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What the CUPS is and where to find it on your bill

The CUPS is the code that identifies your supply point, and it's needed for almost any dealing with your electricity. We explain what each part of it means, where it is on your bill and how to check you've copied it correctly.

Written by Equipo luzgasia Digital energy advisory · 5 min read

Sooner or later somebody asks you for it: to switch company, to set up a new supply, to look up your consumption or to request a comparison. The CUPS is the piece of data that identifies your supply, and knowing where it is saves you half a morning.

What it is

CUPS stands for Código Universal de Punto de Suministro — universal supply point code. It's the unique, permanent identifier of your electricity or gas connection: not of the account holder, not of the contract, but of the physical point.

That has three practical consequences worth understanding:

  • It never changes. You can switch company twenty times, change the account holder or have the supply disconnected: the CUPS stays the same for as long as that point exists.
  • It isn't yours, it belongs to the property. If you move, the CUPS stays with the flat. Your new home will have a different one.
  • Electricity and gas have different CUPS. If you have both supplies, they're two different codes at the same address.

What a CUPS looks like

It looks like this:

ES 0031 4000 0000 1234 AB 0F

It's normally printed as a single string, with no spaces: ES0031400000001234AB0F. Piece by piece:

Part What it is
ES The country
4 digits The distribution company for your area
12 digits The number identifying the point within that distributor
2 letters Check letters
2 final characters Optional: the boundary type (0F, 1P…)

The two letters at the end aren't decorative: they're a check digit worked out from the 16 numbers before them. They exist so you can spot a mistyped digit — exactly like the letter on a Spanish DNI.

And those two final characters are the cause of the most common confusion with this code: some bills print them and some don't. A 20-character CUPS and the same one at 22 characters are the same supply point. If a form rejects one, try the other.

Where it is on your bill

It depends on the retailer, but it's almost always in one of these three places:

  1. On the first page, in the "supply details" or "contract details" block, next to the address and the contracted power.
  2. On the second page, in the technical details or consumer information area. This is common on gas bills and on regulated-tariff bills.
  3. Underneath the barcode, or in the footer, in small print.

If you can't see it, search directly for the word "CUPS", or for any long string starting with ES followed by numbers. It's unmistakable.

If you have the bill as a PDF, hit Ctrl+F and type "CUPS".

If you don't have the bill to hand

There are three alternative routes:

  • Your retailer's app or customer area. It's usually under the contract details.
  • The distributor for your area. They have an online office and can give it to you once you prove you're the account holder. If you're not sure which distributor covers you, it's the one your bill names as responsible for faults and outages.
  • The purchase or rental contract, if the property is new to you. It usually appears among the utility details.

What you should not do is guess it or copy a neighbour's: the CUPS identifies one specific point, and anything done with the wrong CUPS is being done to somebody else's supply.

How to check you've copied it correctly

The check letters exist for precisely that. A correctly copied CUPS passes that check; one with a transposed digit doesn't. Any serious form runs it automatically — ours included — and tells you there and then instead of leaving you to find out three days later.

Tips for getting it right:

  • Copy and paste whenever you can, rather than typing it out.
  • Watch out for 0 and O: in the CUPS, the twelve positions after ES are always numbers, so there's never a letter O there.
  • Spaces and hyphens don't matter: they can be stripped out.

What you'll be asked for it for

  • To switch retailer. It's the only essential piece of data, along with your own details as account holder. We cover the whole thing in how to switch electricity company.
  • To set up a supply in a new property.
  • To look up your consumption history with the distributor.
  • To request a comparison without having the bill in front of you.

On that last point, a useful warning: the CUPS on its own doesn't prove the supply is yours. Anyone who sees one of your bills can copy it. That's why, when somebody asks you for your CUPS in order to look up the official data for your supply point, the right thing is for them to ask you for an identity document for the account holder as well: without that check they'd be showing you the meter readings of a third party. If a service pulls up your consumption data from the CUPS alone, with nothing verified, that's a privacy problem, not a convenience.

And if you can't find it, it doesn't matter

You can still get a comparison without it. At luzgasia you have three routes: upload the bill — the AI pulls out the CUPS and everything else — enter your consumption figures by hand, or type in the CUPS if you have it. All three end up in the same place, with your comparison in front of you.

It's free, with no strings attached and no sales calls: you see your analysis first and decide afterwards. Analyse your bill now.