The short answer (prices checked 26 October 2026)
- Cheapest gas on the shelf: the 8-pack of 227g butane bottles, £15.99, which is £2.00 a canister and works out at 64p per kWh of gas.
- Mains electricity under the Ofgem cap in force today is 26.32p per kWh, so even the cheapest cartridge gas costs about two and a half times what the wall socket charges.
- A 227g cartridge holds roughly 3.1 kWh, computed from Campingaz's own published figures for the Camp Bistro 3 (2,200 W, 160 g per hour). The same 3.1 kWh drawn from the mains costs 82.1p.
- The audit finding: of the first 20 unsponsored Amazon UK results for "camping gas cartridge" on 26 October 2026, none stated an energy content in kWh, MJ or BTU, and only one mentioned burn time at all. You cannot cost a cartridge from any of them.
Something unusual is happening on the Amazon UK charts this week. On 26 October 2026 the single best-selling product in the entire Sports & Outdoors department was a pack of camping gas cartridges, with a second pack at number four and a third at number nineteen. Around them sat water purification tablets at numbers five, thirteen and fifteen, a 25-litre water container at number eight, hand warmers at number nine and a first aid kit at number sixteen. Over in Electronics, eleven of the top thirty tiles were wind-up or solar emergency radios.
That is not a camping chart. It is a preparedness chart, and the Cabinet Office's Be Ready campaign is the obvious reason for it. Britain is buying cooking gas to keep in a cupboard.
There is a catch worth knowing before you add anything to a basket. The chart-topping pack, Straame's 227g push-fit canisters, showed "Currently unavailable" on its own product page when we opened it on 26 October, and the number four and number nineteen packs had no buy button either. Three of the chart's gas listings cannot actually be bought today. The six picks below were chosen partly because they can.
Prices in this table come from Amazon and are refreshed at least once a day, with the date of the last update under the table. The cost-per-use and running-cost figures on this page use prices Look Into read on 26 October 2026, so they can differ from today's price.
As an Amazon Associate, Look Into earns from qualifying purchases. Product prices and availability are accurate as of 26 October 2026 and are subject to change.
Prices and specs last checked by Look Into on 26 October 2026 · next check 21 December 2026 · how we picked
What the government's power cut advice actually asks you to cook
Read the Be Ready power cuts page carefully and you find something most buying guides miss. The official advice routes around cooking almost entirely. It tells you to keep three days of bottled water and "non-perishable food that doesn't need cooking such as ready-to-eat tinned meat, fruit or vegetables and a tin opener". A stove is not on the list. Nor is a gas cartridge. Our UK emergency kit guide works through what the campaign does ask for, and power cut lanterns cover the light it puts first.
One task survives that pruning. The same page says that to prepare baby formula safely "you will need to be able to boil water", because powdered formula is not sterile and has to be made up with freshly boiled water. That is the single cooking job the government's own guidance says you may be unable to skip in a power cut.
So the question a cartridge has to answer is narrow and answerable: how much gas is in it, how long will it burn, and what does that cost. Which brings us to the problem.
The arithmetic, and where every number came from
Since the cartridges will not tell you, the appliance will. Campingaz publishes three figures for its Camp Bistro 3 stove, which sat at number eighteen in the same Sports & Outdoors chart on 26 October: a power output of 2,200 W, a gas consumption of 160 g per hour, and a runtime of up to 1 hour 15 minutes on a 220g CP 250 cartridge. The Amazon listing states the 2,200 W figure too.
Those two numbers are all you need. Burning 160 grams an hour to produce 2.2 kW means 160 divided by 2.2, or 72.73 grams of gas per kWh. Turn that around and a kilogram of this gas carries 13.75 kWh. That figure is worth a second look, because it lands within a whisker of butane's gross calorific value, which is a decent sign the maker's own numbers hang together.
From there everything follows. A 227g cartridge holds 227 divided by 72.73, which is 3.12 kWh. The cheapest stated-weight pack here costs £2.00 a cartridge, so 200 pence divided by 3.12 kWh is 64p per kWh. The Ofgem price cap in force from 1 October to 31 December 2026 puts mains electricity at 26.32p per kWh, the rate our UK Running Cost Index runs on. Cartridge gas is 2.4 times dearer.
