Bill shock is one of the fastest ways to lose a driver. The map looked cheap. The receipt did not. The app gets deleted on the way home.
Transparent pricing is not a nice-to-have for an eMSP. It is core trust. This post breaks down what “the price” actually includes, what good UX looks like, and the rule we use when the network will not give us a clean tariff.
What the price actually includes
A single session bill can mix several components:
- Energy (€/kWh) — sometimes tiered by power level or time of day
- Time (€/min) — common on AC, or as occupancy after a grace period
- Session / connection fee — a flat cost just to start
- Idle / overstay — after full, or after free parking ends
- Roaming margin — when your eMSP is a guest on another CPO’s hardware
If any of those is hidden until the PDF arrives, trust is gone. Drivers do not distinguish “CPO tariff” from “eMSP markup.” They blame the app they opened.
What good UX looks like
We aim for three moments of truth:
- Before start — estimated energy price and fees for this EVSE, this network, this contract. Not a generic national average.
- During session — live cost and energy, not only a “Charging…” state.
- After stop — the same numbers on the receipt, with a clear line for idle if it applied.
That sounds obvious. It is hard in roaming, because tariffs arrive through hubs with different formats, partial data, and delays.
Roaming makes this harder
When you charge “at home” on a partnered network, prices are often clean. When you roam, the eMSP has to normalize whatever the hub returns into something a human can read in two seconds at a rainy motorway stop.
Sometimes the honest answer is: we do not have a reliable tariff for this EVSE yet. Inventing a number that will be wrong later is worse than saying price is unavailable.
Our rule
If we cannot show an honest price, we do not pretend.
We surface a clear price unavailable state and point you at the CPO display when needed, rather than painting a fake €/kWh that will not match the CDR. When we do have a tariff, we show it before Start and keep the live total consistent with the final receipt.
What’s next
Pricing is only useful if you can find a working bay. See map filters that actually help and roaming authorization failures .