24 ms·

UK government launches fuel forecourt price API

121 points by Technolithic 8mo ago

drcongo 8mo ago
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.
- entuno 8mo ago
  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.
- blibble 8mo ago
  as much as I try to stay away from Google products: waze shows this on the usual driving map quite well
  - drcongo 8mo ago
    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.
    - blibble 8mo ago
      > though I do miss the fact that Waze shows you your current speed. this is the only reason I use waze!
      - thebruce87m 8mo ago
        I feel like I’m missing something here - presumably your vehicle has a speedometer? What does the Waze speed dial give you over this? Unless you mean that it has the speed limit too, if so I agree that it’s a must have, along with the speed camera alerts.
        txomon 8mo ago
        It gives you your current speed, the speed limit, and flashes warns when you go over the limit. I find it more helpful than plain speedometer because sometimes you don't notice speed limit changes
  - citrin_ru 8mo ago
    Strange that google maps still doesn't show fuel prices in the UK. Google maps show fuel prices the US so this feature was implemented and it should be easy to show prices in the UK using the same data source was Waze.
bitdivision 8mo ago
> 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-forecourt-details 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 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp80dpzdg37o
- traceroute66 8mo ago
  > 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.
- Nextgrid 8mo ago
  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.
  - bitdivision 8mo ago
    Some vague info here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuel-finder-enforcement-guidance https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuel-finder-enfor...
    - Nextgrid 8mo ago
      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.
buckle8017 8mo ago
Needs a solver for cost that takes fuel needed, distance to station, fuel economy, and value of the drivers time.
traceroute66 8mo ago
99% of UK government IT makes you despair and then you get the 1% like this which are gems.
- tene80i 8mo ago
  Gov.uk services are generally pretty high quality, at least from the citizen’s POV.
  - ifwinterco 8mo ago
    Yes one thing the UK state genuinely does well in general
    - ggm 8mo ago
      And, the website feedback hooks are read by the coding team. I got a meaningful response to a UX issue inside 48h.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
nmeofthestate 8mo ago
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.
- tene80i 8mo ago
  It’s only just been launched. AI isn’t a great way to find out about brand new things.
  - nmeofthestate 8mo ago
    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).
- GJim 8mo ago
  > after asking AI about this Seriously? I thought HN readers would have more sense than that.
cpfleming 8mo ago
Bit better than the original trial of "stick a JSON file somewhere on your website" - neat.
maffyoo 8mo ago
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
- oniony 8mo ago
  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?
  - maffyoo 8mo ago
    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.
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    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.
pjc50 8mo ago
This is neat, great use of public data, and just in time for the ICE phaseout starting within a decade.
- entuno 8mo ago
  Set's an good precedent for places that offer electric charging having to do the same thing in future though.
  - rcxdude 8mo ago
    These are usually already available on the various charging apps and maps, especially because it can vary by a lot.
    - triceratops 8mo ago
      Charging apps suck. Why can't charging work just like gas? Tap a card and you're done.
      - rcxdude 8mo ago
        I am mainly referring to the apps which hold a database of chargers, not the shitty ones which are used to take payment. Thankfully it seems like more of them are switching to contactless payments.
- Traster 8mo ago
  (a) that phase out is going to take an extra-ordinarily long time. and (b) it'll be pretty trivial to extend this to charging networks.
xnorswap 8mo ago
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.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago
  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.
jpfromlondon 8mo ago
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.
- graemep 8mo ago
  Providing better price information makes a market work better.
  - jpfromlondon 8mo ago
    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.
    - graemep 8mo ago
      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.
    - notahacker 8mo ago
      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
- bonsai_spool 8mo ago
  > 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...
defrost 8mo ago
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/ https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/ Nice to see the UK come onboard.
rahimnathwani 8mo ago
The CSV file has only 650 rows.
stavros 8mo ago
Is anyone else getting a 403 from this URL?
- whalesalad 8mo ago
  yes - assuming it is geoblocking
  - gazoakley 8mo ago
    Yep - out of the country right now and get the same. VPN back home and it’s working. A bit annoying
n4r9 8mo ago
More information on the API schema from here: https://www.developer.fuel-finder.service.gov.uk/apis-ifr/info-recipent 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.
londons_explore 8mo ago
