The short answer
A utility bill is a recurring statement from a provider of an essential household service: electricity, natural gas, water, sewer, or trash. For proof of address, that definition is not enough. The bill has to show three things (your name, the service address, and a statement date) and it has to be inside the window the person asking uses, which runs from 60 days to 180 days to no window at all.
So there are two questions hiding inside one. If you are budgeting, a utility bill is the essential-services line in your monthly spending, and Cornell’s Wex defines a public utility as an entity that provides goods or services to the general public, naming electric, gas, water, heat, and cable. If you are standing at a DMV counter, none of that matters and only the state’s printed list does. The rest of this page is mostly about the second question, because that is the one that sends people home.
What counts as a utility bill
To prove your address, bring an electric, gas, or water bill. Texas, Florida, DC, and Tennessee name all three, and California’s regulation accepts a “home utility bill” without naming any of them. None of the DMV lists names sewer, trash, or propane, and only DC’s names heating oil. For housing aid, HUD’s utility allowance rule also counts sewer and trash collection, but not the telephone.
A second tier counts only sometimes. Internet and broadband, cable television, satellite, landline telephone, mobile service, streaming subscriptions, and even lawn service. Texas names five of them and says its examples aren’t a complete list. Tennessee takes cable and landline but not mobile. The UK checklist takes a landline bill and rejects a mobile one. That is not a contradiction anyone resolves for you; it is the actual state of the rules.
A third tier is never a utility bill. Rent, credit card statements, car insurance, gym memberships, and HOA dues. Worth one caveat, because it trips people up: California and Tennessee both accept insurance documents as residency proof even though insurance is not a utility. Not a utility bill, still a valid proof of address. Those are different tests.
For scale: the average US residential electric bill was $142.26 a month in 2024, at 863 kWh and 16.48 cents per kWh, across 143.1 million residential customers (EIA, Table 5.A, released October 2025). There are more residential electric accounts in the country than there are households, which is why almost every list starts with the electric bill. It is the closest thing to a document everybody has.
Heating is the other anchor, and it is seasonal. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association projected an average household winter natural-gas bill of $693 for 2025-26, up from $639, and $1,205 for households that heat with electricity, a 10.2 percent rise (NEADA, September 2025). A winter bill is also the one most likely to be sitting in your inbox when somebody asks for proof.
Is a phone bill a utility bill? Internet? Rent?
Is a cell phone bill a utility bill?
Four jurisdictions, four different answers to the same question. California’s regulation at 13 CCR 15.01(d)(4) reads, verbatim, “Home utility bill including cellular phone bill.” Texas names cellular telephone in its list of qualifying residential services. Washington, DC accepts a “Telephone bill (cell phone, wireless, or pager bills acceptable)” but lists it as its own document type, separate from the utility bill. Tennessee’s list says “landline telephone,” and stops there. And the UK checklist rejects mobile phone bills by name.
The mobile-versus-landline split is the edge case that matters most, because most US households no longer keep a landline at all. If you are in Tennessee and your only phone is a mobile, the phone bill is not on the table and you need a different document. Read the list, not the summary.
Is internet or cable a utility bill?
For residency, usually yes. For a housing subsidy, explicitly no. Texas accepts internet, cable, and streaming services. Florida accepts cable, and takes a recent internet service provider bill from CDL applicants on a 60-day window. Tennessee accepts cable. HUD, at 24 CFR 982.517(b)(1)(iv), states that a housing authority “may not provide any allowance for non-essential utility costs, such as costs of cable or satellite television.” Texas is right about residency and HUD is right about subsidies, because they are answering different questions.
Is rent, car insurance, or a streaming subscription a utility bill?
No to all three, though two of them still have a use. Rent is a payment to a landlord, not a service provider, though a signed lease is one of the non-photo items USPS Form PS 1093 will accept for a PO Box. Car insurance is not a utility, but an insurance document is named on California’s list (“including medical, dental, vision, life, home, rental, and vehicle”), so the declarations page can do the job the bill cannot. Streaming is not a utility by any definition, and Texas still accepts a streaming service bill as a residential service bill. HOA dues are not a utility bill, and none of the six lists on this page names them.
Which utility bills count as proof of address
Two findings first, because they are the ones people assume the other way. The Postal Service will not take a utility bill to open a PO Box. And Form I-9 has no utility bill in List A, List B, or List C, so a new employer cannot use one either. Those are the two counters where people arrive most confident and most wrong.
