Beijing Utility Bills: Power, Water, Gas & Heating

If you rent a flat in Beijing for a month or more, no single bill arrives. Power, water, gas, heating and the property management fee come through five different doors, on five different cycles, in Chinese, and at least two of them are not legally yours to pay. Below: what each one costs under Beijing's published tariffs, which account numbers and apps you actually need, the hotlines worth saving, and the twenty minutes of paperwork on move-in day that stop a deposit from turning into an argument.

Which of these bills are actually yours

Rentals here do not follow one legal default, but the market has settled into a pattern. Charges that track what you consume — electricity, water, piped gas, broadband — are normally the tenant's. Charges that attach to the property — central heating and the property management fee (物业费) — are normally the owner's, because those contracts are signed in the owner's name. Some landlords bill tenants for heating anyway. The only thing that decides it is your contract, so settle it before you sign rather than after.

Normally yours — Electricity, water, piped gas, home broadband and any TV package you ask for.
Normally the landlord's — 物业费 (property management) and 供暖费 (central heating) — both are contracted in the owner's name.
Negotiated case by case — A parking space, a storage room, and whether heating sits inside the rent or on top of it.
One line worth adding — Write into the contract who pays which bill, and the unit price if the landlord re-bills you.

Electricity: three tiers, reset every month

Beijing prices household power on a monthly ladder published by the municipal development and reform commission. Tier one is the first 240 kWh a household uses in a month, tier two runs to 400 kWh, and everything above that is tier three. A one-bedroom flat used normally stays inside the first two tiers; a summer of air conditioning, or a winter spent heating a flat with no radiators, will walk you into the third.

Tier 1 — up to 240 kWh a month — ¥0.4883 per kWh.
Tier 2 — 241 to 400 kWh — ¥0.5383 per kWh.
Tier 3 — above 400 kWh — ¥0.7883 per kWh, about 60% more than the first tier.
What that looks like in money — 240 kWh in a month costs about ¥117. At 500 kWh the same flat pays roughly ¥282, because the last 100 kWh are billed at the top rate.
Six or more people in one flat — A household registered with six or more residents gets 100 kWh added to each tier, so tier one becomes 340 kWh a month.
Shared master meter (合表) — In older blocks where the building sits behind one meter, the settlement price to the end user is ¥0.5103 per kWh; anything the landlord adds on top is a private arrangement.

Paying for power: 网上国网 and the 电户号

State Grid sells electricity in Beijing and its app 网上国网 (wǎng shàng guó wǎng) runs around the clock — but it is Chinese-only and wants a Chinese mobile number to register. You do not have to be the account holder: what you need is the 电户号, the electricity account number, which your landlord can read off any old bill or the 电费缴费卡. Add that number and you can pay the account yourself.

Ways to pay inside the app — Alipay, WeChat Pay, 云闪付 (UnionPay's app), digital RMB and bound bank cards.
When the lights go out at 11pm — Look for 应急购电 (emergency top-up): it grants a small amount of credit so the power comes back before you can reach a bank.
Staying for months? — Ask the landlord to set up 代扣 (automatic debit). Otherwise you discover the balance exactly when the lights stop working.
Not an app person? — Any State Grid 营业厅 takes cash and cards over the counter, and 95598 is the 24-hour power hotline.
Ask which meter you have — Most of Beijing is on remote smart meters, but a few older blocks still use an IC card you top up and insert into the meter. Find out on day one.

Water: annual tiers, ¥5 a cubic metre

Water is stepped by the year rather than the month, which surprises almost everyone. The first 180 cubic metres a household uses in a year cost ¥5 each, and only a large household or a running toilet reaches the dearer steps. That ¥5 is a bundle: about ¥2.07 for the water itself, ¥1.36 for sewage treatment, and the remainder is the water resource tax that replaced the old resource fee.

