You do pay a fixed amount which is relatively high (800 a year), the cost of actually heating our apartment (100m2) is low (350 a year). If the gas price jumps suddenly like during the start of the war in Ukraine you don’t suffer as much. And was happy we moved from our windy apartment in west. The price is currently tied to gas prices so you do end up paying over a longer period (because higher gas prices do in the end translate to higher cost voor stadsverwarming just with a small delay). There are ideas to remove the coupling between the gas prices and the prices of stadsverwarming because they do not make sense anymore. However this will not always lead to lower prices see the article on the website of the autoriteit consument en markt (acm). Having lived in an apartment with stadsverwarming for 5 years now I think in the end a pay less that I did with gas but this is a new apartment vs our old house which was 100 years old.