This is exactly the sort of thing a government should be doing in a free market. Fair access to pricing information is essential to the operation of a free market. Now do this for all EV charging stations.
Ha! If you look into that you’ll find they tried and then the “free service” was somehow insidiously overtaken by private companies with vested interests in listing their own charge points.
When see things like this, I always think of the Chinese proverb
"An inch of time is worth an inch of gold, but it is hard to buy one inch of time with one inch of gold"
Which always says to me that its not worth it just use the quickest option
Take the example drcongo posted:
"Yesterday I had to drive to a nearby town, just 20 minutes away, and noticed that every single petrol station there was a good 5p per litre cheaper than my town. I might plug this into a map."
Assume he uses 30 litres a week (high end of average UK usage) that's £1.50 per week saving but assume the extra miles use half a litre, that takes about 65 p off the saving (ill not go into wear and tear) over 30 years of work 50 weeks a year this means a saving of £1,275 over 30 years ... sounds a lot but
20 mins away - this assumes 40 minutes per week over 50 weeks is 2000 minutes, and over 30 years 60000 minutes. Now assume you are awake for 16 hours a day this equates to 62.5 days of free time - more than two months of awake time
so as the saying goes... which would you prefer £1,275 saving or 62.5 days of time
I almost never go out of my way for fuel, because as you say, it's rarely worth it once you factor in your time (never mind the fuel spent).
But it's still useful to know about price variation so that you can plan ahead. I regularly drive past several different petrol stations, and if I know that one of them is usually cheaper or usually more expensive then I choose to use or avoid it, or to decide that I'll fill up tomorrow when I'm going that way rather than today at a more expensive one.
And that'd be more useful built into satnav, so that if I know I have to fill up somewhere along my route then I can pick the cheapest place, since there's no real time cost to any of the options compared to each other.
totally agree, technology could make this much more cost effective (or time effective). what's the best use of my time versus the cheaper option..
It's interesting running the numbers though. e.g. if it only take 10 minutes to get cheaper fuel, how much cheaper does it need to be for your time to be worth more than the UK minimum wage (£12.21 for adults over 21)
based on my maths (from above calculations) it needs to be about 7p per litre cheaper to justify the extra 10 minutes and for your time to be worth more, per hour, than the minimum wage.
mostly such tools are useful when you go very close to a few petrol stations on your regular routes anyway. I can pretty much time topups for when the cheapest station locally is en-route to my destination
A 7p per litre difference does sound like the difference between local station and motorway prices though, and they probably will have factored in that opportunity cost of time...
> A 7p per litre difference does sound like the difference between local station and motorway prices though, and they probably will have factored in that opportunity cost of time...
Only 7p?
Motorway services have shocking price markups, way more than 7p. Most people don't realise this or are just too lazy to find something that isn't quite as convenient.
According to the live feed at https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/fuel-watch/ I see:
Unleaded is 131.80p (UK wide) and 156.80p (Motorway Service Area).
Last time I drove into a motorway services and saw prices ~20p/litre higher I just drove through the petrol station and found a local garage to fill up at.
Also depends on the size of your fuel tank and how full it already is. The time taken to refuel is (almost) the same regardless, but if you've got a 40l fuel tank vs a 70l one or you're only half-empty then it's going to be less worthwhile.
7p cheaper for 10 minutes works out at about minimum wage if you're buying 30 litres, but with a bigger car you could easily be buying twice that, which works out much better.
Although of course you also need to factor in how much fuel you burn driving to the cheaper place, and the extra wear and depreciation on the car. If you take the HMRC standard rate of 45p/mile (which was meant to cover all of that kind of thing, but hasn't been updated for years) then even going a few miles out of your way quickly ends up costing more than it's likely to save.
Sure. Now imagine your car’s GPS knows you have 60 miles in the tank, and your journey is 300 miles. It can query the APO and figure out what the best petrol station to refuel on your journey is.
More information is always good.
It can be more complex than that, sure for one person your comment makes sense
but if enough people use their time to go to the cheaper station further away, then they may force the closer garage to to reduce their price
either that or the close garage goes out of business and the one further away puts up the price because they can.
but still, it can be more complex
This is like saying that selling enough volume might make up for losing money on every unit. It's only complex until you do the math
Driving somewhere to fill the tank 5p/l cheaper probably waste of time but unless all your trips are very short you usually can find a petrol station along a commute roue or along the route of a long leisure trip which is cheaper than one closest to your home. When you see prices in your navigator it's much easier to do.
As someone who waits until my tank is almost empty, to visit Costco one per month for a fill-up, despite it being 5 miles away, I understand your point.