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.
- n4r9 8mo ago
  According to this webpage you can do it by phone: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-forecourt-details#other-ways-to-report 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.
- advisedwang 8mo ago
  https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-forecourt-details https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-fore... does have a Web interface for updating prices.
londons_explore 8mo ago
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.
- teamonkey 8mo ago
  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.
- pixelesque 8mo ago
  That's often out of date, and the UI is pretty buggy (at least on iOS). There's also 'Gaspy' which is really a NZ app that was very popular in NZ (I used to live there) where people submit and confirm prices, but in the UK there aren't that many users (hasn't got critical mass), so there are often no prices or things are very out-of-date.
- tolien 8mo ago
  The AA also show prices through their app.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
gerjomarty 8mo ago
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-filling-stations-just-surviving-due-price-differences/ https://www.impartialreporter.com/news/25653110.border-filli...
turblety 8mo ago
Created a quick map dashboard that shows the prices on a map with pins: Preview: https://bf31ed2a-ec85-460a-a503-fa9bf86bf63b.paged.net/ https://bf31ed2a-ec85-460a-a503-fa9bf86bf63b.paged.net/ Source: https://github.com/markwylde/uk-fuel-price-map https://github.com/markwylde/uk-fuel-price-map You have to download the CSV manually from the gov.uk link.
tzs 8mo ago
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.
- notahacker 8mo ago
  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...
dang 8mo ago
See also: UK-fuel-price-map: A web UI for the UK fuel price data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46857520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46857520 (no comments there yet though!)
tietjens 8mo ago
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.
- noAnswer 8mo ago
  It's 22 times a day, according to the Federal Cartel Office. https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/DE/Aufgaben/MarkttransparenzstelleFuerKraftstoffe/MTS-K_Infotext/mts-k_node.html#frage1 https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/DE/Aufgaben/Markttransparenz...
  - Nursie 8mo ago
    Here in western Australia, they must publish the price for the day by 2pm the day before, and cannot change it. Definitely very different.
lazzurs 8mo ago
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.
- urbandw311er 8mo ago
  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.
- megablast 8mo ago
  Encouraging car use is exactly the sort of things governments should not be doing!!!
  - afavour 8mo ago
    This is not encouraging car use
constantcrying 8mo ago
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?
- noAnswer 8mo ago
  The source for the "private APIs" is the government run MTS-K. https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/EN/Tasks/markettransparencyunit_fuels/markettransparencyunit_fuels_node.html https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/EN/Tasks/markettransparencyu...
- p0pularopinion 8mo ago
  Remarkable how you can spit out such an ignorant comment and then be wrong about it
gnufx 8mo ago
Good to see. For what it's worth, data were previously available from the Competition and Markets authority, used by https://localfuelprices.co.uk/ https://localfuelprices.co.uk/
alexfoo 8mo ago
Decisions about fuel purchases are often irrational, much like many food purchases or generic medicines. I know someone who avoids their local petrol station that is 10p/litre cheaper than most others nearby (within a mile or so) as they think the cheaper fuel must be lower quality. There are weird status things going on with purchases like this. Only the other day my father refused to buy some branded paracetamol because it was ~5 times more expensive than the local pharmacy brand that was out of stock. (£2.25 vs £0.49 for 16 500mg tablets.) I'd usually agree with him but he was out of paracetamol and has been advised by his doctor to take 2x500mg a day and there was no viable nearby alternative. A digression but for that generation (those born in 1940s/50s) that grew up with rationing I think it is hardwired into their brain to try and minimise the cost of so many things, but with lots of random exceptions. Later on that day he ordered an extra drink but decided he was too full once it had arrived so he left it. So he was worried about spending an extra £1.76 on paracetamol but not about spending £7 on a pint he didn't drink. Many people decide what petrol station to use based on simply how close it is, what kind of shop is attached to it (and the bits of British snobbery around that), whether it also sells whatever else they want (bread, milk, beer, etc), or even whether it is easy to drive in and out of.
- aucisson_masque 8mo ago
  In France we had such api available for decades, many apps are using it and there are a lot of people using them. I don't know if your experience is from British people but it looks like they just didn't have the mean to effectively compare fuel prices. Once they do, there is a significant part of the British drivers that will most likely be using it.
  - Nursie 8mo ago
