What public EV charging costs in South Africa, from 504 recorded tariffs

Of the 532 public charging locations SunVerified publishes, 504 record a price per kilowatt-hour. Across the 431 that charge for electricity, the median is R5.88 per kWh, the range runs from R2.56 to R11.76, and 73 further locations are recorded at zero, meaning free to use. Those numbers come from the Open Charge Map register, which this site republishes in full.

The spread, and where most locations sit

The distribution is tight in the middle and long at the top. Nine in ten paid locations record between R5.86 and R8.12 per kWh, so the typical experience is closer to six rand than to eleven. The outliers at the top end tend to be the highest-power sites, where the tariff is buying speed rather than energy.

The caveat, stated plainly

495 of the 504 tariffs carry the register's own note that the value is estimated. They are contributed by the community rather than published by the network operators, so treat them as a reliable picture of the market and an unreliable guide to what any single charger will bill you today. The operator's own app is the authority on the price you will actually pay.

What that means per charge

Public charging is priced by energy delivered, so the arithmetic is straightforward: energy taken multiplied by the tariff. A 50 kWh top-up at the median R5.88 is roughly R294. The more useful comparison is against home charging, where you pay your domestic tariff instead, which in most municipalities is materially lower than the public median above. That gap is the whole financial case for a home charger.

Speed is a separate question from price

197 of the recorded locations offer at least one DC connector, which is the type that charges in minutes rather than hours. The median connection across the whole dataset is 22 kW, which is AC and an overnight or half-day proposition. Filtering for DC matters more than filtering for price if you are planning a route rather than a weekly errand.