Put it in hours instead. Running that 2,200 W stove flat out for an hour costs 57.9p if the power is on. The same hour on the cheapest cartridge gas here burns 160 grams at 0.881p a gram, which is £1.41. On the dearest single cartridge in this guide it is £3.96.
Two honest limits on that comparison. A camping stove loses more heat around the sides of the pan than a kettle element loses into water, so the gas figure flatters itself. And none of this matters when the power is off, because then the mains rate is not 26.32p, it is unavailable at any price. The point of the arithmetic is the other 364 days: cartridge gas is expensive energy, so it belongs in the cupboard, kept for emergencies.
Three fittings, one name
The second trap is physical. "Camping gas 227g" describes at least three cartridges that will not fit each other's stoves.
- The push-fit cassette canister, the tall slim one with a notched collar, used by the flat tabletop stoves most British households own. This is what the chart leaders are.
- The threaded screw-on cartridge, which takes a 7/16 inch thread and seals itself when you unscrew the burner. Backpacking stoves use these.
- The pierceable cartridge, which the appliance punctures and which then cannot be removed until it is empty.
All three are covered by BS EN 417, the British adoption of the European standard for non-refillable metallic gas cartridges for liquefied petroleum gases. Its scope runs to cartridges between 50 ml and 1,000 ml, and its contents list treats pierceable cartridges and cartridges with a threaded centre boss valve as separate things with separate marking rules. The standard knows they are different. The listings, seven of twenty of which cite it, mostly do not say which one they are selling you.
Check the stove first, then buy the cartridge. A cassette canister will not thread onto a backpacking burner and a pierceable cartridge will not fit anything with a valve.
One safety point we will not bury
Butane burning indoors produces carbon monoxide. Camping stoves are built for outdoor use and their instructions say so. If a power cut has you thinking about cooking inside, that is the moment to put this page down, read the stove's own instructions and make sure you have a working alarm. Our guide to the best carbon monoxide alarms covers the England and Scotland rules, which differ.
How we picked these
We started from the Amazon UK Best Sellers chart for Sports & Outdoors and the Camping Replacement Fuel subcategory, read on 26 October 2026, then searched amazon.co.uk for the head term and read the first 20 unsponsored results. Every cartridge below was opened on its own product page, its title checked, its price read from the buy box and its availability confirmed on the same day. Three chart entries were dropped because they could not be bought. One Campingaz pack was dropped because its listing quoted dispatch in one to three months.
Look Into has not handled these products: every figure comes from the maker, the listing or a named source, read on the date shown. Where a listing does not state the gas weight we say so, and the cost per kWh stays blank with no guessed figure.
At a glance
| Cartridge | Price 26 Oct 2026 | Per cartridge | Gas stated | Cost per kWh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Butane Gas Bottles, 227g | £15.99 | £2.00 | 227g | 64p |
| Green Haven Camping Gas, 8 pack | £14.49 | £1.81 | not stated | cannot be computed |
| Bright Spark BS3656, pack of 4 | £10.29 | £2.57 | 220g | 85p |
| EN417 Butane Canisters, pack of 4 | £12.95 | £3.24 | 227g | 104p |
| Coleman C500 Performance, 4 pack | £22.15 | £5.54 | 440g | 92p |
| GoSystem Threaded Mix, single | £11.01 | £11.01 | 445g | 180p |
The six cartridges
8 Butane Gas Bottles Canister, 227g, pack of 8
£15.99 on 26 October 2026 · £2.00 a cartridge · 0.881p per gram · 64p per kWh
This is the plain, unbranded 8-pack that does the one thing most of its rivals will not: it states 227g in its own bullet points. That single sentence is what makes it costable, and once you can cost it, it turns out to be the cheapest gas in this guide by a clear margin. Each bottle carries about 3.12 kWh, so the pack holds roughly 25 kWh of cooking for sixteen quid. It is the standard push-fit cassette shape that fits the flat tabletop stoves sold alongside it.