First 180 m³ a year — ¥5 per cubic metre.
181 to 260 m³ — ¥7 per cubic metre.
Above 260 m³ — ¥9 per cubic metre.
Paying on Alipay — Open 生活缴费, choose 水费, pick 北京市自来水集团, then enter the 9-digit 户号 (user number) and pay.
Paying another way — The 北京市自来水集团 WeChat official account and the 北京自来水 app do the same thing; the app accepts WeChat or mobile-number login.
You do not know the 户号 — Alipay's 生活缴费 flow has a lookup link, and the water company can find the number from the account name and the exact address printed on the bill.
The meter itself — Beijing has been fitting smart remote water meters at no cost to the resident. They run on their own battery with no wiring, and a flat battery stops the reading being uploaded — it does not stop the water.
Hotline — 96116, Beijing Water Group.

Gas: ¥2.61 a cubic metre, and the card meters are going

Piped gas is the cheapest of the three and the easiest to forget, because cooking alone barely touches the first tier. It is stepped annually: ¥2.61 per cubic metre for the first 350 m³, ¥2.83 up to 500, and ¥4.23 above that. Flats heated by a gas wall-hung boiler (壁挂炉) instead of the municipal network get a far larger allowance before each step — 1,500 and 2,500 m³ — charged at the same three rates.

General living gas — 0–350 m³ a year at ¥2.61; 350–500 at ¥2.83; above 500 at ¥4.23 per cubic metre.
Wall-hung boiler heating (壁挂炉采暖) — 0–1,500 m³ at ¥2.61; 1,500–2,500 at ¥2.83; above 2,500 at ¥4.23 — the same prices, a much bigger first tier.
Paying — The 北京燃气 mini-program on WeChat or Alipay, by gas account number; 96777 is the 24-hour gas hotline.
Card meters — Beijing Gas has posted notice that IC-card gas meters are being taken out of service and swapped for smart meters free of charge. If yours is still a card meter, that is a 96777 call — not a cost that should land on you.
If you smell gas — Open the windows, close the valve, and do not touch light switches or use a phone indoors. Go outside and call 96777; call 119 if there is a fire.

Central heating: usually the owner's bill, but learn the number

Beijing's heating season runs from 15 November to 15 March, and the city can bring that forward in a cold snap. Most flats are billed by floor area: ¥24 per square metre of building area per season on the municipal heat network (市热力集团中心大网), ¥30 where a gas, oil or electric boiler serves the block, and ¥16.50–19 where coal boilers survive. A small number of buildings are metered instead, with a standing charge plus ¥0.16 per kWh of heat.

Municipal heat network — ¥24 per m² of building area per heating season.
Gas, oil or electric boiler — ¥30 per m² per season — the most common setup in newer blocks.
Metered buildings — A basic charge of ¥12 per m² on the municipal network or ¥18 on a boiler, plus ¥0.16 per kWh of heat actually used.
When it falls due — The standard residential heating contract asks for the whole season to be paid by 31 December, with a penalty accruing from 1 January on whatever is unpaid.
The temperature you are owed — While the outdoor average stays above −7.6 °C, bedrooms and living rooms should hold at least 18 °C. Below that the supplier must run at full load, but no indoor figure is guaranteed.
Empty flat for the winter — Heating can be suspended, but a basic fee — commonly 30% of the season's charge — still applies. Ask before assuming that switching off is free.
Hotlines — 96069 for Beijing District Heating Group; 12319 for city services; 12345 is the all-purpose municipal hotline and takes calls in English.

物业 fee, access cards and parking

The property management fee is the charge most often pushed onto tenants who do not owe it. It is billed to the owner per square metre of building area each month, the rate is filed with the district authorities and has to be posted, and the management office for your compound can show you the filing. Rates differ sharply between compounds, so treat any figure you are quoted as specific to that building.

物业费 — Charged to the owner. If a landlord asks you to pay it, ask to see the filed rate and the compound's posted price notice before agreeing.
门禁卡 and lift cards — Access cards carry a small refundable deposit of a few tens of yuan. Take a receipt and hand the card back on move-out day.
Parking — A space is rented separately from the flat, and monthly prices swing widely by district and by whether it is underground. Fix the price in the contract.
What 物业 actually covers — Common areas, lifts, security, and the building's plumbing and heating plant. Anything inside your own front door is normally the landlord's, unless the contract says otherwise.

