Texas has more than 100 licensed retail electric providers competing for your bill, and most of them want you to stop reading before you reach the contract terms. This page maps the Texas REP market from the ground up: what a retail electric provider actually is, how the licensing and oversight structure works, what the current REP list looks like by segment, and which scoring criteria separate a reliable provider from a risky one.
This is a hub page. Each provider named below links to a full profile with complaint data, plan comparisons, and a structured score across five criteria. Use this page to orient yourself, then drill into the profiles that match your usage tier and zip code.
What Is a Retail Electric Provider
A retail electric provider is a company licensed by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) to sell electricity to end-use customers in the deregulated portions of the state. The REP buys power on the wholesale market, packages it into retail plans, handles billing, and serves as the customer’s primary contact for service issues.
The REP does not own the wires. That function belongs to a Transmission and Distribution Utility (TDU), also called a wires company. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area the TDU is Oncor. In Houston it is CenterPoint. In Austin the area served by Austin Energy is not deregulated at all, so no REP operates there. When the power goes out, you call the TDU, not the REP. When your bill is wrong, you call the REP.
This distinction matters for two reasons. First, it explains why switching providers does not change the reliability of your physical service. The wires stay the same regardless of which REP you choose. Second, it explains why REP complaints cluster around billing, enrollment errors, and contract disputes rather than outage response.
Texas deregulated its retail electricity market in 2002 under Senate Bill 7. Roughly 85 percent of Texans now live in a deregulated service area. The remaining 15 percent are served by municipal utilities or electric cooperatives that fall outside PUCT retail jurisdiction.
How the REP Licensing System Works
Before a company can sell retail electricity in Texas, it must hold a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity or, more commonly for REPs, a retail electric provider certificate issued by the PUCT. The application requires proof of financial capability, a customer service plan, and designation of a Customer Relations Manager.
The PUCT publishes a current REP list at powertochoose.org, the state-run comparison site. As of the most recent quarterly snapshot available to LightCompanies (Q1 2025), 132 certificates were active. That count includes large integrated retailers, small brokers operating under their own certificates, and affiliated REPs attached to TDUs. Not all 132 are actively marketing plans in every service territory.
The PUCT also publishes complaint data. The formal metric is the number of complaints per 10,000 customers served, reported quarterly. PUCT only publishes quarterly snapshots, so the figures cited in individual provider profiles reflect the latest available period and will lag real-time performance by up to 90 days. LightCompanies notes the reporting date on every profile.
The Current REP Market: Four Segments
For practical shopping purposes, the Texas REP market breaks into four segments. Size, ownership structure, and customer base differ enough across segments that the same scoring criteria produce different risk profiles.
Segment 1: Large integrated retailers. This group includes Reliant Energy (owned by NRG), TXU Energy (owned by Vistra), and Constellation. These providers serve hundreds of thousands to millions of residential customers each. Their complaint rates per 10,000 customers tend to be lower in absolute terms than smaller competitors, partly because scale creates more robust billing infrastructure and partly because large providers negotiate more favorable wholesale contracts that reduce billing volatility. TXU Energy reported 1.8 complaints per 10,000 customers in the Q4 2024 PUCT data. Reliant came in at 2.1. The statewide average across all active REPs in the same period was 3.4.
Segment 2: Mid-size regional competitors. Providers like Gexa Energy, Green Mountain Energy, and Discount Power fall here. Customer counts range from roughly 50,000 to 300,000. Plan variety tends to be higher in this segment than among large retailers, and renewable product depth is often stronger. Green Mountain Energy, for instance, sources 100 percent of retail sales from renewable generation and has maintained that claim since its founding in 1997. Complaint rates in this segment are more variable. Gexa has held near the statewide average for six consecutive quarters. Discount Power has run above average in three of the last four quarters, a pattern LightCompanies flags in its individual profile.
Segment 3: Low-price commodity REPs. This is the most volatile segment. Providers in this group compete almost entirely on introductory rate, frequently undercutting segment 1 and 2 prices by 10 to 20 percent at the 1,000 kWh usage tier. Complaint rates are disproportionately high. Several providers in this segment have had certificates suspended or revoked in the past five years, including Griddy Energy (2021, following Winter Storm Uri) and Pulse Power (certificate lapsed 2023). LightCompanies recommends caution with any provider in this segment that cannot show at least four consecutive quarters of PUCT complaint data below the statewide average. Many cannot.
Segment 4: Broker-affiliated and specialty REPs. Some certificates are held by brokers who aggregate plans from underlying wholesale suppliers. Others are niche products targeting commercial customers or specific geographic markets. Residential shoppers rarely encounter these directly, but powertochoose.org does not always make the distinction visible. If a provider’s name does not appear on the BBB directory with an independent rating and at least 24 months of complaint history, treat it as a segment 4 entity and apply the same caution framework as segment 3.
