City of Houston Houston Public Works – Utility Billing

Provider briefing

How this utility’s billing works

City of Houston Houston Public Works – Utility Billing operates as a municipal department serving Houston and the City of Houston Public Works retail service territory. Customers should use the provider’s current account-specific bill and official customer-service instructions as the final authority for deadlines, balances, and service requests.

The published water-rate framework is described as Increasing block/tiered metered rates with a fixed meter-size charge, a separate TCEQ Public Health Service Fee, and additional volume tiers. Effective April 1, 2026, a common single-family 5/8- or 3/4-inch meter has water charges of $8.23 at zero usage, $10.41 at 1,000 gallons, $12.38 at 2,000, $14.35 at 3,000, $44.82 at 4,000, $53.91 at 5,000, and $63.00 at 6,000 gallons; usage above 6,000 is charged $12.54 per 1,000 gallons through 12,000, $15.82 per 1,000 through 20,000, and $20.20 per 1,000 above 20,000. The TCEQ fee is an additional $0.21 per month for single-family residential connections, and drainage/stormwater is separate from the water-and-wastewater calculator.. Bills are generated monthly. houston’s residential charge calculator is explicitly monthly, and the current rate schedule publishes monthly water and wastewater base and volume charges. the exact bill date and due date are account-specific and appear on the customer statement., and a typical residential cost reference is Approximately $125–$149 per month for a typical 5/8- or 3/4-inch single-family account using 5,000–6,000 gallons, before drainage/stormwater or other account-specific charges. The April 1, 2026 schedule lists $53.91–$63.00 for water at those usage levels plus the $0.21 TCEQ fee; residential wastewater adds a $16.88 base charge, $7.77 per 1,000 gallons for the first 3,000 gallons, and $15.20 per 1,000 gallons over 3,000, producing approximately $70.59 at 5,000 gallons and $85.79 at 6,000 gallons. Actual bills can differ by meter size, customer category, drainage fees, adjustments, and account-specific service charges.. These descriptions are useful planning benchmarks; actual charges can change with meter size, usage, sewer averaging, local taxes, drought stages, or account-specific fees.

Wastewater and sewer calculation

Houston bills residential wastewater as a meter-size base charge plus a volume charge tied to billed water consumption, rather than a winter-average formula. For a 5/8- or 3/4-inch single-family meter effective April 1, 2026, the sewer base charge is $16.88; the first 3,000 gallons are charged $7.77 per 1,000 gallons, and each 1,000 gallons over the first 3,000 is charged $15.20. Thus 5,000 gallons yields a wastewater component of approximately $70.59 and 6,000 gallons approximately $85.79 before any separate drainage or adjustments. The City’s public calculator estimates water and wastewater but expressly excludes the drainage fee.

Meter and infrastructure notes

Houston historically operates an in-ground Automated Meter Reading (AMR) network. The May 2026 Houston Water Bill Improvement Plan reports that remote-reading-device replacements provide daily/hourly meter reads, usage alerts, and earlier leak detection; automated reads averaged 86% by district at the time of the update. Houston Public Works reports more than 120,000 remote reading devices installed since April 2024, more than 110,000 meter registers replaced, and a plan to install more than 240,000 additional remote reading devices over five years. The City began a March 2026 smart-meter replacement pilot using meters with no moving parts, while more than 240,000 meters remained without updated remote-reading devices; therefore the 2026 system is mixed AMR/remote-device coverage with estimates or manual reads possible when a device is inaccessible or fails, not a uniformly deployed fully two-way AMI network.