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LIHEAP Energy Bill Help — Eligibility Checker (2026)

Federal law sets a band, not a line: your state picks its own limit inside it. This shows where your household falls in that band, and says plainly what only your state can answer.

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Your Household and Energy Costs

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The state runs the programme and sets its own income limit, its own benefit amounts and its own application dates. It also decides which poverty table applies: Alaska and Hawaii have their own, and they are higher.

Paying it inside the rent counts. This is the point renters most often assume rules them out, and it does not: only a household with no responsibility for its energy costs at all is generally outside the programme.

Most states treat this as automatic income eligibility. Not all handle it the same way: some need only one member to receive it, others every member, so it is reported here as the likely answer rather than a settled one.

Everyone in the dwelling, related or not. LIHEAP looks at the home and its energy bill rather than at a family, so lodgers and other adults generally count.

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Gross income for everyone in the home. States differ on the period they look at — many use the last month or the last three, not the year — so treat this as a position in the band rather than the figure on your application.

This shows the federal band only. Your state's actual income limit, its benefit amounts and its application dates are set by the state and are not held here.

Your Result

Answer the questions to see where your household falls in the federal band

What LIHEAP Money Pays For

Component What it does
Heating The main winter benefit, usually paid straight to the utility or fuel supplier. Every state runs one.
Cooling Summer electricity, and sometimes a fan or air conditioner. Not every state runs one, and the ones that do vary widely.
Crisis For a shut-off notice, a disconnection or an empty tank. Faster than the regular benefit and often open when it is closed — the number to ring if the heat is about to go.
Weatherization Insulation, draught-proofing and repairs that lower the bill permanently rather than paying it once.

This is an educational eligibility check based on the federal LIHEAP statute and the 2026 poverty guidelines. It computes your household's poverty guideline, your income as a percentage of it, and the statutory band every state's income limit must fall inside — no lower than 110% of poverty, no higher than the greater of 150% of poverty or 60% of state median income. It does not hold your state's actual income limit, its benefit amounts, its application dates, its crisis programme rules, or the state median income figures behind the upper ceiling, and it cannot tell you whether funds remain. LIHEAP is a block grant, not an entitlement: meeting the income rule does not mean a payment will be made. Only your state or local energy assistance office can decide an application. The federal programme page and the directory of state and local energy assistance offices are at acf.hhs.gov.

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A Band, Not a Line

Federal law does not set a LIHEAP income limit. It sets the range a state's limit may fall in: no lower than 110% of the poverty guidelines, and no higher than the greater of 150% of poverty or 60% of that state's median income. Everything between those two points is a state decision, and states use the room. That is why a household can be told it qualifies across a state line and not at home on the same income, and why any site quoting one national LIHEAP income limit is quoting something that does not exist.

Your state's limit sits between 110% of poverty and the greater of 150% of poverty or 60% of state median income

Why This Page Will Not Guess Your State's Number

The upper bound depends on state median income, published each winter for every state at every household size — several hundred figures that change annually. Getting one of them wrong would not produce a vague answer; it would produce a confident, specific and false one, quoted back to an agency by someone who trusted it. A missing figure sends you to ask. A wrong figure stops you asking.

So the page reports what it can stand behind: your position in the federal band, computed from the published poverty guidelines, with the three answers that follow from it. Below 110% you are under the lowest line any state may draw. Between 110% and 150% you are in the territory states differ over. Above 150% the poverty ceiling has passed but the median-income ceiling may not have, which for a one or two-person household is often the higher of the two.

Eligible Is Not the Same as Served

LIHEAP is a block grant, not an entitlement. SNAP and Medicaid must serve everyone who qualifies; LIHEAP has a fixed sum for the year and stops when it is gone. In practice it reaches a minority of eligible households nationally, and the ones it reaches are largely the ones who applied first. Most states open in the autumn, run first come first served, and close when the money is exhausted regardless of the published end date. A household that reads "you qualify" and waits for the January bill has usually waited too long.

There is one exception worth knowing. Most states keep a separate crisis fund for households facing a shut-off notice, a disconnection, or an empty fuel tank in cold weather, and it is often open when the regular benefit has closed and answered within days rather than weeks. If the heat is about to go off, that is the number to ring — not next season's application.

Important Disclaimer

This is an educational eligibility check based on the federal LIHEAP statute and the 2026 poverty guidelines. It computes your household's poverty guideline, your income as a percentage of it, and the statutory band every state's income limit must fall inside — no lower than 110% of poverty, no higher than the greater of 150% of poverty or 60% of state median income. It does not hold your state's actual income limit, its benefit amounts, its application dates, its crisis programme rules, or the state median income figures behind the upper ceiling, and it cannot tell you whether funds remain. LIHEAP is a block grant, not an entitlement: meeting the income rule does not mean a payment will be made. Only your state or local energy assistance office can decide an application. acf.hhs.gov

Renting, and the Bill You Do Not See

Renters assume LIHEAP is for homeowners with a bill in their name, and drop out at the first question. It is not. Paying for heat inside the rent counts as being responsible for energy costs, and states have procedures for exactly that case — often paying the benefit to the landlord or the utility on the tenant's behalf, sometimes to the tenant directly. Only a household with no responsibility for its energy at all is generally outside the programme, and even then a shared meter or an unusual tenancy is worth a question rather than an assumption.

Is This Checker Accurate?

What it computes is exact: your household's poverty guideline from the published 2026 tables, including the separate Alaska and Hawaii versions, your income as a percentage of it, and the statutory band of 110% to 150%. What it does not compute is your state's actual limit, because that is a state decision this page does not hold, or the 60% state-median-income ceiling, for the reason given above. It does not know your state's benefit amounts, its application window, whether its money has run out, or which extra programmes it accepts as automatic eligibility. It cannot tell you that you will be paid — no page can, for a programme that closes when the grant is spent.

Guides for your state

This programme is run by the states, so the name, the agency and some of the limits change at the border. These states have their own page, with the calculator already set to them.