Data sources

The core dataset

Our plan data originates from the official plan-export feature on Power to Choose (powertochoose.org), the Public Utility Commission of Texas's own electric-choice comparison site. It's the same underlying data every retail electric plan is required to file with the state. Our current dataset covers 1,809 real plan offers from 45 real retail electricity providers, pulled across 11 ZIP codes spanning all 6 delivery-utility (TDU) territories we currently support: Oncor, CenterPoint, TNMP, AEP Texas Central, AEP Texas North, and Lubbock Power & Light.

Electricity Facts Label (EFL) enrichment

Every plan is legally required to publish an Electricity Facts Label — a standardized disclosure with the real energy charge, base charge, contract term, and exact termination-fee language. We went a step further and individually fetched and parsed a sample of these EFL documents directly, so the highest- value terms show up on our own results page instead of requiring a click-through to a dense PDF. Concretely: across the 1,809 plan rows in our dataset there are 138 unique (provider, plan) combinations (the same plan often repeats across multiple ZIP/TDU territories with only the delivery charge differing) — of those, we successfully parsed 80. The remaining 58 use dynamic, JavaScript-rendered EFL viewer pages we could not extract as plain text; those plans still link to their real, official EFL page or PDF as a fallback, we just haven't machine-read the fine print off of them yet. Every plan honestly discloses which category it falls into rather than showing enriched-looking data that wasn't actually verified.

The ZIP-to-delivery-utility map

Which company delivers electricity to a given address (Oncor, CenterPoint, etc.) isn't something Power to Choose's export tells you directly — pricing there is organized by delivery utility, not ZIP code. We built our ZIP-to-TDU crosswalk separately, directly from each delivery utility's own published service-territory ZIP list. Some ZIP codes genuinely straddle more than one utility's territory; where that's true, we ask which utility serves your specific address rather than guessing, because the same plan can be priced differently depending on which TDU actually delivers your power.

How current is this data, really?

Our plan dataset is a static snapshot, not a live feed — every visitor to the site is served the same bundled dataset regardless of when they arrive. It's a July 2026 snapshot; we did not record the exact pull date/time in a durable way when the dataset was built, so rather than guess at a precise day, we're telling you plainly that only the month is confirmed. It is not updated automatically and does not change day to day.

We've written the code for an automated refresh pipeline (functions/api/refresh-plans.js) that can pull a fresh statewide export directly from Power to Choose on a schedule and store it in Cloudflare KV. As of this writing, that code exists and is secured, but it is not connected to what visitors see — the live comparison tool still reads only from the bundled dataset described above, not from that refreshed KV data. Turning a successful refresh into something that actually changes visitor results would still require frontend work to read from the refreshed data instead of (or alongside) the bundled file, and a plan for preserving the Electricity Facts Label enrichment described above, since the fast refresh path doesn't re-run that enrichment. Until both of those are done, please don't assume "current" means "today." Prices, plan availability, and terms in the deregulated Texas market change regularly, sometimes daily, so always confirm the real number on the plan's own Electricity Facts Label — linked directly from every plan we show you — before enrolling.

Possible gaps and errors

• Deposit requirements are not disclosed in our current source export for any plan — we flag this honestly rather than assume "no deposit."
• Our dataset directly covers 11 ZIP codes. An address outside those falls back to the nearest covered ZIP as a clearly labeled reference sample, not a guarantee of exact pricing at that address.
• The bill-credit flag on a plan is a heuristic based on matching plan name and terms text, not a fully structured field — it's possible for an unusually worded plan to be missed.
• Because our EFL parsing only fully succeeded for 80 of 138 unique plans, some plans show less enriched detail (like exact termination-fee wording) than others — every plan still links to its real official EFL as the authoritative source.
• Providers add, remove, and change plans continuously; our snapshot reflects a specific pull date, not the present moment.

Authoritative sources, if you want to verify anything yourself

• Public Utility Commission of Texas — the state regulator overseeing retail electric choice.
• Power to Choose — the PUCT's own official plan-comparison site and the origin of our core dataset.

See How We Rank Plans for how this data is turned into a recommendation, and Editorial Policy for how we handle sourcing and corrections more broadly. Last reviewed July 19, 2026.