    This is exactly it. We have a system here in Western Australia and people use it a lot: fuelwatch.wa.gov.au I think it's exactly that, the UK has never had this so people there either choose by brand or just convenience. But since moving to WA I've found that it's really easy to have a quick look when I notice I need to fill up, then I can head to the cheapest station nearby, and the difference can be in the range of 10-15%, occasionally 20%. In a country where fuel is as expensive as it is in the UK, people are going to use that.
adamm255 8mo ago
Anyone able to use the API? The CSV link is dead and I cant get the API to authenticate. The Beta flag doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but I love the idea!
bencevans 8mo ago
This is great news. There's been a pilot study in which each retailer (voluntarily) hosted a JSON file containing their current prices (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/access-fuel-price-data https://www.gov.uk/guidance/access-fuel-price-data). I noticed recently that a few of them had been removed/stopped working. Neither the pilot nor the current API appears to include all fuel stations, but at least they provide (hopefully) more reliable updates from the ones that do. I'd been playing with the pilot study data and set up FuelBelly to aggregate and compare https://fuelbelly.com/explore?lat=51.50740713124398&lng=-0.12772404476481578 https://fuelbelly.com/explore?lat=51.50740713124398&lng=-0.1.... (doesn't include the API updates, yet...) A quick play with the API, the information responses (opening times, addresses etc.) doesn't appear to be working, I just get a 500 (HTML not JSON) response. But the price calls are working, and I'm glad this is being pushed forward post-pilot.
harry8 8mo ago
This sort of thing works well for individuals. Eg. https://www.fuelcheck.nsw.gov.au/app/FuelPrice/ByLocation?latitude=-34.0&longitude=151.0&nearbyme=true&radius=3 https://www.fuelcheck.nsw.gov.au/app/FuelPrice/ByLocation?la... Then you need the integration into home assistant for your local options. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/nsw_fuel_station/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/nsw_fuel_station/ And an app for ease of use when you're out of your local area. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.nsw.onegov.fuelcheckapp&hl=en_AU&pli=1 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.nsw.one... https://apps.apple.com/au/app/nsw-fuelcheck/id1266569551 https://apps.apple.com/au/app/nsw-fuelcheck/id1266569551 How does it affect things across the economy for fuel purchase? Haven't seen a study. It would incentive-ise price cutting to increase sales, especially by the independent operators, by essentially advertising the lower pricing for free, is my guess.
mootothemax 8mo ago
It’s a delight even to have a regulated source of all fuel station locations in the uk! This might be a slight missing woods/trees moment but that aside - there is precious little open geospatial data in the uk that establishes see this dot here? That’s a fuel station, that is. That dot there? Oooooh no, that there’s a pub. The uk govts of the time managed to hand both the address data and the this-is-what-it-is data off to separate commercial enterprises in the name of privatisation, and I genuinely believe it was by accident as it’s… err… quite a niche topic of knowledge. So anything - anything! - that brings some of that back and truly open to the public is very much welcomed.
aaronrobinson 8mo ago
You need a mix of price, availability and trust. I just head for the nearest Sainsbury’s. They have. Reputation to protect, I can do my shopping at the same time and their prices are competitive. I just wouldn’t go to the cheapest place unless it was a hire car.
mlaretallack 8mo ago
The api seems very unstable (or it might just be me) keeps timing out when I try to fetch.
upmostly 8mo ago
I spent the last few hours hacking together PetrolMate using this dataset: https://petrolmate.co.uk https://petrolmate.co.uk A couple of interesting observations while building it: Yesterday the dataset had ~600 stations. Today it’s reporting 6,666 stations from the UK government feed, which is… a slightly ominous number, but according to the data and me asking an LLM, that’s close to full UK coverage already. I deliberately went for a “pure speed” tech stack. Astro, no UI framework, just vanilla JS. Deployed on Cloudflare, with prices stored in D1. I'm not using the API to load the data, I'm cleansing and then importing the CSV (which you can download for free) into the D1 database. There’s also an /insights page with some aggregated stats that genuinely surprised me: https://petrolmate.co.uk/insights https://petrolmate.co.uk/insights Really nice to finally have an official, open dataset to build on. It already feels far more reliable than the old user-reported approaches, and it’ll be interesting to see how coverage and update frequency settles over the next few weeks. Would love to hear feedback by the way. What is this missing to make it a genuinely useful tool?
- Mumps 8mo ago
  Thanks for putting this together! Couple QoL features I'd love to see: 1. filter slider, decreasing on price, to see places closest to me disappearing 2. on the left panel, when I click on a low priced area, it should highlight it on the map, so I know where it is. The 'go to pump' button, I guess is good. but I'd only want to commit to gmaps if I already know that it's a reasonable place for me to. be going.
- bitdivision 8mo ago
  Looks great. Interesting to see that a lot of stations are included but without prices. Note, in brave on linux I can't see the map. Console has a lot of 401 on stadiamaps. But works great in chrome.
- jaffa2 8mo ago
  Doesn't seem to have any data for Morrisons Stations. Is this a glitch in the data, or Morrisons, or the app ?