Those are the counters with a written rule behind them. Plenty of others commonly ask for a utility bill without publishing a list you can read in advance: a landlord screening an application, a school district proving your child lives in the catchment, Medicaid or marketplace enrollment, a utility transferring a deposit from your last address, and a public library issuing a card. For those, ask what they take before you print anything.
| Who is asking | Does a utility bill work, and the rule |
|---|---|
| REAL ID, the federal floor | The state decides, not the federal government. 6 CFR 37.11(f): "To document the address of principal residence, a person must present at least two documents of the State's choice that include the individual's name and principal residence." There is no federal list of acceptable documents. Every list you have ever read is a state's. |
| Voter registration | Yes, named in the statute. HAVA, at 52 U.S.C. 21083(b)(2)(A)(i)(II), accepts "a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter." The word is "current," with no number attached. |
| Opening a bank account | Not required by any federal rule. The customer identification program at 31 CFR 1020.220 requires a name, a date of birth, a street address, and an identification number, and its documentary method names unexpired government-issued photo identification. A utility bill appears nowhere in it. A bank that asks for one is applying its own policy. Affinity Federal Credit Union, for example, accepts a credit card statement, utility bill, cell phone bill, or cable bill. |
| A USPS PO Box | No. PS Form 1093 asks for two valid forms of identification, one photo and one non-photo, both current. The non-photo item has to be a lease, mortgage, or deed, a voter or vehicle registration, or home or vehicle insurance. No utility bill. The form also states that Social Security cards, credit cards, and birth certificates are not acceptable forms of ID. |
| A new employer, Form I-9 | No. No utility bill appears in List A, List B, or List C of the I-9 acceptable documents list, as verified 2026-09-02. Form I-9 is about identity and work authorization, not address, and people conflate the two constantly. |
| A housing authority | Not as proof, but it drives the money. HUD's utility allowance schedule is maintained "for all tenant-paid utilities (except telephone)" at 24 CFR 982.517(a)(1), across the categories at (b)(1)(ii): space heating, air conditioning, cooking, water heating, water, sewer, trash collection, and other electric. Subsection (b)(1)(iv) states that a housing authority "may not provide any allowance for non-essential utility costs, such as costs of cable or satellite television." |
The REAL ID row is the one that explains all the others. The federal rule sets a floor and hands the list to the states, so there is no such thing as “the” proof-of-address list. Note also that the written exceptions process at 6 CFR 37.11(h) covers identity and date-of-birth documents only. It is not an address workaround, whatever a forum post told you.
| Jurisdiction | Utility bill, and the rule |
|---|---|
| California | Yes, and the cell phone bill sits inside the same line.
13 CCR 15.01(d)(4) reads, verbatim, "Home utility bill including cellular phone bill." |
| Texas | Yes, and its list of qualifying services is the widest here.
A "Utility or residential service bill," covering electric, water, gas, internet, cable, streaming services, lawn services, and cellular telephone. |
| Florida | Yes, with the window written into the line itself.
Verbatim: "Utility bill – (Ex. water, gas, electricity, cell phone, cable) (must be dated within the last 60 days)". |
| Washington, DC | Yes, but a phone bill is a separate document type, not a utility bill.
"Utility bill (water, gas, electric, oil, or cable)." Disconnect notices are not accepted. |
| Tennessee | Yes, but landline only, and paper only.
"Current Utility Bill – This includes landline telephone, electric, water, gas, and cable bills." |
Sources for the rows above, in order: 13 CCR 15.01 and the California DMV REAL ID checklist, Texas DPS, Florida HSMV, DC DMV, Tennessee Driver Services. Pennsylvania is not in this table because the PennDOT rule we verified is its affidavit path, covered below rather than here. Note the California split in the fifth column: the regulation says the applicant shall submit one document from subsection (d), while the DMV’s REAL ID checklist asks for two printed documents showing the same first and last name and the same mailing address. Those are two different rules from two different authorities, and merging them is how people end up short a document at the counter. Rules as verified 2026-09-02.
How recent does a utility bill have to be?
Most pages just say “recent.” The actual windows run from 60 days to 180 days, and one state names no window at all. A bill that clears Texas by three months is dead on arrival in Florida.
Florida is 60 days. Washington, DC is 60 days. The UK proof-of-identity checklist is three months. Tennessee is four months. Texas is 180 days. California states no window in the regulation or on the checklist, which is not the same as saying an old bill is fine; it means the clerk has discretion and nothing on paper backs you up.
The quarterly water bill trap
Some utilities cannot produce a bill recent enough, by design. The City of Somerville, Massachusetts states it plainly: “Somerville Water & sewer residents are on a quarterly billing schedule. Bills will be issued four times per year.” A quarterly bill is outside a 60-day window for roughly a third of every billing cycle (about 31 of its 91 days). If your water is billed quarterly and you are standing in Florida or DC, the water bill is not your document for most of the year, and no amount of asking nicely fixes the calendar.
