Is it cheaper to run fire or central heating?

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As the title says, does anyone know which is cheaper?

I live in a two bed terrace and am sitting in the living room about to turn either my heating or fire on, and wondered which would be cheaper. They both run off gas, and all of the radiators would come on except the one in my bedroom (I’m not going to turn radiators on and off all of the time so that the heating will only heat one room).

Am I better off turning the heating or fire on, or is the difference negligible?

I would say the fire. I wish we had a fireplace. If you live near woodland maybe you could even find some free wood to burn.

We have a gas fire and a log burner. Both are expensive to run, except when a friend will give me free wood. But the wood fire is far nicer, and I can cook or boil water on the top.

If you're only using the room with the fire, that will be cheaper. If you had people using different rooms, radiators would be cheaper then multiple fires. Though I would consider turning off radiators if your generally in the same 1 or 2 rooms on an evening then you won't need to change which are on/off that often.

I have no idea how much either would cost to run.

I wouldn’t be able to guess neither. That’s impossible!

Do you mean just turn the fire on vs putting the radiators on?

why not do an experiment and see for an hour how many units of gas each uses by checking your meter?

And turning radiators on and off isn’t that much of a chore?? Eg turn the ones down in your bedroom for example. I’m always fiddling with ours.

People need reminding that woodlands are owned by landowners. So the wood collected is owned by that person. I have land, and id be pissed if I found people collecting wood on it.

its not free wood

It depends. We were advised that our old gas fire probably cost about the same to run as the central heating. More modern gas fires are significantly more efficient. If you're going to be asking yourself this question on a regular basis it would be worth working it out, either as a PP described by monitoring how much gas you're using, or by searching online for the model of gas fire you have and looking for the stats. The efficiency of the central heating will depend as well.

It’s a gas fire, though. Not something you can burn wood in.

sorry my bad, I thought OP meant a traditional fireplace lol… When we last went glamping DH and I both collected sticks from the woodland to burn in the wood burner, it made the little cabin so cosy. I now totally envy anybody with a fire place in their house.