme

The liberalised electricity market continues to be more expensive than the regulated market. This is confirmed by ARERA’s Annual Report: even in 2025, for all categories of domestic consumption, prices for market-based tariffs were higher than those for the regulated service.

This comparison relates specifically to customers who have not yet switched to the open market. From 1 July 2024, the ‘Maggior Tutela’ service will be reserved solely for vulnerable customers: for them, as of 1 January 2026, the price of electricity will be 25.2 c€/kWh excluding tax (27.97 including tax). Non-vulnerable customers who have not yet chosen a supplier on the open market will, however, remain in the ‘Servizio a Tutele Graduali’ scheme, where the price is even lower: 22.8 c€/kWh excluding tax, 25.3 including tax. The average final price paid by Italian households in 2025, across all schemes, was 35.12 c€/kWh.

According to ARERA, the cause is not technical but behavioural: in the small-scale liberalised market – as President Nicola Dell’Acqua explains in his presentation of the Report – what matters most is trust in the operator’s brand, not the cheapest price. The gaps between the offers chosen by consumers and the most efficient ones available on the market remain wide, and monitoring data confirm that purchasing decisions are still largely unrelated to the actual value for money of the available offers.

To correct this distortion, the reform of energy bills, which came into force in July 2025, aims to make the breakdown of costs clearer and the contractual terms between suppliers more comparable. Over the next four years, ARERA plans to further strengthen the Offers Portal and the Code of Commercial Conduct by introducing new enforcement tools. The liberalisation process, however, will not stop: from March 2027, even customers still on the Gradual Protection Scheme will have to switch to the open market.