Deregulated Cities in Texas

The deregulated cities in Texas cover most of the state, but not all of it. In a deregulated area you pick your own electricity provider instead of taking whatever the local utility hands you. About 8 million Texas homes and businesses sit in those competitive areas. Austin and San Antonio don't. Neither does El Paso, Beaumont, or most of the Panhandle.

The dividing line also doesn't follow city limits, which is where most city lists quietly go wrong.

The rule comes straight from the Public Utility Commission of Texas: if you live in the ERCOT region and you aren't served by an electric cooperative or a municipally-owned utility, you have the power to choose your electric provider.

Two conditions. Both have to be true.

The two-part test for electricity choice

You have to be inside ERCOT. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas runs the grid covering about 90% of the state's electric load and more than 27 million customers. If your power comes from a utility outside that grid, there's no competitive market to shop in.

Your local wires company can't be city-owned or a co-op. When Texas opened its electricity market on January 1, 2002, municipal utilities and electric cooperatives were allowed to keep their monopolies. Most of them did.

Pass both and you can shop. Fail either one and you have exactly one option, at a rate the PUCT approves.

Which Texas cities have deregulated electricity

The reliable way to tell isn't the city name. It's who owns the poles and wires on your street.

Inside ERCOT's competitive area, four investor-owned delivery companies handle that job: Oncor, CenterPoint Energy, AEP Texas, and Texas-New Mexico Power. They maintain the lines and read your meter no matter which provider you pick, and they're the same company before and after you switch.

If one of those four delivers your electricity, you're in a deregulated area.

Roughly speaking, Oncor covers Dallas–Fort Worth and much of North and West Texas. CenterPoint runs the Houston area and the upper Gulf Coast. AEP Texas serves South Texas and parts of West Texas, Corpus Christi included. TNMP picks up scattered pockets, including some Houston suburbs and stretches of the Permian Basin.

Notice what those are: service territories, not city boundaries. That distinction matters more than most people expect, and it's why the list below is worth checking against your actual address.

Which Texas cities don't have a choice

Two different things can disqualify you.

Utilities outside the ERCOT grid. Four investor-owned utilities operate outside ERCOT: Entergy Texas, Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO), Southwestern Public Service Company (SPS), and El Paso Electric. The PUCT sets their rates directly. That covers Beaumont and Port Arthur, the northeast corner near Texarkana, the Panhandle around Amarillo, and El Paso.

City-owned utilities and rural co-ops. The two largest are the ones people ask about most:

• Austin. Austin Energy calls itself "a not-for-profit enterprise of the City of Austin." The city owns it, so there's no retail competition.

• San Antonio. CPS Energy is the largest municipally owned energy utility in the country, serving more than 900,000 electric customers. Same story.

Dozens of smaller Texas cities run their own municipal utilities, and electric cooperatives serve a large share of rural Texas. If you're in one of those areas, shopping isn't an option, and any site telling you otherwise is guessing at your address.

Lubbock is the city that changed

For two decades the map barely moved. Then Lubbock moved it.

Lubbock Power & Light spent years planning a shift onto the ERCOT grid and completed it on December 12, 2023. Competition followed. Between March 4 and April 1, 2024, ERCOT transferred 109,577 Lubbock premises to competitive retail providers, making Lubbock the first Texas city to voluntarily join the competitive market since it opened in 2002.

There's a practical footnote for anyone in Lubbock. Customers who didn't pick a provider during the selection window were assigned one by default. A default assignment isn't a shopped rate, so if you haven't compared anything since 2024, that's worth an afternoon.

Why your neighbor can switch and you can't

This is the part that trips people up, and it's not a glitch.

Deregulation follows utility service territory. Territory boundaries were drawn decades ago around wires and substations, not around city halls. So a subdivision annexed by a city in 1998 might still sit inside a co-op's footprint, while the street behind it sits in Oncor's.

The practical effects show up in ordinary places. Someone in a Georgetown or Kyle subdivision may be able to shop while a neighbor two streets over cannot. Suburbs surrounding Austin are frequently deregulated even though Austin itself isn't. Some new construction on the edge of a municipal utility's territory ends up in a co-op nobody expected.

City-level lists are a starting point. They are not an answer for a specific house.

How to check your own address

Put in your ZIP code. That's the whole check, and it takes a few seconds.

If your area is deregulated, you'll see the plans available at that address with their current rates and contract terms. If it isn't, you'll find that out immediately instead of filling out a form that goes nowhere. From there you can compare plans across Texas providers or read our full Power to Choose guide if you want to understand how the state's own shopping site compares.

One disclosure worth making plainly: Energy Outlet earns a commission when someone enrolls through us. That commission never changes how plans are ranked. Listings are ordered on rates and plan details, not on what a provider pays.

Common questions about deregulated cities in Texas

Is all of Texas deregulated?

No. Retail choice reaches roughly 8 million premises, which is most of the state's population but well short of all of it. Municipal utilities, electric cooperatives, and the four utilities operating outside ERCOT are all excluded.

When did Texas deregulate electricity?

Retail competition began January 1, 2002, under Senate Bill 7, which the Legislature passed in 1999. Municipal utilities and co-ops were exempted from the requirement to open their territories.

Can Austin or San Antonio ever get electricity choice?

Yes. Municipal utilities and cooperatives are allowed to opt into competition voluntarily, and Lubbock did exactly that in 2024. Neither Austin Energy nor CPS Energy has announced plans to follow.

Does deregulation mean cheaper electricity?

It means you get to compare offers and choose one instead of accepting a single set rate. What you pay depends on the plan you pick, how much electricity you use, and when you sign. Two houses on the same street with the same usage can pay noticeably different amounts based only on which plan each one chose.

How do I know for certain whether my address is deregulated?

Check by ZIP code rather than by city name. Because eligibility follows utility service territory, a ZIP-level check reflects the wires actually serving your home, which a city list can't do.

Who fixes my power if I switch providers?

The same delivery utility as before. Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Texas, or TNMP still owns the lines, restores outages, and reads the meter. Switching changes who bills you for the electricity, not who maintains the poles.