What a heat pump installation costs in Canada

Ask for the heat loss calculation

Natural Resources Canada recommends retaining a heating and cooling professional to run the required calculations for your home rather than sizing by square footage or by what was there before. An oversized unit is not a safe default either — NRCan describes it producing too much heat and cycling on and off, which means discomfort, wear on the equipment and standby electrical draw.

So the first thing to compare between quotes is not the brand. It is whether anyone did the arithmetic, and whether they will show it to you.

The balance point is the number that decides your bill

NRCan defines the balance point as the temperature below which the heat pump does not have enough capacity to meet the building's heating needs on its own. Below that, something else has to make up the difference. NRCan is clear that most air-source installations require a supplementary heating source to maintain indoor temperatures on the coldest days, and that newer models have a minimum operating temperature that can range between minus 15 and minus 25 degrees Celsius.

There is also an economic balance point: the temperature below which the ratio of electricity prices to a supplemental fuel makes running the backup cheaper. In a house with gas, that number, not the equipment's limit, is often what the thermostat should switch on.

A quote that names your balance point and says what carries the house below it is a real quote. One that says "works down to minus 30" without saying at what capacity is marketing.

Ducted, ductless, or both

If the house has good ductwork, a central heat pump can replace the air conditioner and work with the existing furnace as backup — NRCan describes this arrangement as the indoor coil sitting in the duct with air heated or cooled as it passes over it. If the house has baseboards or hot water heat, the alternative is ductless heads on walls or floors, priced per head, and the layout of the house decides how many you need. A one-and-a-half-storey with closed-off bedrooms is not a one-head job, whatever the sticker says.

The electrical panel is the quiet cost

Adding a heat pump adds load, and adding backup electric heat adds a great deal of it. Whether your panel and service can carry it is a question for an electrician, not the HVAC salesperson, and in Ontario only a Licensed Electrical Contractor can do the work and pull the permit for it. A service upgrade is its own project with its own timeline, so it is worth asking early rather than discovering it the week of the install.

Rebates change more often than equipment does

Do not build a decision around a program without checking it that week. The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program began delivery in 2025 through participating provinces and territories, offering no-cost retrofits such as heat pumps to low-to-median-income households, applied for through the province or territory rather than federally. Provincial and utility incentives run alongside it and are the larger number in some provinces. Several require a pre-retrofit energy evaluation before any equipment is ordered, so the order of operations matters.