LPG Range Cooker Off Grid: The Cost Gap With Oil

Choosing an LPG range cooker off grid usually comes down to one comparison the showroom will not put in front of you: propane currently costs roughly 19.2p per kWh against 11.6p for kerosene, so the same heat out of an LPG cooker costs about two thirds more than out of an oil one. That gap decides most off-grid kitchens on its own. It does not decide all of them, because the two fuels behave very differently in a house, and only one of them lets you shop around for every delivery.

Here is what actually runs on each fuel, what the tank arrangements commit you to, and where LPG still earns its place.

The running cost, side by side

Those are the same figures used in our range cooker fuel types comparison: kerosene from BoilerJuice’s UK average, propane from the Nottingham Energy Partnership’s cost comparison, converted at 9.78 kWh per litre of kerosene and 6.64 kWh per litre of propane. The two fuels sell at a similar price per litre, but a litre of kerosene carries about 47% more energy, which is where almost all of the difference comes from.

For context, heating oil has been bought for well under that this autumn in bulk: the UK average for a 1,000 litre delivery sat around 96.6p per litre excluding VAT at the start of September 2026, which is a materially better rate than a small top-up order. Oil rewards buying in quantity in a way bottled gas does not.

Two things blunt the gap slightly. Gas is instant, so an LPG cooker only burns fuel while you are cooking, whereas a heat-storage oil range that is left on tickover burns through the night whether or not you use it. And an efficient gas appliance wastes less of what it burns: Esse quotes 80% efficiency for its gas Ironheart. If you cook three nights a week and never want the cooker warming the room, a modern gas range can close a good deal of the distance. If the cooker is also your heating, oil wins comfortably.

What actually runs on LPG

There is no long list. The heat-storage range cooker market is mostly oil, wood and electric, and gas is the minority fuel.

Rayburn 400 Series. The one mainstream cast-iron range built for gas, available in natural gas or LPG, and the only Rayburn series that does. It provides central heating and hot water as well as cooking, and is designed to fit within standard 600mm kitchen cabinetry, which matters in a smaller rural kitchen. If your house has no mains gas and you want a Rayburn that runs on bottled or bulk propane, this is the model.

Esse gas cookers, including the gas Ironheart. Esse’s gas range is available in natural gas and propane across the board. The gas Ironheart, launched as a gas version in 2013, keeps the cast-iron looks of the wood-burning original with immediate gas control and is rated 80% efficient. These are cookers rather than heating appliances, so they do not take over your radiators.

A conventional range cooker, converted. This is what most off-grid households actually buy. You purchase an ordinary gas or dual-fuel range cooker and have it converted to LPG with the correct jets. Our LPG cooker guide covers the conversion, the Gas Safe requirement, propane versus butane and how to size bottles, and the dual fuel range cooker page covers the gas-hob, electric-oven combination that suits a lot of rural kitchens.

What actually runs on oil

The oil side is where the heat-storage market really lives, and AGA’s Rayburn line covers it in three steps.

Rayburn 300 Series is oil-fired, cooks, and provides domestic hot water. No central heating. The large hotplate takes up to five saucepans across different heat zones. This is the one for a house that already has its heating sorted.

Rayburn 600 Series is oil-fired and adds central heating and hot water to the cooking, with an output up to 28kW. The hotplate takes up to seven pans.

Rayburn Heatranger is the serious heating machine, sold in three outputs: 60K at 17.58kW for up to 12 radiators, 80K at 23.45kW for up to 16, and 100K at 29.3kW for up to 20. Crucially the heating is controlled independently of the cooking, which is the single feature that makes a heat-storage range tolerable in July. AGA quotes the Heatranger as running on HVO as well as conventional kerosene.

Esse also builds oil cookers, and there is a large secondhand market in oil-fired Rayburns and AGAs, many of them decades old and still serviceable.

The HVO question

Hydrotreated vegetable oil is a drop-in renewable replacement for kerosene, refined from waste vegetable, animal and forestry residues, and the industry puts the carbon saving at around 88% against the fossil fuel it replaces. If you are buying an oil range cooker now and expect to keep it for twenty years, an HVO-capable model such as the Heatranger is worth choosing on principle.

Be realistic about supply. HVO for domestic heating is not universally available from local distributors, and the price per litre is higher than kerosene. Treat HVO compatibility as future-proofing rather than something you will necessarily switch to on day one, and ask your own fuel supplier what they can actually deliver to your postcode before you assume it.

The part that costs more than the fuel: the tank

This is the structural difference between the two fuels, and it gets skipped constantly.

Heating oil: you own the tank. A domestic oil tank belongs to you, so any supplier can fill it. You can ring round, buy when the price dips, join a local buying group and order a full 1,000 litres to get the bulk rate. Over a cooker’s lifetime that freedom is worth real money.