The catch: there is no brand here to complain to. The listing names no manufacturer, carries no model number and does not cite EN 417, so if a canister is faulty your recourse runs through the seller and nobody else.
Check price on Amazon →Green Haven Camping Gas Butane Canisters, 8 pack
£14.49 on 26 October 2026 · £1.81 a cartridge · gas weight not stated
The cheapest eight-pack we could buy on the day, and one of the seven listings in our twenty that actually names EN 417 in its title. It sat at number nine in Camping Replacement Fuel and number 106 across Sports & Outdoors, so it is a genuine chart presence, and at £1.81 a canister it undercuts everything else here on the sticker.
The catch: nowhere in the title, the bullets, the specification table or the description does this listing say how much gas is in a canister. We looked for every spelling of grams and found none. So the one figure that would let you compare it with the pack above does not exist on the page, and we have left its cost per kWh blank. Assuming 227g would be a guess.
Check price on Amazon →Bright Spark BS3656 Catering Gas Cartridges, 220g, pack of 4
£10.29 on 26 October 2026 · £2.57 a cartridge · 1.169p per gram · 85p per kWh
A named brand with a model number, a stated 220g and a four-pack that keeps the outlay in single figures plus change. If all you need is a stocked cupboard, four cartridges is roughly five hours of cooking at full gas, which is more than the Be Ready guidance asks of you. The 220g size matches the cassette most tabletop stoves are specified around.
The catch: it is a third dearer per kWh than the unbranded eight-pack above, and it sits at number 530 in Garden, far from the camping chart, so availability has been patchier than the volume sellers.
Check price on Amazon →EN417 Butane Gas Canisters, 227g, pack of 4
£12.95 on 26 October 2026 · £3.24 a cartridge · 1.426p per gram · 104p per kWh
This one earns its place on disclosure. It puts EN 417 in the title and 227g in the bullets, which together are enough to work out exactly what you are buying and what it will cost to burn. Out of twenty listings we read, this was among the small group that let us do the whole calculation without leaving the page. For a first cartridge, knowing what you have bought is worth something.
The catch: you pay handsomely for that clarity. At 104p per kWh it is roughly 60 per cent dearer than the unbranded eight-pack for the same 227g of butane in the same fitting, and four cartridges is a small pack for the money.
Check price on Amazon →Coleman C500 Performance Gas Cartridge, 440g, 4 pack
£22.15 on 26 October 2026 · £5.54 a cartridge · 1.259p per gram · 92p per kWh
If your stove takes a screw-on canister, the cassette canisters above are no use to you and this is the sane way to buy the alternative. The listing states 440g of butane and propane mixture per canister, which is about 6.05 kWh a cartridge, and the valve reseals so you can take a part-used cartridge off the burner. The propane in the blend is what keeps pressure up when the temperature drops, which matters more in a November power cut than in July.
The catch: it is 43 per cent dearer per kWh than the cheapest cassette gas here, and a threaded cartridge is useless on the flat tabletop stove most British kitchens have in a cupboard. Check the burner before you buy four of them.
Check price on Amazon →GoSystem Butane Propane Threaded Mix Gas Cartridge, 445g
£11.01 on 26 October 2026 · single cartridge · 2.474p per gram · 180p per kWh
Sometimes you want one cartridge, not four, and this is the threaded one you can buy on its own. At 445g it is the largest single cartridge here, holding about 6.12 kWh, and the listing repeats the weight in the title, the bullets and the size field, which is more candour than most of the chart manages. Useful as a spare that lives in the car.
The catch: buying one at a time is the most expensive way to buy gas. At 180p per kWh it costs nearly three times what the cheapest eight-pack charges for the same energy, and almost seven times the capped mains rate.
