Units for your money at Eskom's 2026/27 rates, what they will run, the 50 free units you may be owed, and a check on whether your last purchase was priced right.
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From Town Tools. For the current version, visit https://www.towntools.org/soweto-gauteng-za/what-your-money-buys
You stand at the vendor with R100 and you find out how many units you got after you have paid. This page tells you before.
The rates here are Eskom's own, from the schedule that took effect on 1 April 2026. Pick the tariff your meter is on, put in what you want to spend, and it works out the units, what they will run, and — at the bottom — whether a purchase you already made came out at the right price.
How to tell: A 20A supply runs lights, a fridge, a TV and a kettle, but trips if you run a geyser and a stove together. If you buy tokens rather than get a monthly bill, you are on a Homelight tariff — Eskom can confirm which one on 08600 37 566.
What your money buys
37 units
You get
at R2,70 per unit
R100,00
That costs
R2,70
What you actually pay per unit
Everything taken off this purchase, divided by the units it bought.
Every rate on this page includes VAT at 15%, because that is what you actually hand over. Eskom publishes them both ways; the figure before VAT is on its own schedule.
No fixed monthly charge on this tariff
On Homelight 20A you pay only for the electricity you buy. Nothing is owed in a month you buy nothing.
What that runs
37 units is roughly:
Appliance
How much
units per use
FridgeAn ordinary fridge-freezer, running all day
37 days
1
Four LED lightsAll four on at once
924,9 hours
0,04
Phone charge
3 699,6 full charges
0,01
TV
370 hours
0,1
KettleA full 2 kW kettle from cold
336,3 boils
0,11
Iron
37 hours
1
One stove plateOn high
24,7 hours
1,5
Bar heaterThe winter budget-killer
18,5 hours
2
Electric geyserThe element only runs while it is heating, not all day
12,3 hours of heating
3
These are typical ratings, not measurements of your house. A different appliance, an older one, or a colder week will move them. Use them to compare — a heater against a kettle — rather than to predict a month exactly.
The free units
50 free units a month, and you do not have to buy anything to get them
Free Basic Electricity is 50 kWh a month for households registered as indigent. Eskom's own guidance is explicit that 20-amp prepaid households qualify under national policy, that 60-amp prepaid households can qualify if they are identified as indigent, and that conventional customers using under 150 units a month on average qualify too. The municipality decides who is on the register, not Eskom — so registering is done at the municipal office.
On your tariff that is worth about R135,15 a month.
How to claim it
Claim the token every month. Dial *130*869# or *130*269#, or ask at your local prepaid vendor.
You do not have to buy electricity to claim it. Eskom says so in as many words: the token can be claimed without purchasing any units.
If you are not registered yet, register once with the City of Johannesburg's Expanded Social Package (ESP) — the indigent register Eskom uses to decide who qualifies. The household income limit is R7,503.01 a month.
Bring an ID, proof of income (a payslip, a SASSA card, or a sworn affidavit if you have neither), your last three months of bank statements (or an affidavit if you have no account), and proof of residence to a City of Johannesburg Customer Service Centre.
Registration is done in person, not online. Call 011 407 6515 / 6688 / 6751 first to check which Customer Service Centre is handling ESP applications near you.
The rules that catch people out
One token per household per month. Claiming from more than one municipality is not allowed.
It does not roll over. An unclaimed month is gone — the units do not stack up for later.
Use it inside the calendar month you claimed it. A token used in a later month is invalid.
The free units are released on the 1st of each month.
A household in default does not get them until the supply is back in order.
Indigent registration lapses every six months. The City of Johannesburg says so on its own registration page — put a reminder in, because a lapsed registration stops the free units even though nothing else about the account changes.
Take your last slip. Put in what you paid and the units you got, and this divides one by the other and holds it against the published rate. It is a check on your own purchase, so it stays right even if our figures fall behind Eskom's.
Why a purchase can come out different
The meter may be on a different tariff from the one you assume. A 20A and a 60A meter are charged different rates, and the meter decides — not the size of the house.
If you claimed your free units in the same transaction, you got units you did not pay for, so the rate comes out lower than the published one.
If there is a payment arrangement on the account, part of a purchase can go to arrears instead of units. Worth asking whether one is in place.
A vendor can add a charge of its own on top of the electricity. Your slip should show what actually went to Eskom.
Rates changed on 1 April 2026. A slip from before that date was priced at last year's rate and will not match.
If it keeps coming out different
Keep the slip — it carries the meter number, the amount and the units, which is everything needed to trace a purchase. Eskom's customer care line is 08600 37 566, and there is a WhatsApp channel and a published complaint process. If Eskom's own process is exhausted and you are still not satisfied, NERSA, the national energy regulator, takes complaints about electricity accounts.
The rates on this page
In force from 1 April 2026. They hold until 31 March 2027. Eskom resets these on 1 April every year for the households it supplies directly, which includes Soweto. The 2026 rise was 8,76% on residential tariffs.
Which tariff are you on?
Price of one unit
Before tax
Standing charges
Homelight 20A
R2,70
R2,35
—
Homelight 60A
R3,44
R2,99
—
Homepower (monthly bill)
R3,56
R3,09
R700,28
Worth knowing
Soweto buys from Eskom, not City Power
Most of Johannesburg is supplied by the municipal utility, City Power. Soweto is the exception: it has historically bought electricity directly from Eskom, and although a transfer to City Power was agreed in principle in 2021 it is still incomplete. That is why the rates on this page are Eskom's national tariffs and why account queries go to Eskom rather than to the City.
Prepaid has no fixed charge. A monthly bill does.
This is the largest single difference between the tariffs and it is invisible on a purchase slip.
On Homelight — either amp size — you pay for electricity and nothing else. Buy nothing in a month and you owe nothing.
On Homepower there are standing daily charges for the connection itself, which come to roughly R700 a month on the smallest band before a single unit is used. Over a year that is more than R8,000 whether the lights are on or not.
Residential tariffs rose 8.76%, following NERSA's decisions of 30 January 2025 and 7 February 2026. Eskom also shifted how it recovers fixed costs on Homepower: more of the bill moved into the standing charge and the energy rate came down to compensate. For a Homepower household that uses very little, that shift makes the bill worse, not better — the part you cannot avoid got bigger.
EasyElectricity, and the thing worth knowing about it
Eskom is introducing EasyElectricity purchase options — set rand amounts based on typical monthly use. They are not new tariffs and, for Homelight, the arithmetic is the same: the 20A package is 150 units for R405.44, which is exactly 150 units at the ordinary rate. Nothing is gained or lost on price.
One thing does change, and it is worth having: Eskom says these tokens do not expire.
It is arithmetic on published rates. It is not your account, it cannot see your meter, and it takes no view on the smart-meter rollout or on anybody's payment history. If a figure here and a figure from Eskom disagree, Eskom's is the one that governs what you owe — but a difference you can name and show is a much better starting point than a feeling that something is wrong.