Bulk LPG: the supplier owns the tank. A domestic bulk propane tank is almost always leased from the gas company that installed it, above ground or buried, and only that company can fill it. You are on their price list until you go through a switching process. This is exactly why comparison services exist for bulk LPG and not for oil, and why LPG customers so often discover their unit price has drifted upwards between renewals.

Bottled LPG: no tank commitment, worst unit price. Swapping 47kg propane cylinders means no contract and no installation cost, but you pay the highest price per litre of any of these options and someone has to physically change a heavy bottle, occasionally mid-roast. Fine for a cooker used a few times a week, poor for anything that runs continuously.

If you have no tank yet and no strong preference, the ability to price-shop every oil delivery is a genuine argument for oil beyond the headline 11.6p versus 19.2p.

Flues, siting and installation

Both fuels need a flue and neither is a DIY job. Gas work must be done by a Gas Safe registered engineer holding the LPG competency, and oil appliances by an OFTEC registered technician.

If the house has no usable chimney, ask about a power flue. AGA offers one on the Rayburn range, which allows the cooker to sit on an external or internal wall without a conventional chimney, and it opens up kitchens that would otherwise be ruled out. It is worth raising early, because it can change where in the room the cooker goes and therefore the whole kitchen plan.

Grants, if the cooker is also your boiler

A range cooker that runs your radiators is a heating system, which brings it inside the Boiler Upgrade Scheme rules. From 21 July 2026, uplifted grants apply to off-gas-grid properties replacing oil heating in England and Wales: £9,000 towards an air-to-water or ground source heat pump, £2,500 towards an air-to-air heat pump, and £5,000 towards a biomass boiler.

That does not mean you should rip out a working Rayburn. It does mean that if your oil range is near the end of its life and it is also heating the house, the arithmetic on replacing the heating and the cooking separately is different from what it was two years ago. Check the current rules on the Boiler Upgrade Scheme before committing to a like-for-like replacement.

So which one?

Choose oil if the range is also going to heat the house or the hot water, if you want the lowest running cost per unit of heat, or if you value being able to buy fuel from whoever is cheapest that week. This covers most rural farmhouses.

Choose LPG if you want instant, controllable flame rather than stored heat, if the cooker is a cooker and nothing more, if your kitchen cannot accommodate an oil tank and its siting rules, or if you cook in short bursts and object to paying to keep cast iron hot around the clock.

Choose neither if your electricity supply is solid and you have no need for the heat: a modern electric heat-storage range such as an Everhot, or a good induction range, sidesteps fuel deliveries entirely. Our page on whether electric range cookers are expensive to run has the numbers, and AGA running costs per year is the reality check on heat-storage cooking generally.

Frequently asked questions

Can I run an AGA or Rayburn on bottled gas? The Rayburn 400 Series is built for natural gas or LPG, so yes. Most other cast-iron Rayburns and traditional AGAs are oil, electric or solid fuel and cannot simply be switched to gas. Esse’s gas cookers are all available in propane. For anything else, converting an ordinary gas range cooker with the right jet kit is the practical route.

Is LPG or oil cheaper for a range cooker? Oil, on current prices, by a wide margin per unit of heat: about 11.6p per kWh for kerosene against 19.2p for propane. The gap narrows if the gas cooker is only lit when you cook and the oil one is a heat-storage model left on all week, because then you are paying for hours of standing heat you never used.

Do I have to rent an LPG tank? For bulk propane, effectively yes. Domestic bulk tanks are leased from the supplier who installs them and only that supplier can fill them, so you are tied to their prices until you switch. Bottled propane avoids the tie at the cost of a higher price per litre and the chore of swapping cylinders.

Can an oil range cooker run my central heating? Some can. The Rayburn 300 Series does hot water only. The 600 Series does central heating and hot water at up to 28kW, and the Heatranger covers 12 to 20 radiators depending on output. Always size the boiler to the actual radiator count rather than the room count, and get the installer to confirm it.

Will I be forced to stop using heating oil? Conventional heating oil remains available for existing systems, and policy has focused on what you may install rather than what you may burn. The rules around replacing off-gas-grid fossil fuel heating have changed repeatedly, so check GOV.UK for the position that applies on the day you are buying rather than relying on any article, this one included.

Does a range cooker on tickover really use much fuel? Yes, that is the nature of heat-storage cooking. A cast-iron range holds heat because it is always burning something, so the fuel goes whether or not you cook. That is exactly why the Heatranger separates heating control from cooking control, and why instant gas can beat cheaper oil for a household that cooks occasionally.

Sources

• AGA Rayburn cast iron ranges
• Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant categories and values, GOV.UK

Fuel prices correct as at September 2026 and move constantly. Get a current quote from your own supplier before deciding.