One more rule that catches people carrying two bills from the same utility. Texas allows both documents from the same source only when that source is a local governmental entity or service provider that provides multiple residential services, and it states that a water and gas bill from the same municipal utility on separate statements are acceptable while statements for the same service for different months are not. Two months of electric bills is one document, not two.
What is actually on a utility bill
A residential bill carries more than a dozen fields and a clerk looks at four of them. The rest is billing detail: the account number, the service period, the due date, the meter number, previous and present readings, usage in kWh or therms or hundred cubic feet, the rate plan, supply against delivery charges, line-item taxes, the previous balance, and the total due. Layouts vary more than people expect. The Minneapolis sample utility bill marks its meter readings ACT or EST depending on whether somebody actually read the meter, and the NYC DEP sample bill identifies the property by borough, block, and lot rather than by a street address alone.
- 1The account holder's name. Every state list keys on a name plus a residential address, so the name has to be yours. A bill in a spouse's, a parent's, or a roommate's name is a different problem with its own fix, covered further down this page.
- 2The SERVICE address. This is where the power is delivered, and it is the address the clerk is trying to confirm. On a PG&E bill it is labeled Service For. It is not always the same as the address the envelope went to.
- 3The statement date. The date the bill was issued, which is what a recency window measures against. Not the due date, and not the service period. Florida and DC want that date inside 60 days.
- 4The issuer. Who sent the bill. It is what makes the document third-party evidence rather than something you typed, and it is how Texas decides whether two of your documents came from the same source.
- 5The payment stub, and the trap in it. The stub at the bottom carries the MAILING address, and the stub is the part people photograph because it is the part they tear off. If your mailing address is a PO Box or an old address, a photo of the stub proves nothing about where you live. DC will not take a PO Box at all.
The four fields a clerk reads
The account holder’s name, the service address, the statement date, and the issuer. That is the whole test. Every state list above keys on your name and a residential address, and every one of those that states a window keys on the date too. The issuer is the fourth, because it is what makes the page third-party evidence.
The trap is the fifth field, the one on the payment stub. PG&E labels the delivery point “Service For”, and it sits near the top. The stub at the bottom carries the mailing address, which can be a PO Box, a parent’s house, or an address you left two years ago. The stub is also the part people photograph, because it is the part designed to be torn off. If your two addresses differ, photograph the top of the bill. And if you hold a PO Box in California, the DMV wants one document showing both the box and the physical residence address; DC will not take a PO Box on a residency document at all.
Two things quietly decide whether the name and the date do their job. The first is the difference between the account holder, the person the utility contracts with and prints at the top, and an authorized user, someone the account holder has allowed to call in and discuss the account. Only the first is a name on the bill. Being able to pay it, or to phone about it, is not the same as being on it. The second is what the statement date means once billing gets clever. Under budget billing, the amount is a levelized estimate rather than the month’s usage, and under autopay many people stop opening the statement at all. Neither changes what the document proves, and both change how recent the newest one in your possession actually is.
When the name on the bill is not yours
A bill in someone else’s name is never enough on its own, and every state fixes it a different way. In each of the four places below, you have to connect yourself to the person whose name is on the bill, either with a document that proves the relationship or by having that person vouch for you.
- California. Under 13 CCR 15.01(b), a parent, legal guardian, or child can use a birth certificate, and a spouse or domestic partner can use a marriage license or domestic partner registration certificate, to trace their relationship to the person the bill is addressed to. The regulation names nothing for a roommate, though it lets the DMV accept other documents case by case.
- Washington, DC. The certifier has to live at the address, sign within 60 days, and appear with a DC ID plus two residency documents in their own name. Family relationships need a relationship document on top of that.
- Pennsylvania. Bring the person you live with, along with their driver license or photo ID, to sign an affidavit. The affidavit alone is not enough: PennDOT also wants a second proof of residency such as official mail at the same address.
- Tennessee. A bill in a spouse’s, parent’s, or guardian’s name requires proof of the relationship.
A related failure is the name that used to be yours. If the bill says one name and your ID says another, the clerk needs the paper trail between them, which is a marriage certificate, a court order, or a domestic partnership certificate. Our name change after marriage checklist covers the order to do it in, which matters more than people expect.
Paperless, or no bill at all
Print it, and know which rule you are standing in front of. Texas states that printed documents are required and printed electronic statements are acceptable. DC goes further and states that computer printouts of online bills are considered original and must be printed and brought with you, while screenshots on electronic devices are not accepted. Tennessee runs the other way: original documents only, no photocopies. Florida accepts printouts and faxes. If you have gone paperless at home, that is not the problem; showing up with a phone instead of paper is.