Check price on Amazon →The listing audit: nobody publishes the number you need
A cartridge is sold as a quantity of metal and gas, but the thing you are buying is energy. To price energy you need either an energy figure or a burn rate. We read the first 20 unsponsored results for "camping gas cartridge" on amazon.co.uk on 26 October 2026, counting only what each listing says in its own copy: the product title, the bullet points, the technical specification tables and the product description. Carousels and related-product panels were excluded, because those will confirm almost any feature you go looking for.
- 0 of 20 stated an energy content in kWh, MJ or BTU.
- 0 of 20 stated a power output in kW.
- 1 of 20 mentioned burn time, and that one offered only the phrase "extended runtime", with no figure.
- 7 of 20 cited EN 417, the standard the cartridges are built to.
- Only 1 of 20 used the word pierceable, 5 referred to a thread and 1 to a bayonet fitting, so the fitting itself usually goes unnamed.
One of the six packs above does not state how much gas is inside, which is why its price per kWh column is blank. It is still on the chart. It is still selling.
Questions people ask
How long does a 227g camping gas cartridge last?
About an hour and twenty minutes at full gas on a 2,200 W stove. That comes from Campingaz's published consumption figure of 160 grams an hour for the Camp Bistro 3: 227 divided by 160 is 1.42 hours. Campingaz itself quotes up to 1 hour 15 minutes on its own 220g cartridge, which is the same sum with a little held back. Turn the burner down and it lasts proportionally longer, because consumption falls with the flame.
Is camping gas cheaper than mains electricity?
No. On the figures above, the cheapest cartridge gas in this guide works out at 64p per kWh and the dearest at 180p. Mains electricity under the Ofgem cap running to 31 December 2026 is 26.32p per kWh. Cartridge gas is between two and a half and seven times the price, before you account for a camping burner wasting more heat around the pan than a kettle does. It is emergency energy, not everyday energy.
Which camping gas cartridge fits my stove?
Look at the stove, not the cartridge. A flat tabletop stove with a lever on the side takes a push-fit cassette canister that slides in sideways. A small burner that screws onto the top of a cartridge takes a threaded one. An older appliance that punctures the cartridge takes a pierceable one, and that cartridge then stays attached until it is empty. BS EN 417 covers all three, so seeing the standard quoted on a listing tells you it is a proper cartridge but not which fitting it has.
Does the government tell you to buy a camping stove for power cuts?
It does not. The Be Ready power cuts guidance asks households to keep three days of bottled water and non-perishable food that does not need cooking, along with a tin opener, a battery or wind-up torch and a battery or wind-up radio. Cooking equipment is absent from the list. The one exception it names is baby formula, which the page says has to be made up with freshly boiled water, so a household with a baby on powdered formula does need a way to boil.
Why are camping gas cartridges selling out in October?
Preparedness buying, on the evidence of the chart around them. On 26 October 2026 the Sports & Outdoors top thirty held camping gas at numbers one, four and nineteen, water purification tablets at five, thirteen and fifteen, a water container at eight, hand warmers at nine and a first aid kit at sixteen, while Electronics carried eleven wind-up or solar radios in its top thirty. Three of the gas listings had no buy button when we checked them.
Sources
- Be Ready, Power cuts, Cabinet Office campaign site, read 26 October 2026, for the preparation list, the no-cooking food advice and the baby formula boiling requirement.
- BSI, BS EN 417, non-refillable metallic gas cartridges for liquefied petroleum gases, read 26 October 2026, for the scope and the separate treatment of pierceable and threaded valve cartridges.
- Campingaz Camp Bistro 3 specification, read 26 October 2026, for the published 2,200 W output, 160 g per hour consumption and up to 1 hour 15 minutes runtime on a CP 250 cartridge.
- Amazon.co.uk Best Sellers, Sports & Outdoors and the Camping Replacement Fuel subcategory, read 26 October 2026, for chart positions.
- Look Into UK Running Cost Index for the 26.32p per kWh cap rate in force from 1 October to 31 December 2026.
Prices shown in the text are the Amazon UK buy box read on 26 October 2026 and will have moved since. The comparison table above the cards pulls Amazon's live product feed, which can sit a little off the buy box. Look Into is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme and earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.