Five Criteria LightCompanies Uses to Score Every REP
Every provider profile on this site scores the same five criteria on a 1-to-5 scale. The aggregate score is the unweighted mean of the five sub-scores. Here is what each criterion measures and how the measurement works.
Rate transparency. Does the Electricity Facts Label (EFL) show the actual average price per kWh at 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh without requiring the reader to back-calculate hidden fees? The EFL is a PUCT-mandated disclosure document. A provider scores 5 when the EFL price at 1,000 kWh matches the advertised rate within 5 percent. A provider scores 1 when the advertised rate requires a base charge subtraction that the EFL buries in footnotes.
Billing reliability. Measured by two inputs: PUCT complaint data filtered for billing-category complaints only, and BBB complaint volume relative to estimated customer count. A provider running below 1.5 billing complaints per 10,000 customers for eight or more consecutive quarters scores 5. Above 4.0 for four or more quarters scores 1.
Customer service responsiveness. LightCompanies uses a combination of BBB response rate (the percentage of complaints the company formally responds to on the BBB platform) and hold-time data collected through periodic mystery-shopping calls to published customer service lines. A 95 percent or higher BBB response rate with average hold times under four minutes scores 5.
Plan flexibility. Does the provider offer month-to-month options alongside fixed-term contracts? Are early termination fees disclosed clearly? Does the provider serve prepaid customers, which is a meaningful accessibility question in a state with significant economic diversity? Providers offering all three score higher. Providers locked into 12-month minimums with ETFs above $200 score lower.
Renewable mix. What percentage of the provider’s retail sales are matched by renewable energy certificates (RECs) or direct renewable generation contracts? This is reported in the provider’s annual disclosure. A 100 percent renewable match scores 5. Providers making no renewable commitment score 1. Providers claiming renewable sourcing without disclosing the REC vintage or generation source score no higher than 3, because the claim is unverifiable.
How to Use the REP List Texas Shoppers See on Power to Choose
PowerToChoose.org is the PUCT-run comparison site and the closest thing Texas has to a neutral REP list. It is useful but has documented limitations that affect how you should read it.
First, the default sort is not price. The default view rotates featured listings, some of which are paid placements. Sort by price per kWh at your actual expected monthly usage, not at 1,000 kWh unless that is genuinely your usage. At 500 kWh, plans with high fixed base charges look dramatically cheaper than they actually are. At 2,000 kWh, tiered plans with declining block rates look artificially attractive.
Second, filter by contract length before comparing rates. A 6-month fixed plan and a 24-month fixed plan serve different risk appetites. Mixing them in a single price comparison produces a misleading result.
Third, click through to the EFL for every plan you are seriously considering. The plan name on the comparison page is marketing. The EFL is the binding disclosure. If the price on the EFL at your usage level is more than 5 percent higher than the price shown on the comparison page, that gap is the provider’s first communication to you about how they handle accuracy. Weight it accordingly.
What LightCompanies Recommends Against
This site does not operate as a referral marketplace. No provider pays for placement or suppression in these profiles. That means LightCompanies recommends against providers when the data supports doing so.
The clearest disqualifying signals are: a PUCT complaint rate above 5.0 per 10,000 customers sustained across three or more quarters; a BBB rating below B- with a pattern of unresolved billing complaints; an EFL that cannot be reconciled with the advertised rate at any standard usage tier; and any provider that has had a certificate action (suspension, revocation, or conditional reinstatement) without a documented remediation period of at least 12 months.
Several providers currently active on PowerToChoose.org meet one or more of these criteria. Their profiles on LightCompanies note the disqualifying signal in the first paragraph, not the last.
Navigating the Full Provider Profiles
The provider profiles linked from this hub follow a consistent structure. The first section covers market standing: years licensed, current certificate status, estimated customer count, and the most recent PUCT complaint rate with the reporting quarter noted. The second section scores the five criteria with the underlying data shown, not just the score. The third section compares at least two plans against direct competitors at the 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh usage tiers. The fourth section logs any PUCT enforcement actions and BBB rating history.
If you already know which provider you are considering, search its name directly. If you are starting from scratch, the segment framework above gives you a risk-adjusted starting point. Large integrated retailers carry lower operational risk but price at a premium. Mid-size competitors offer more plan variety and, in some cases, stronger renewable credentials. Low-price commodity REPs require the most verification work before signing.
The math on your electricity bill compounds over a 12-month contract. A 1-cent-per-kWh difference at 1,000 kWh monthly usage is $120 over a contract year. A billing dispute that takes four months to resolve is worth quantifying before the plan looks attractive.