Short read. This is a ~300-word brief based on the full analysis at Househeating Pulse. For the interactive charts, brand-level data, and source tables, open the original.
The cleanest signal in the 2026 catalog is not “radiators are bad” or “underfloor heating always wins”; it’s that lower system temperatures unlock the best EPREL-declared efficiency, and the market already contains a wide spread of options. In the live type aggregation from the EPREL Public API, air-water models average 4.54 SCOP across 30,452 listings, ground-water averages 4.77 across 213 models, and water-water reaches 6.15 across 31 models. That 1.61-point gap between air-water and water-water is large enough to matter more than many national tariff differences.
The emitter story is indirect but important for retrofit planning. EPREL does not tag each model with “radiator” or “underfloor” compatibility, so the dataset cannot prove performance for a specific emitter layout. What it can show is the system-level ceiling: the top of the current market reaches 7.0 SCOP, with multiple units clustered at 6.97 and all top-15 entries sitting in APPP efficiency class. That’s a useful benchmark when deciding whether a radiator circuit can be upgraded to run cooler, or whether a low-temperature floor is the more reproducible path.
A second layer is economics. Using the article’s break-even rule of thumb, a heat pump with SCOP 4 clears gas when the electricity-to-gas ratio is about 3.7. In the country_compare slice built from Eurostat, NASA POWER, EEA, and the subsidy register, all 25 markets with both tariffs recorded sit below that threshold; Belgium is the only one above it at 3.90. France is far lower at 1.78, while Germany is 3.16, leaving much less room for a poorly tuned radiator retrofit.
For developers and analysts, the reproducibility angle is the point: EPREL for declared performance, Eurostat for tariffs, and country-level subsidy tables for policy context. Read the full analysis with live data at https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-heat-pump-efficiency-in-heat-emitters-radiators-vs-underfloor — and read the full analysis with live data again if you want the underlying tables, slices, and model examples.
Househeating Pulse aggregates 60,000+ EPREL-registered heat-pump models across Europe — efficiency rankings, refrigerant trends, country-level installed prices and subsidies. Data from EPREL, Eurostat, NASA POWER. Full analysis at https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-heat-pump-efficiency-in-heat-emitters-radiators-vs-underfloor.
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