Best Utilities Companies 2026

Utilities are an unusual review category. Most customers do not choose their electric, gas, water or waste provider — they inherit whichever incumbent serves the address. That fact distorts the absolute rating distribution: even well-run regulated utilities cluster below the 4-star line because the only reviews customers leave are typically about outages, billing disputes, or service calls gone sideways. The 2026 ranking reads that distortion correctly, comparing utilities against peers in the same regulatory model rather than against retail businesses.

CrowdTrust's 2026 utilities ranking weights reviews describing billing accuracy, outage communication, restoration time after major events, and dispute resolution. The deregulated retail electricity and gas markets (Texas, the Northeast, the UK, parts of Australia) get separate weight on contract clarity and rate-lock behaviour — areas where regulated utilities are not benchmarked because the comparison is not meaningful.

The 2026 outlier is solar. Residential solar reviews remain volatile, dominated by installer execution quality, post-install service availability, and the gap between savings promises and actual production. Solar buyers who selected installers solely on price overwhelmingly drove the lowest review tier in our data; those who paid roughly 10-20% more for established, financially-stable installers reported materially better outcomes.