Wood pellets vs. heating oil
Which costs less to run, wood pellets or heating oil? Pick your state; the calculator uses this week's EIA prices and shows both fuels as dollars per million BTU of heat delivered.
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Prices and efficiencies used (edit to match your bill)
| Fuel and system | Price | Efficiency | BTU per unit |
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When the answer flips
Pellets are cheaper than oil per BTU in most years and most states. At $330 a ton and 80% stove efficiency, premium pellets deliver a million BTU for about $25; oil at $3.70 in an 83% boiler delivers it for about $32. That gap is about what you'd expect from a fuel that doesn't need a tanker truck.
The comparison hides three things. A pellet stove heats the room it's in; getting that heat to the far bedrooms means a central pellet boiler, which is a different and more expensive installation. Pellets have to be carried: a ton is fifty 40-pound bags, and a northern house burns three to five tons a winter. And pellet prices move with demand in ways the EIA doesn't track by state, so the national figure above may be off by $50 a ton in your area.
For a house that already has oil, a pellet stove in the main living space is one of the cheapest ways to cut oil use by a third to a half without touching the existing system. For a full conversion, the heat pump has quietly become the better answer in most of the country.
Full method and sources on the methodology page. Compare every fuel at once in the main calculator.