Best Apps for Finding Cheap Fuel in the UK

A fuel price app is worth using because of what it can see that you cannot: the gaps between forecourts in the same town. Across the 526 UK towns with four or more priced stations, the cheapest and dearest petrol differ by 10.9p a litre on average - about £5.45 on a 50-litre fill. The right app, checked for ten seconds before you set off, is the difference between paying that and not.

• The average town's cheapest-to-dearest petrol gap is 10.9p a litre.
• Motorway services average 10.5p above every other forecourt.
• Apps built on official price reporting beat crowd-sourced prices on freshness.
• Check before you leave, not at the pump - that is the whole habit.

What changed in 2026

Gone are the days of driving around town burning expensive fuel just to see which station has the best price board. Since the CMA-mandated fuel price reporting scheme came into force, retailers transmit their pump prices to an official feed, and price tools can draw on it directly. Finding the cheapest petrol and diesel now requires nothing more than a quick search on your phone. But not every app uses the same data, and that is where the differences between them actually live.

The official solution: FindPetrol

We built FindPetrol.co.uk to be the fastest way to act on that official data. Unlike older crowd-sourced apps that relied on users manually reporting prices - which often led to out-of-date or incorrect information - FindPetrol reads the government feed covering nearly 8,000 forecourts, including BP, Shell, Esso, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons, refreshed throughout the day. You get the reported prices without having to download an app or create an account.

It also shows you the comparisons an individual station board never will: every brand's national standing on our brand price table, and your own town's full cheapest-to-dearest ranking.

Waze

Waze is primarily a navigation app, but it also features a built-in fuel price tracker. Because it relies on its community of drivers to update prices, its accuracy depends on how many active users are in your specific town - a busy city stays reasonably current, a quiet market town may not. For navigation straight to a pump, it remains a good tool. For deciding which pump to navigate to, official data is more reliable.

Brand and supermarket apps

Brand apps such as BPme show live prices, but only for their own stations, blinding you to the independent across the street. Supermarket apps tie you to one chain's loyalty earning, which on fuel is typically worth under 1p a litre - an order of magnitude less than the gap between the best and worst station in most towns, as our loyalty cards guide shows in detail.

What a price app is actually worth

The honest way to judge any of these tools is what the underlying decisions are worth at the pump. These are the gaps we measure across our own dataset right now:

Two things follow from that table. First, a price app earns its keep on the first two rows alone - no loyalty scheme or brand app reliably shows you those. Second, the biggest saving on the list is not finding a cheaper station at all; it is not buying a more expensive fuel, which is a decision an app can inform but only you can make.

How to use any price app properly

• Check before you leave. Deciding at the pump means you have already arrived somewhere. Ten seconds before departure beats a postcode search from the forecourt.
• Stay realistic about detours. A station 2p cheaper two miles off your route may not be worth the extra fuel. The five-minute detour rule of thumb is covered in our guide to finding cheaper fuel.
• Do not chase a bargain across town. The prize is the cheap station that is already near your route, and in the average town there is one.
• Freshness matters more than features. A beautiful app showing yesterday's price is worse than a plain one showing today's.

The verdict

For speed, no-account privacy and official-data accuracy, use a tool built on the government feed - we think FindPetrol is the best of them, and we would say that. The habit matters more than the app: a quick search before you set off, every time, is worth several pounds a fill against the average town's spread.

Where to find the cheapest fuel near you

Supermarket forecourts usually undercut the oil majors, but the gap varies enormously by town - a competitive independent will often beat a supermarket that has no rivals nearby. You can compare every UK fuel brand side by side, or search your postcode to find the cheapest petrol near me right now. The UK average is currently 161.2p a litre across 7,986 stations.

Frequently asked questions

Are fuel price apps free?

The ones worth using are. FindPetrol is free with no account, and the brand apps are free downloads. Anything asking for a subscription to see fuel prices is selling you data you can read for nothing.

Why do apps show different prices for the same station?

Different data sources. Apps reading the official retailer-reported feed show the same figures; crowd-sourced apps show whatever their users last entered, which may be hours or days old.

Do I need an app at all, or is a website enough?

A website is enough - that is how FindPetrol works on a phone. What matters is checking before you drive, not what you check it with.

Figures updated 27 September 2026. Town spreads calculated from live pump prices at the 7,986 UK stations reporting through the CMA-mandated fuel price scheme, across the 526 towns with four or more priced stations. Brand averages from the same feed; premium-price gap measured across the 6,229 forecourts publishing both standard and premium petrol. Averages move daily; the live tables are on our brand and regional pages.