What “going direct” actually shows you

Here’s the part that catches people out. When you ring British Gas, you get British Gas prices. Ring EDF and you get EDF. Each supplier quotes its own book, and none of them will tell you whether the firm down the road is twenty per cent cheaper for your usage shape. That’s not a criticism. It’s just how a direct sales line works. They’re there to sell their product.

So “going direct” doesn’t give you the market. It gives you one window onto the market at a time. To compare properly you’d need to ring several suppliers, get a quote on the same start date and term from each, then line them up. Some businesses do exactly that and do it well. Plenty start, get two quotes back in slightly different formats, run out of afternoon, and sign with whoever called back first.

None of this means direct is wrong. It means you should know what you’re getting when you choose it.

When going direct genuinely makes sense

There are real situations where dealing with a supplier yourself is the sensible call, and a broker who tells you otherwise isn’t being straight with you.

If you’ve got a single site and a usage profile that hasn’t changed in years, the legwork of comparing is small. One meter, one quote to chase, one signature. You can handle that over a couple of phone calls.

Loyalty to a particular supplier counts too. Maybe their billing portal suits how your finance team works, or you’ve had good service through a tricky period and you’d rather not move. If you want that supplier’s own product specifically, going to them direct is the cleanest route. A broker can still place you with them, but if you already know exactly who you want, you might not feel you need one.

And if you’ve genuinely got the time to ring around, you can run your own comparison. The market isn’t a secret. The catch is that getting quotes onto a like-for-like footing takes longer than people expect, and the prices move while you’re collecting them.

What a broker changes

A broker’s main job is breadth. Instead of one supplier’s prices, you see a spread across the suppliers they work with, quoted on the same terms so you can actually compare them. That’s the difference between one window and several open at once.

There’s the whole-contract view as well. A headline unit rate looks tidy until you notice the standing charge, the contract length, the early-exit terms, and whether the price is fixed or tracks the wholesale market. A decent broker reads those against your usage rather than just sorting by the biggest number on the page. We cover the full mechanics in our piece on what a business energy broker does, so this isn’t the place to walk through every step.

Then there’s the admin and the calendar. Chasing quotes, checking terms, getting the switch processed, and remembering your renewal window before you drift onto an out-of-contract rate. That last one quietly costs businesses real money, and it’s the bit that slips when you’re running the place yourself.

The commission question, head on

Brokers get paid, and most of the time it’s through commission built into the unit rate the supplier offers you. That’s the honest trade-off, and you should weigh it rather than wave it away.

The reasonable worry is obvious. If a broker earns more by placing you on a pricier contract, whose side are they on? It’s a fair question. The answer comes down to transparency. You’re entitled to ask how a broker is paid, what the commission is, and whether a lower-commission option was on the table. A broker who won’t give you a clear answer has told you something.

We set out exactly how we’re paid on our how we make our money page, because we’d rather you asked us than wondered. Going direct doesn’t make this disappear, by the way. Supplier sales teams have targets and margin too. The cost of acquiring you is in the price either way. The difference is whether someone’s comparing across the market for you while it’s there.

Going direct vs using a broker, side by side

The table simplifies, of course. A confident finance team with one meter and a supplier they trust might tick most of the left column and be perfectly happy. A three-site retailer renewing across different end dates usually finds the right column does the heavy lifting.

Multi-site is where the gap widens

One meter is manageable on your own. The maths changes once you’ve got several.

Say you run six sites with contracts ending in four different months. Going direct now means a separate round of calls for each, with each supplier quoting only itself, and four renewal dates to keep straight in a calendar that’s already full. Miss one and that site rolls onto an out-of-contract rate that nobody chose. The effort doesn’t add up. It multiplies.

This is the point where most multi-site operators stop trying to do it themselves, not because they can’t, but because the hours stop being worth it. If you want to see how the comparison looks across a portfolio, our compare business energy prices tool gives you a starting view.

So which one is right for you

Be honest about three things. How many meters you’ve got, how much time you’ll genuinely give it, and whether you already know which supplier you want.

One site, plenty of time, a supplier you’re set on? Direct is a perfectly good answer, and you don’t need anyone’s permission to take it. Several sites, a packed week, no strong preference and a renewal creeping up? That’s the case a broker is built for. Most businesses sit somewhere between, and the deciding factor is usually time rather than anything to do with energy.

If you want a sense of the wider picture before you decide, our business energy overview lays out how the contracts and the market fit together. Whatever you land on, ask the person quoting you how they get paid. The ones worth dealing with won’t mind the question.