However, I think (and hope) the point of this service is that by being public, it'll drive prices down for drivers.
I drive 10 miles round-trip once per month to save what I guesstimate is £5 on a tank of fuel, then spend £100-300 in the Costco store while I'm there. I'm not the target audience, but I hope that for those who drive regularly, or for a living, this can help route them to where they can get the best prices as they're passing by.
Once I had a boss who said: "Availability beats Pricing, always"
Driving 40 minutes to save 5p might not be worth it. What does make more sense (at least where I live) is to go to the petrol station in the late afternoon or evening instead of the morning hours. The intraday price span on most regular fuels is usually 10 Euro cents per liter. Weekends also tend to be cheaper.
I've also wondered about whether to fully fill my tank or drive on a small amount so that I'm not using fuel to carry fuel. Do you know of any metrics on that?
I haven't made any calculations, and it's more a hunch, but considering you usually need to remove hundreds of KG in order to make an impact on how much fuel is being spent, 40-50L of gas (~40KG difference between full and empty maybe?) would have an marginal effect on how much fuel is spent to carry a full tank vs 10% filled tank.
Besides, with a smaller tank, you'll make more trips to tank it, and also have less choice to go to gas stations that are further away but have cheaper price. Then again it becomes a question of "Do I want more time or more money?", back to square one :)
Edit: Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the fuel pump use fuel itself as a coolant or something? Never investigated myself, but some car-knower once told me that running the tank on low always isn't good for the fuel pump, or something like that. If that's true, running with 10% of the fuel would mean more maintenance too, potentially removing any savings in the first place.
> Never investigated myself, but some car-knower once told me that running the tank on low always isn't good for the fuel pump, or something like that.
The main issue is that it risks pulling detritus from the very bottom of the fuel tank, usually a bigger issue in diesels and I suspect less of a problem these days.
> doesn't the fuel pump use fuel itself as a coolant or something
I know very little about these things, but my understanding was always that any form of liquid pump uses the liquid itself as coolant to some extent.
Yeah, fair enough, I think what he mentioned though, wasn't just about fuel going through the pump being used as coolant, but some extra process that only happens when you're not running below say 10% or whatever, an extra cooling process that only runs when you're not low on fuel. Maybe I misunderstood him though and it's just about the liquid passing through.
I think the fuel passing through is the only method that could be used to cool, the volume of fuel required is presumably constant, regardless of how much fuel you have left, so the amount passing through the pump should be the same until you run out.
On a related note, my car has a fuel heater, to pre-heat the Diesel before it hits the engine, I assume this is typical in modern cars, but using the fuel as a coolant would presumably contribute positively to this desire for warmer fuel entering the cylinders.
you can probably work it out but you have to make a lot of assumptions :)
Ultimately how much is your time worth? in the example given drcongo's time is worth £1.28 an hour.
Unless you're driving a lorry with a 120L tank, it's negligible. We're talking like, 100 mL per 100km.
>so as the saying goes... which would you prefer £1,275 saving or 62.5 days of time
Just want to say, nothing wrong with doing that. Everyone has different priorities. I just hope most wont have to do it.
The typical use case is probably much more like deciding which station within half a mile of home is cheapest, and that could easily be a variance of 5p or more.
If your priority is the journey to fill a car with fuel and time spent doing so, surely just buy a Battery Electric Vehicle and then this problem evaporates because it just plugs in like every other appliance you own rather than needing a trip to a fuel station.
Shopping around for the fuel of an EV you can do from a web browser, oh hey, Octopus have a good deal for night charging, click click done.
Well that saved me from trying to work it out, thanks!
edit: My annual milage is actually very low, so it definitely wouldn't be worth it, but I appreciated the maths either way.
You didn't factor in the amount of taxpayer money spent on creating the website and the ongoing costs of running it.
Good to see. For what it's worth, data were previously available from the Competition and Markets authority, used by https://localfuelprices.co.uk/
Last year there was a study done in Germany. The gas station prices change an average of 14 times a day. This really shocked me. I wonder if this is normal practice most other places.
It's 22 times a day, according to the Federal Cartel Office.
https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/DE/Aufgaben/Markttransparenz...
We've had fuelwatch here in W.Australia for 30(?) ish years now (used to be a telnet file IIRC)
https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/
Nice to see the UK come onboard.
> From 2 February 2026, you must submit fuel price updates within 30 minutes of any change.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-fore...
So looks as though the requirement to report was only just introduced, hence the considerable missing data.
Edit: BBC reporting here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp80dpzdg37o
> So looks as though the requirement to report was only just introduced
Yeah. It was formally announced in the November 2025 budget and launched today.
