Electric vs Hydronic Heated Driveway
In an electric vs hydronic heated driveway choice, electric usually costs less to put in, and hydronic, which uses hot liquid in pipes, usually costs less to run. How big your driveway is, and whether you are already redoing it, will usually point you to one or the other.
The short answer: for a single driveway, go electric; for a double, get both systems priced; and to heat the driveway you already have, under a new top layer, electric is the only choice.
How the Two Systems Differ
An electric system warms cables buried in the driveway surface. A hydronic one circulates heated glycol, a kind of antifreeze, through pipes beneath the pavement, and a gas boiler does the heating. A boiler is a gas heater that warms the liquid, much like a furnace warms air. These figures use two common driveway sizes: 400 sq ft for a single and 600 sq ft for a double, the sizes Green Building Canada gives for Canadian homes. Sq ft means square feet. GTA means the Greater Toronto Area.
| What we look at | Electric | Hydronic |
|---|---|---|
| Price per sq ft to install | $20 to $60 | $40 to $95 |
| Installed total, single driveway | $8,000 to $24,000 | $16,000 to $38,000 |
| Installed total, double driveway | $12,000 to $36,000 | $24,000 to $57,000 |
| One snowfall, single driveway | $7 to $23 of electricity on Time-of-Use | about $2 to $3 of gas |
| One snowfall, double driveway | $11 to $34 of electricity on Time-of-Use | about $3 to $5 of gas |
| Extra equipment | Sometimes a bigger electrical panel (the breaker box), at $2,700 to $5,400 | A boiler, at $4,300 to $12,200 |
| Can heat a driveway you already have | Yes: laid on the old driveway, then covered with new asphalt or new paving stones | No, only a new or rebuilt driveway |
Installation prices come from Precision Landscaping and Action Home Services, and the panel and boiler prices come from Floor Heating Systems. By one snowfall we mean the system running for 4 to 6 hours. Price my driveway shows both systems for your own size. The electricity costs use Time-of-Use, the Ontario plan where the price depends on the time of day, from its lowest to its top price; the other plans are further down.
Going Electric in Toronto
For a single driveway, electric is the usual choice. For a double, two installers see it a little differently. For most two-car driveways in the GTA, electric is the practical pick, according to Floor Heating Systems. Precision Landscaping finds it works best on areas under about 500 sq ft, so for a bigger double driveway, ask the installer to price both. A typical double is about 600 sq ft, so the simple rule is: single, go electric; double, get both systems priced on the visit. Hydronic cannot go beneath an existing driveway, so if you want to keep yours, ask an installer whether electric can work.
An electric driveway uses a lot of power the whole time it runs. Unilock points out that not every house has that much spare electrical capacity. An electrical contractor can check whether your home has enough, and if a panel upgrade is needed, it costs $2,700 to $5,400. The panel is the breaker box where power comes into your home; an upgrade swaps it for a bigger one.
What Does Each Snowfall Cost on Different Electricity Plans?
Ontario homes buy electricity on one of three plans. On Time-of-Use, the price changes with the time of day: off-peak (weekdays 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and all weekend) is cheapest, on-peak (weekdays 7 to 11 a.m. and 5 to 7 p.m.) costs the most, and mid-peak (weekdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.) sits in between. Tiered charges the same price at any hour, and a slightly higher one once your home has used 1,000 kilowatt-hours (the unit your bill counts) in a winter month.
The plan you are on makes a big difference to what each snowfall costs. One choice is the Ultra-Low Overnight plan. Overnight power, between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., costs very little, while weekday evenings from 4 to 9 p.m. cost a good deal more. These rates were set by the Ontario Energy Board for 1 November 2026. The board has already published them for this winter. They leave out delivery charges and HST.
Delivery charges are the part of the bill that pays for the wires, and HST is Ontario's 13 % sales tax.
| Rate plan and window | Single driveway, per snowfall | Double driveway, per snowfall |
|---|---|---|
| Time-of-Use at its lowest price (nights, weekends and weekdays after 7 p.m.) | roughly $7 to $11 | roughly $11 to $16 |
| Time-of-Use at its middle price (11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays) | roughly $12 to $18 | roughly $18 to $26 |
| Time-of-Use at its top price (7 to 11 a.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. on weekdays) | about $15 to $23 | about $23 to $34 |
| Ultra-Low Overnight plan, at night (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.) | about $3 to $4 | about $4 to $7 |
| Ultra-Low Overnight plan, weekday evenings (4 to 9 p.m.) | roughly $30 to $45 | roughly $45 to $68 |
| Tiered plan, any hour, up to the monthly limit | $9 to $13 | $13 to $20 |
These prices get reset by the Ontario Energy Board every year on 1 November. A hydronic system burns gas rather than electricity.
How this is worked out
The gas estimates use Enbridge rates effective 1 October 2026 and assume a boiler that is 90% efficient. They use the delivery rate for monthly gas use above 170 cubic metres and leave out HST and the $27.69 monthly customer charge.
The electricity prices behind the table are 3.7¢ per kilowatt-hour overnight on Ultra-Low Overnight and 37.7¢ on its weekday evenings, 9.1¢ off-peak, 14.6¢ mid-peak and 18.9¢ on-peak on Time-of-Use, and 11.2¢ for the first 1,000 kWh a month in winter on Tiered. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is the unit your electricity bill counts.
When Is Hydronic the Smarter Choice?
Hydronic suits driveways that are long or wide, since cheap gas saves more as the area grows. For a double driveway, gas for one snowfall runs about $3 to $5. Electricity for the same 4 to 6 hours costs about $11 to $34 on Time-of-Use prices, before delivery charges and HST.
Because the pipes cannot be placed under a driveway that is already laid, the right moment for hydronic is a driveway rebuild. A boiler is part of the package too, at $4,300 to $12,200. If you are choosing one, look for the ENERGY STAR label: Natural Resources Canada sets it at 90 % efficiency, which is the efficiency these gas costs assume. ENERGY STAR is the label for efficient models, and 90 % efficiency means about 90 % of the gas turns into heat.
What Permits and Trades Each System Needs
In Ontario, electrical work has to be reported to the Electrical Safety Authority with a notification of work before it starts. The ESA suggests hiring a Licensed Electrical Contracting Business for the work. In plain terms: the ESA is Ontario's electrical safety office, the notification is a short form about the job, and a licensed electrical contractor files it for you.
Fuels safety technicians, who hold certification from the Technical Standards and Safety Authority, handle the gas work on a boiler. That simply means a licensed gas technician connects the boiler.
Questions People Often Ask
Which system is better for most driveways?
For most two-car driveways in the GTA, electric is the practical pick because it costs less to install, and WarmlyYours, a manufacturer, expects it to last 30 years or more. A hydronic boiler is expected to last 20 to 25 years. Hydronic makes more sense when you are rebuilding a large driveway, because gas is much cheaper to run.
What Will a Heated Driveway Do to Your Electric Bill?
It depends on how often you run it and on which plan. Toronto's weather records come from Pearson airport. Toronto Pearson averaged 7.2 days a year with 5 cm or more of snow between 1991 and 2020, so if you run a double driveway only on those days at off-peak rates, you would pay roughly $11 to $16 each time. Run it on every day with a dusting (44.7 days a year on average) and the bill climbs quickly. Smaller areas are cheaper: a 100 sq ft electric walkway costs roughly $0.46 per hour off-peak and $0.95 per hour at peak times.