How Intelligent Octopus Go works
Intelligent Octopus Go gives you a fixed cheap window from 00:30 to 04:30 every night. During those four hours, the rate sits at approximately 7p per kilowatt hour. Outside that window, you pay a flat rate of approximately 24-26p throughout the day.
The "intelligent" part is what makes it genuinely clever. Compatible electric vehicles and smart chargers connect to the Octopus platform. When you plug your car in, the system detects your battery level, reads any departure time you have set, and automatically schedules charging within the cheap window to have your car ready when you need it. You plug in, set a departure time once, and forget about it.
There is no daily price-checking. There is no scheduling decisions to make. The tariff manages the optimisation on your behalf. For EV owners who want to reduce charging costs without building new habits, it is an extremely well-designed product.
The limitation is that the cheap window is fixed and narrow. Four hours every night, at a single rate, with no variation based on grid conditions. You either capture it or you miss it.
How Agile works
Agile prices electricity in 48 different 30-minute slots every day. Each slot has its own rate derived from the EPEX wholesale market. Prices are published each afternoon after 4pm for the following 24 hours.
Overnight, Agile typically runs at 2-8p per kilowatt hour. But that range varies significantly. On a night with strong wind generation, prices can drop to 1-2p or go negative, meaning you are effectively paid to consume electricity. On a night with low wind and high demand, overnight prices can creep toward 10-15p.
The reward for engaging with Agile is access to rates that beat Intelligent Go on the best nights, often significantly. The requirement is that you check prices and make decisions. The AgileAlert dashboard shows every rate for today and tonight, colour-coded so you can see at a glance when it is worth running appliances and when it is not.
Agile also has plunge pricing events, where the wholesale market drives prices negative. These happen 5-10 times per month. During a plunge event, every kilowatt hour you consume earns you a credit on your bill. Intelligent Go does not offer this.
Head-to-head: overnight rates compared
This is the central comparison. Both tariffs are primarily about cheaper overnight electricity. The numbers tell a clear story.
Intelligent Go delivers a fixed 7p from 00:30 to 04:30, every single night. No variation, no surprises. If you run your EV charge, dishwasher, or washing machine in that window, you pay 7p.
Agile delivers an average overnight rate of approximately 4-5p across the year. But that average conceals significant variation. On the cheapest Agile nights, rates between midnight and 6am average 2-3p. On the most expensive Agile overnight periods, they sit around 10-12p. The distribution skews toward the cheaper end because high-wind overnight events, which produce the lowest prices, are common in the UK.
For the engaged Agile user who checks prices and acts on cheap nights, the overnight advantage over Intelligent Go compounds over a year. For the disengaged user who sets a timer at midnight and leaves it, the saving compared to Intelligent Go is modest but still present on average.
Who Intelligent Go is better for
Intelligent Go wins for one specific household type: EV owners who want automatic, zero-effort charging at a consistently low rate.
If your primary energy concern is the cost of charging your car, and you do not want to build habits around checking prices or scheduling appliances, Intelligent Go solves that problem completely. Plug in, set a departure time, wake up with a full car. The system handles everything. The 7p rate is excellent relative to the 26.11p standard tariff and competitive with most of what Agile delivers in practice.
Intelligent Go also suits households with very consistent routines. If your overnight electricity usage is almost entirely your car and you are indifferent to optimising other appliances, the tariff delivers most of the available saving with none of the complexity.
Anyone who finds the daily price variation of Agile stressful rather than engaging should seriously consider Intelligent Go. The psychological value of a fixed, known cheap window is real. You are not leaving money on the table by choosing certainty. You are trading some optimisation for peace of mind, and that trade is often worth it.
Who Agile is better for
Agile wins for households that want to optimise beyond just EV charging.
If you have multiple high-consumption appliances to schedule, storage heaters, a home battery, or solar panels, Agile gives you the price signal to make real-time decisions that Intelligent Go cannot provide. The tariff is designed for whole-home energy management. A household running a heat pump, an EV, a battery, and a hot water cylinder can use Agile's daily price information to orchestrate all of those loads in a way that simply is not possible on a fixed-window tariff.
Agile is also better for households that genuinely enjoy the optimisation game. There is a community of Agile users who check prices each afternoon as a daily habit, who celebrate plunge pricing events, and who track their monthly savings with real satisfaction. That engagement is rewarded financially. If you are the kind of person who finds this interesting rather than stressful, Agile will return more money.
Solar and battery owners should default to Agile. The interaction between export rates, overnight import rates, and plunge pricing events is complex and rewarding. Intelligent Go is not designed for bidirectional energy management.
The EV-specific comparison: which saves more per charge?
For a 60kWh electric vehicle charged from near empty, here is what each tariff costs.
On Intelligent Go at 7p, a full 60kWh charge costs approximately £4.20. That is a substantial saving against the standard tariff rate, which would cost £15.67 for the same charge.
On Agile, with an average overnight rate of 4.5p, the same charge costs approximately £2.70. On a very cheap Agile night averaging 2p, the cost drops to £1.20. On a more expensive Agile night averaging 10p, it rises to £6.00.
For an engaged Agile user who charges on cheap nights and delays charging on expensive nights, the annual saving on EV charging alone, compared to Intelligent Go, is typically £50-100. That figure assumes approximately 10,000 miles per year and selective charging behaviour.
For a household that charges regardless of price, Intelligent Go's certainty at 7p beats the unmanaged Agile average, which includes some higher nights. The saving from Agile only materialises if you are actually checking prices and acting on them.
| Feature | Agile | Intelligent Go |
|---|---|---|
| Cheap window | Variable overnight (typically 10pm - 8am) | Fixed 00:30 - 04:30 |
| Cheap rate | 2-8p average, can go negative | Fixed ~7p every night |
| Day rate | Varies 8-50p (avg ~15p) | Flat ~24-26p all day |
| EV automation | No - manual scheduling | Yes - automatic |
| Requires daily attention | Yes, for full benefit | No |
| Plunge pricing | Yes - 5-10 events/month | No |
| Best for | Engaged multi-device households | EV owners wanting automation |
Can you switch between them?
Yes, and many people do. Both Agile and Intelligent Go are Octopus tariffs with no exit fees. Switching between them is done through your Octopus account and takes effect within your current billing period.
Some households start on Intelligent Go, appreciate the automation, then move to Agile once they become comfortable checking prices and want to push their savings further. Others try Agile, find the daily variation stressful, and move back to Intelligent Go for the certainty. Both transitions are normal, cost nothing, and can be done whenever you choose.
If you are undecided, start with whichever feels less daunting. The most important step is getting off the 26.11p standard tariff. Either Agile or Intelligent Go will significantly reduce your bill from that baseline.