I guess the question is how will it be enforced and what would the penalties be for reporting inaccurate or outdated data?
Companies do not understand "must" unless it's accompanied by a proven threat of sanctions that outweighs the profits made by breaching the regulation. The GDPR is a good example of plenty of "musts" and theoretical fines but lax enforcement means it's always more profitable to breach it than comply.
Some vague info here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuel-finder-enfor...
Thanks.
Looking at that document, this regulation is dead on arrival. Enforcement is contingent on the aggregator noticing the price discrepancy, giving the seller many opportunities to rectify the situation without a penalty (if we assume every step gives them 30 days to respond, we're looking at ~5 months before a financial penalty becomes possible), and even then, the regulatory "may" impose a financial penalty, meaning it isn't even guaranteed.
You know what would immediately resolve this problem and prevent non-compliance? A reporting system where any citizen can submit evidence of a price discrepancy and upon validation gets a 1k payout from the government who then recovers it via a fine. This would make it sustainable for anyone to act as an "auditor" or even do this as a business.
Of course, the reason it isn't done this way is because it would be too effective, where as this current iteration gives the appearance that something is being done while having no impact in practice.
More information on the API schema from here:
https://www.developer.fuel-finder.service.gov.uk/apis-ifr/in...
It doesn't mention any filters beyond batch number and effective start date. They're definitely storing the lat-lon information though, so it would be nice to do area-based queries, especially if you're building an app with a map view.
Created a quick map dashboard that shows the prices on a map with pins:
Preview:
https://bf31ed2a-ec85-460a-a503-fa9bf86bf63b.paged.net/
Source:
https://github.com/markwylde/uk-fuel-price-map
You have to download the CSV manually from the gov.uk link.
This is a great innovation and I'm sure in time it'll become a useful source of information. There are some edge cases of course.
If you live on the Irish border, you'll have a choice between getting your petrol on the UK side, or the Irish side. For about 20 years, petrol was cheaper on the Irish side, causing a bunch of petrol stations to spring up just over the border, attracting drivers from the other side with cheap prices and good exchange rates.
In the last 10 years or so, the position has reversed. Petrol is now roughly cheaper on the UK side of the border, or at least not worth making a special trip for.
There's even a petrol station in Belleek mentioned here[1] that straddles the border and apparently has or had pumps on both sides.
[1]: https://www.impartialreporter.com/news/25653110.border-filli...
What are the price variations like over short distances?
In the US gasoline short distance price variations are ridiculous. I've seen it where one station was $3.50/gal and another station on the same main road just a 30 second drive away was $4.30/gal. These two stations almost always have a large difference like that. This kind of large difference over a small distance is common all over the country.
Yet a surprisingly large number of people will always choose the more expensive station, even if they know about both of them (and the other stations with prices consistently in between that are also about equally close). There's nothing about the layout of the town and traffic patterns that make the expensive station more convenient, or make it easy to find. All these stations are about equally busy so it is not like the expensive one is faster. The less expensive one even has a way better convenience store.
This is one of the higher gas price states and people are constantly complaining about how much it costs to fill up, and when I ask complainers about where they buy gas it is often the expensive stations.
Many of them think that if they don't buy at the expensive station it will be bad for their car. Different brands add different detergents and additives that fight clogging and build up of deposits in your engine and fuel system.
However in 1995 the US got a federal standard that all gas has to meet, and then in 2004 several major car makers developed a standard they called "Top Tier" which is about 20 times more effective than the federal standard. Most major gas brands now sell only gas that is certified to meet the Top Tier standard.
Most testing has found that going for something beyond Top Tier doesn't really have a significant benefit for most people. For nearly everyone the best approach is:
(1) Avoid gas that is not at least Top Tier. Generally the only places that sell gas that isn't at least Top Tier are grocery store brands and maybe some convenience store brands. The savings with those brands is usually only a couple or so cents a gallon compared to the least expensive Top Tier brands (ARCO, Costco) and your car will perform better (including improved mpg) and need less maintenance.
(2) Buy the least expensive Top Tier or above gas that is convenient. You aren't going to notice any difference in performance or maintenance if you pay extra for some brand's particular proprietary blend.
I think my favourite in the UK is the town I grew up in, where the cheapest petrol station is 100 yards down the two lane road from a more expensive one, so you could actually see the cheaper prices from the forecourt of the more expensive one...
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I wonder if the CSV is supposed to list all petrol stations, as currently it only has 4 with city==Edinburgh.
Edit: after asking AI about this I would say the CSV is pretty useless as a comprehensive source of info on UK fuel prices.
