Last updated: 16 August 2026
A Pakistani electricity bill packs fifteen or more numbers onto one page, and only one of them is the cost of the electricity you actually used. Below is a complete sample bill with every field annotated: what it is, where it comes from, and whether you can do anything about it. Once you can read this one, you can read your own.
This is not a real bill. Illustrative figures only. These amounts are made up to show how a bill is put together — they are not current approved rates. For real rates see the NEPRA tariff schedule; for your own bill, look it up with your reference number.
Each card below is one field from the bill above. On a phone they read top to bottom as plain field-name and meaning pairs — nothing here needs to be pinched or zoomed.
On the sample bill00000000000000
The 14-digit code that identifies this connection in the national billing system. It is the only thing you need to look a bill up online. It belongs to the meter, not to the person, so it does not change when the account holder changes — note it down once and you can check every future bill without the paper copy.
On the sample bill250 kWh
The electricity used this month in kilowatt-hours, worked out as this month's meter reading minus last month's. This single number drives almost everything below it: which tariff slab you land in, your per-unit rate, and your fixed charge band. If it looks wrong, compare it with the previous three months before assuming the bill is right.
On the sample billRs 8,750.00
The energy charge: your units priced through NEPRA's slab system, and the only line on the bill genuinely about how much electricity you used. Note how it is calculated — this sample consumer is UNPROTECTED, and domestic billing is not telescopic for them: every one of the 250 units is charged at the rate of the band 250 reaches, not the first 100 at one rate and the next 100 at another. Crossing a band boundary therefore reprices the whole month.
On the sample billRs 625.00
A monthly correction for what fuel actually cost the generators, usually about two months earlier. It is charged per unit, so it scales with your usage. When fuel costs fall it can appear as a credit. The FPA is the main reason two months with identical units can produce different bills — it is set nationally and no distribution company can waive it.
On the sample billRs 500.00
A separate periodic adjustment, applied for a defined number of months at a time, that reconciles capacity, transmission and other allowed costs across the whole sector. Like the FPA it is charged per unit and set by NEPRA — but it runs on a quarterly cycle rather than a monthly one, which is why it can sit on your bill unchanged for several months and then jump.
On the sample billRs 400.00
A rupees-per-kilowatt monthly charge for keeping capacity available to you — the wires, the transformer, the metering — whether you draw on it or not. It is banded by consumption slab and protected status, so it rises as your usage rises. It is why a nearly empty house still receives a bill that is not nearly zero.
On the sample billRs 25.00
A small monthly amount for the meter itself, which is the distribution company's property rather than yours. It is a flat figure that does not move with usage. On many bills it sits with the service or service-rent line.
On the sample billRs 131.25
A provincial levy charged as a percentage of the variable (energy) portion of your bill. It is collected by the distribution company on the provincial government's behalf — the company is a collection agent here, not the beneficiary.
On the sample billRs 1,845.00
Federal sales tax, charged as a percentage on the electricity charges plus most of the surcharges above. Because it is applied on the subtotal rather than on the energy line alone, GST is normally the single largest tax item on a domestic bill.
On the sample billRs 35.00
The Pakistan Television licence fee, collected through electricity bills for administrative convenience. It is a flat monthly figure, has nothing to do with your electricity use, and applies whether or not you own a television.
On the sample billRs 0.00
Anything unpaid from earlier months, carried forward onto this bill. A non-zero figure here means a previous bill was not paid, was paid short, or was paid too late to be recorded before this bill was generated. If you paid recently, check the date the bill was issued before treating an arrears line as an error.
On the sample billRs 12,311.25
Everything above, added up. This is the amount to pay, and it is the figure a bank counter, an ATM or a wallet app expects if you pay on or before the due date.
On the sample bill15-09-2026
The last day to pay at the normal amount. Banks and payment channels credit on their own timetable, so paying on the due date itself is cutting it fine — paying a couple of days early is the difference between the two totals on this bill.
On the sample billRs 1,231.13
The penalty added if you pay after the due date. It is a percentage of the current bill amount, so it grows with the bill: on this sample it is the difference between the two totals printed at the bottom. Miss the due date on a large summer bill and the surcharge alone can exceed a whole low-season bill.
On the sample billRs 13,542.38
The higher figure you pay once the due date has passed: the amount above plus the late payment surcharge. Two totals on one bill confuses a lot of people — always check which of the two you are being asked for.
On the sample billUNPROTECTED
Domestic consumers are split into protected and unprotected. Protected consumers keep their monthly units at or below a set threshold for a set run of consecutive months and are charged noticeably lower per-unit rates; go over it, and you move to unprotected rates. This sample consumer is unprotected. The status is printed on the bill and is worth checking every month, because crossing the line in a single hot month can cost you the lower rate.
The order matters, because each step is calculated on the one before it rather than on the energy charge alone. On the sample bill it goes like this:
Notice the shape of it. The electricity itself is Rs 8,750.00 of a Rs 12,311.25bill — around seven rupees in every ten. The rest is adjustments, fixed costs and tax. That is why “units × the rate I saw in the news” never matches the total at the bottom of a real bill, and why cutting units reduces a bill by less than people expect: the fixed and flat items do not move at all.
Domestic consumers sit in one of two categories, and the difference between them is large. A protected consumer is defined as a Non-ToU residential consumer using 200 kWh or less per month, consistently for the past six months (S.R.O. 1165(I)/2022, PART-II, A-1 Residential). Unprotected consumers pay the standard schedule.
The “Non-ToU” condition is the part almost every explanation leaves out, and it disqualifies people outright. A sanctioned load of 5 kW or above requires Time-of-Use metering and A-1(b) billing, so such a household can never be protected at any level of consumption — fifty units a month would not help. The sanctioned load is printed in the bill header, in kW; on the sample above it is 2 kW, so this consumer at least clears that test. Full definitions, including lifeline, are on our tariff page.
The practical consequence is that a single hot month can be expensive twice over: once for the extra units, and again for losing protected status and the lower rates that come with it. If your bill shows you as protected and your usage is creeping towards the threshold, that is the month to be careful — not the month after, when the status has already gone. Your status is printed on the bill; on the sample above it reads UNPROTECTED — and with a 2 kW sanctioned load, this consumer is at least eligible on the Non-ToU test.
The energy charge is not one rate applied to all your units. Consumption is divided into slabs — bands of units — and the rate steps up as you cross each boundary, with the higher rate applying to the units in the upper band. Crossing a boundary therefore raises the cost of the units above it, which is why bills can jump sharply for a modest rise in usage near a threshold. The current approved slab boundaries and per-unit rates are published by NEPRA; we reproduce them only once we have checked them against the notification, so where you see a dash on this site, it means we have not verified that figure yet rather than that it is zero. Our plain-language walkthrough is in unit slabs, FPA & taxes explained.
If after all that the units genuinely do not match your usage, the issue is a meter reading, and that is a complaint for your distribution company — the company named at the top of your bill — not for the billing website. Each of our twelve company pageslists that company's own complaint channels.
Your reading is taken by a meter reader employed by your distribution company. That reading, your tariff category and your sanctioned load go into the national billing system run by the Power Information Technology Company (PITC), which generates the bill you receive on paper and the identical copy you can pull up online with your reference number. The rates it applies are set by NEPRA and are the same across the mainland distribution companies for a given category; Azad Jammu & Kashmir is billed separately and is not guaranteed to match. eBill Pakistan is independent of both PITC and the distribution companies — see our editorial policy.
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