Photograph every meter — Electricity, water and gas, reading clearly visible, on the day you move in. Send the photos to the landlord the same afternoon.
Collect three account numbers — The 电户号, the 9-digit water 户号 and the gas account number. Without them you cannot pay anything yourself.
Ask for the previous bill — It proves the last occupant settled up before you inherited the balance, and it shows which tariff the account sits on.
Agree the unit price — If the landlord re-bills you, the contract should name a price per kWh and per m³ rather than a monthly figure no meter backs up.
Write a 交接单 — A short handover note with meter readings, keys and cards, signed — or at least confirmed in chat — by both sides.
Check the meter seal — The utility's seal (封签) should be intact. A broken one is a question to ask before signing, not after.

Shared meters, sublets and 二房东

Two arrangements deserve a closer look. The first is a 合表 building, where the whole block sits behind one master meter and residents pay the landlord or the management office; the published settlement price to the end user is ¥0.5103 per kWh, and anything above that is a private markup. The second is the 二房东 — someone renting you a room in a flat they hold themselves — who may split one bill across rooms by a formula nobody can check.

Ask for the utility's own bill — A screenshot from 网上国网 or the water company beats any spreadsheet. If it will not be shown, the split is whatever they say it is.
合表 markup — Charging above the published end-user price is a commercial decision, not a tariff. Agree the rate up front or decline it.
包水电 (utilities included) — Comfortable until it comes with an unwritten cap. Ask what happens if you run the air conditioner all summer, and whether the rent moves instead.
Room-by-room splits — In a shared flat, agree whether the bill divides by headcount, by room, or by a separate meter. Put it in the chat at the very least.

Paying all this without a Chinese bank card

Every app above assumes a verified Alipay or WeChat Pay wallet. Foreign visitors can run Alipay with an international card, but it is not the same instrument: transactions above ¥200 generally carry a fee of around 3% while smaller ones do not [verify], and utility payment channels are stricter than ordinary shops about which wallets they accept [verify]. In practice two routes work better than fighting the apps.

Route one — let the landlord pay — Transfer the money by WeChat or Alipay and ask for a screenshot of the paid bill. Plenty of long-stay tenants do exactly this for their first six months.
Route two — cash at a 营业厅 — State Grid and Beijing Water service halls still take cash over the counter. Slow, but it works with no local card at all.
Open a Chinese bank account — Once you have one, 代扣 (automatic debit) removes the problem entirely. It needs your passport and a mainland mobile number.
Keep every receipt — Screenshots of each payment, filed by month. They are your only evidence at deposit time.
Why the 户号 matters — Anyone can top up an account by number; registering one in your own name needs 实名认证 (real-name verification), which is the step foreign cards struggle with.

Move-out: settling up and getting the deposit back

Deposit disputes in Beijing are rarely about bad faith — they happen because nobody wrote a number down. Settle on the day you leave: read all three meters with the landlord there, work out what is owed against the readings you photographed on arrival, pay it, and take the balance of the deposit back in the same conversation. Any deduction for unpaid bills should arrive with the bill attached.

Bring the arrival photos — Move-in reading and move-out reading are the whole calculation. Nobody argues with a dated photograph.
Itemised deductions only — Withholding ¥500 for 水电费 without producing the bills is withholding, not settling. Ask for each one.
If it stalls — 12345 is the municipal hotline and takes English; 12319 covers city services; the district housing authority handles rental contract disputes.
Faults are not your bill — A leaking pipe inside a wall or a failed boiler is a landlord or 物业 matter. Report it in writing the day you notice, so it cannot be charged to you later.
Close the accounts — Ask for a final reading confirmation from each utility and remove the accounts from your wallet, so nothing debits you after you have gone.

Water, Power and Gas in a Beijing Rental: What the Bills Cost and How to Pay Them