It’s only just been launched. AI isn’t a great way to find out about brand new things.
Apparently although it is a requirement to upload data from today, there's an effective grace period of 3 months (sorry - got that from AI).
There is an app called 'PetrolPrices' which seems to have a pretty complete price database. It's much better than this government API so far.
I’ve used that app for some time but unfortunately it relies on user reporting, and the prices can be days or weeks out of date.
Is anyone else getting a 403 from this URL?
yes - assuming it is geoblocking
See also: UK-fuel-price-map: A web UI for the UK fuel price data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46857520
(no comments there yet though!)
This is neat, great use of public data, and just in time for the ICE phaseout starting within a decade.
Set's an good precedent for places that offer electric charging having to do the same thing in future though.
These are usually already available on the various charging apps and maps, especially because it can vary by a lot.
Bit better than the original trial of "stick a JSON file somewhere on your website" - neat.
Needs a solver for cost that takes fuel needed, distance to station, fuel economy, and value of the drivers time.
This is great news. There used to be a handy email newsletter that did this, but then when everything became "apps" the newsletter disappeared in favour of an app, which then became a premium paid service only.
It's missing closing the circle with one of the users of the premium paid only service to start their own newsletter because they got tired of the paid product. It's only a matter of time.
They have a REST API for the stations... Great.
But they also need a little WebUI for stations to manually update prices, since small stations won't have a programmer on staff to do this stuff.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-fore... does have a Web interface for updating prices.
According to this webpage you can do it by phone: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-fore...
I wouldn't look forward to having to do that every time I changed prices!
I wonder how many small independent stations are there these days? Almost every one I see is either in a supermarket, a big chain like Esso, or a smaller chain like Harvest.
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The CSV file has only 650 rows.
Yesterday I had to drive to a nearby town, just 20 minutes away, and noticed that every single petrol station there was a good 5p per litre cheaper than my town. I might plug this into a map.
The variation in even a couple of miles can be pretty big. I almost never go out of my way to visit a cheaper petrol station because that's usually a false economy, but there are definitely some local places that I favour or avoid because they're almost always cheaper/more expensive than the surrounding ones.
as much as I try to stay away from Google products: waze shows this on the usual driving map quite well
I had to give up Waze over xmas because it refused to give me the 1 hour, straight down the motorway route, and instead tried to send me a bizarre route that would take 2.5 hours. Switched to Apple Maps and haven't gone back, though I do miss the fact that Waze shows you your current speed.
> though I do miss the fact that Waze shows you your current speed.
this is the only reason I use waze!
99% of UK government IT makes you despair and then you get the 1% like this which are gems.
Gov.uk services are generally pretty high quality, at least from the citizen’s POV.
Yes one thing the UK state genuinely does well in general
Why is the government doing this, this seems like a ridiculous waste.
Here in Germany private corporations provide APIs for this. Google maps straight up tells you the price at nearby stations.
Maybe the UK government should focus on things such as their crumbling infrastructure, their almost non existent GDP growth or getting rid of their knife murderer and rapist population?
The source for the "private APIs" is the government run MTS-K.
https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/EN/Tasks/markettransparencyu...
Remarkable how you can spit out such an ignorant comment and then be wrong about it
More unnecessary meddling, this causes price convergence so anyone living close to a typically lower cost source of fuel is going to have an almost imperceptible increase in relative cost.
They certainly love spending taxpayer money on nothing don't they.
Conversely, some expensive petrol stations won't be able to get away with staying so expensive.
Providing better price information makes a market work better.
In the above model prices converge on a mean, reducing the potential savings for those that price really matters (the poor are the ones most likely to check existing price discovery sites), thus it's regressive - the government are either seeing it as an opportunity to marginally increase tax rake, or more likely are oblivious to the externality of the poor bearing the burden.
That's... not how markets work. The cheap petrol stations are very much aware that they're cheaper than their neighbours already. The more expensive ones may feel some downward pressure, but mostly won't.
People who are price sensitive can discover cheaper alternatives more easily; others still won't bother
Which model? Tested how? Are the poor the most likely to check existing sites?
This is not a new sites. Its making data more available so sites and apps will have more accurate data. This is most likely to benefit those who are willing to trade convenience for lower costs.
> More unnecessary meddling
This is a funny take, because we ostensibly assume 'perfect information' when we extol the virtues of capitalism. It would appear the government is supporting capitalism with this particular initiative...
We don't assume perfect information, or rather - it exists already in an unsanctioned form for those that seek it (usually those to whom price is sensitive).
Until this we assume marginality holds true and price dispersion has a benefit in society that we unwittingly enable.