UK Fuel Price Index

Source. The monthly series combines two official sources. Up to June 2026 it uses the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero weekly road fuel price statistics. From July 2026 it uses our own daily national average, calculated from prices retailers publish under the CMA open fuel price scheme.

Sampling, and why it changes. This matters if you are quoting the numbers. Months up to June 2026 are the mean of one official reading per week, so four or five readings a month. Months from July 2026 are the mean of one reading per day. This edition used 30 readings (daily sampling). Both are legitimate monthly means, but a month built from four Mondays is a coarser figure than one built from thirty-one days. Tested against July 2026, where both methods are available, the two approaches differ by 0.5p a litre - small, but not nothing, and worth a footnote if you are comparing a 2021 month against a 2026 one.

Coverage. The series runs from January 2020 to the present. Months with fewer than three readings are omitted entirely rather than published as a thin average. August 2026 is still in progress and will change until the month ends.

Averaging. Figures are the unweighted mean of the price at each forecourt. A site is one observation regardless of how much fuel it sells, so this is an average of prices available, not of fuel purchased. Supermarket-heavy regions will read slightly lower than a volume-weighted measure.

Exclusions. Prices below 100p or above 300p a litre are excluded as data errors - a handful of sites report in pounds rather than pence. Records not updated within 30 days of the most recent feed update are excluded as stale.

Regions. Our regional series begins in July 2026, because it comes from our own weekly snapshots rather than the national statistics behind the rest of this series. This month has a regional breakdown, calculated as the mean of the 4 weekly snapshots taken during the month. Months with only one snapshot are not shown as a regional average, because a single reading describes a few days rather than the month.

Revisions. Completed months are settled and do not change. The current month is recalculated as new days arrive, so it should be treated as provisional until the month ends.