If there is no bill in your name at all, ask the utility for a letter of residency. This is the answer almost nobody publishes. SDG&E, for one, lets customers generate one themselves and says on its own page that “If you are moving and/or transferring service, you may need a letter of residency for school verification or other purposes”. We verified that one utility offers it as self-service. Whether yours does is a phone call, and it is a faster phone call than the alternative.
Documents that work better than a utility bill
The utility bill is the most famous proof of address, not the strongest one. California’s own list names a “Mortgage bill,” “A property tax bill or statement,” an “Insurance document, including medical, dental, vision, life, home, rental, and vehicle,” and a “Change of Address Confirmation by the United States Postal Service (Form CNL 107).” HAVA names a bank statement, a government check, and a paycheck alongside the utility bill for voter registration.
Several of these beat a utility bill on the one axis that matters, which is whether the address on the page is unambiguously where you live. A property tax bill identifies a parcel. A mortgage statement names a property. A bank statement and a pay stub are both HAVA-named and both usually monthly, so they clear a 60-day window when a quarterly water bill cannot. If you are moving, the USPS change of address confirmation is worth keeping for exactly this reason, and our change of address checklist covers the order to update everyone in.
One document that does not do this job, despite being the one people reach for: your own driver license. Florida says so directly, that customers may not use their current driver license or ID card as proof of residential address. Proof of identity and proof of address are separate tests, which is also why a citizenship certificate settles status on Form I-9 and settles nothing about where you live.
The UK rules are different
If you landed here from a British page, three things change. Start with what the page even is: the gov.uk proof-of-identity checklist accepts a “Utility bill (gas, electric, satellite television, landline phone bill) issued within the last three months” and a “Local authority council tax bill for the current council tax year.” It is an identity-checking checklist, which is what its title says, rather than a residency list of the kind a US state publishes. Council tax has no direct US equivalent, and its closest analogue is the property tax statement: both are a local authority billing you against a property you occupy. And the checklist’s rejected list, verbatim, is “Provisional driving licence / Mobile phone bills / Credit card statements.” A mobile bill that California names in its regulation is refused outright in the UK.
How long to keep utility bills
One year from the bill date. About a year is enough to spot billing errors and to have a record for a move or a service dispute, and there is rarely a reason to keep them longer. The exception is a home-office deduction: if you claimed a share of the utilities against it, keep those bills seven years with the rest of the tax file. Bank statements follow the same one-year default.
A dated reason to keep them anyway: the National Energy Assistance Directors Association’s winter 2025-26 outlook put utility arrears at $23.0 billion in May 2025, up 31 percent from $17.5 billion in December 2023, with roughly one in six households behind on their utility bills. A year of statements is what you argue a disputed balance with. Full table in how long to keep important documents, and the interactive version is the document retention timeline. A year of bills fits inside Granite’s free tier; our pricing is one plan at $99 a year if you outgrow it.
Where Granite stands
Granite reads your address off five documents on California’s residency list: the deed, the property tax bill, the lease, the homeowner’s insurance policy, and the vehicle registration. It also groups the deed, the property tax bill, and the insurance policy with your home. A utility bill gets less. Granite’s general bill type is built around an invoice. When a utility bill fits it, Granite picks up the company that sent it, the name it’s billed to, the statement date, the amounts, and the due date, and files the bill under that company rather than with your home. When it doesn’t fit, the bill is filed as an uncategorized document.
There is no utility-bill schema at all today. Search the library for the word and it appears once, as an example subject value on the uncategorized fallback. That is a real gap and we would rather name it than let you find it. What it means in practice: a utility bill uploads, stores encrypted, and is full-text searchable, and Granite is not lifting a service address off it.
What Granite does here is narrower. It treats a bill as evidence that an organization holds your address. That is what drives the moving checklist: the categories that score highest are bills, insurance, tax, financial, legal, identity, vehicle, and medical, because those are the relationships with your address on file. How Granite reads a document covers the part that does work well.
A note on faking one
People search for utility bill templates and generators, and the forum answer is usually that a fake one violates 18 U.S.C. 1028. That citation is wrong. Section 1028(d)(3) defines an identification document as one made or issued by or under the authority of a government, and (d)(4) defines a false identification document as one that appears to be issued by or under the authority of a government. A utility is neither, so a forged utility bill fails both prongs.
The real exposure is 18 U.S.C. 1344, bank fraud, and sections 1341 and 1343, mail and wire fraud, once the document is submitted to a lender or used to open an account, plus state forgery and uttering statutes. We mention it because the wrong statute is repeated so widely. The alternative is one phone call to your utility.
Windows change, so check the current list before you go.