121 points by Technolithic 8mo ago

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.

entuno 8mo ago
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.
blibble 8mo ago
as much as I try to stay away from Google products: waze shows this on the usual driving map quite well
- drcongo 8mo ago
  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.
  - blibble 8mo ago
    > though I do miss the fact that Waze shows you your current speed. this is the only reason I use waze!
    - thebruce87m 8mo ago
      I feel like I’m missing something here - presumably your vehicle has a speedometer? What does the Waze speed dial give you over this? Unless you mean that it has the speed limit too, if so I agree that it’s a must have, along with the speed camera alerts.
      - txomon 8mo ago
        It gives you your current speed, the speed limit, and flashes warns when you go over the limit. I find it more helpful than plain speedometer because sometimes you don't notice speed limit changes
- citrin_ru 8mo ago
  Strange that google maps still doesn't show fuel prices in the UK. Google maps show fuel prices the US so this feature was implemented and it should be easy to show prices in the UK using the same data source was Waze.

bitdivision 8mo ago

> 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-forecourt-details 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 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp80dpzdg37o

traceroute66 8mo ago
> 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.
Nextgrid 8mo ago
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.
- bitdivision 8mo ago
  Some vague info here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuel-finder-enforcement-guidance https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuel-finder-enfor...
  - Nextgrid 8mo ago
    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.

buckle8017 8mo ago

Needs a solver for cost that takes fuel needed, distance to station, fuel economy, and value of the drivers time.

traceroute66 8mo ago

99% of UK government IT makes you despair and then you get the 1% like this which are gems.

tene80i 8mo ago
Gov.uk services are generally pretty high quality, at least from the citizen’s POV.
- ifwinterco 8mo ago
  Yes one thing the UK state genuinely does well in general
  - ggm 8mo ago
    And, the website feedback hooks are read by the coding team. I got a meaningful response to a UX issue inside 48h.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

nmeofthestate 8mo ago

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.

tene80i 8mo ago
It’s only just been launched. AI isn’t a great way to find out about brand new things.
- nmeofthestate 8mo ago
  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).
GJim 8mo ago
> after asking AI about this Seriously? I thought HN readers would have more sense than that.

cpfleming 8mo ago

Bit better than the original trial of "stick a JSON file somewhere on your website" - neat.

maffyoo 8mo ago

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

oniony 8mo ago
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?
- maffyoo 8mo ago
  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.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago
  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.

pjc50 8mo ago

This is neat, great use of public data, and just in time for the ICE phaseout starting within a decade.

entuno 8mo ago
Set's an good precedent for places that offer electric charging having to do the same thing in future though.
- rcxdude 8mo ago
  These are usually already available on the various charging apps and maps, especially because it can vary by a lot.
  - triceratops 8mo ago
    Charging apps suck. Why can't charging work just like gas? Tap a card and you're done.
    - rcxdude 8mo ago
      I am mainly referring to the apps which hold a database of chargers, not the shitty ones which are used to take payment. Thankfully it seems like more of them are switching to contactless payments.
Traster 8mo ago
(a) that phase out is going to take an extra-ordinarily long time. and (b) it'll be pretty trivial to extend this to charging networks.

xnorswap 8mo ago

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.

embedding-shape 8mo ago
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.

jpfromlondon 8mo ago

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.

graemep 8mo ago
Providing better price information makes a market work better.
- jpfromlondon 8mo ago
  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.
  - graemep 8mo ago
    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.
  - notahacker 8mo ago
    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
bonsai_spool 8mo ago
> 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...

defrost 8mo ago

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/ https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/ Nice to see the UK come onboard.

rahimnathwani 8mo ago

The CSV file has only 650 rows.

stavros 8mo ago

Is anyone else getting a 403 from this URL?

whalesalad 8mo ago
yes - assuming it is geoblocking
- gazoakley 8mo ago
  Yep - out of the country right now and get the same. VPN back home and it’s working. A bit annoying

n4r9 8mo ago

More information on the API schema from here: https://www.developer.fuel-finder.service.gov.uk/apis-ifr/info-recipent 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.

londons_explore 8mo ago

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.

n4r9 8mo ago
According to this webpage you can do it by phone: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-forecourt-details#other-ways-to-report 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.
advisedwang 8mo ago
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-forecourt-details https://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-fore... does have a Web interface for updating prices.

londons_explore 8mo ago

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.

teamonkey 8mo ago
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.
pixelesque 8mo ago
That's often out of date, and the UI is pretty buggy (at least on iOS). There's also 'Gaspy' which is really a NZ app that was very popular in NZ (I used to live there) where people submit and confirm prices, but in the UK there aren't that many users (hasn't got critical mass), so there are often no prices or things are very out-of-date.
tolien 8mo ago
The AA also show prices through their app.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

gerjomarty 8mo ago

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-filling-stations-just-surviving-due-price-differences/ https://www.impartialreporter.com/news/25653110.border-filli...

turblety 8mo ago

Created a quick map dashboard that shows the prices on a map with pins: Preview: https://bf31ed2a-ec85-460a-a503-fa9bf86bf63b.paged.net/ https://bf31ed2a-ec85-460a-a503-fa9bf86bf63b.paged.net/ Source: https://github.com/markwylde/uk-fuel-price-map https://github.com/markwylde/uk-fuel-price-map You have to download the CSV manually from the gov.uk link.

tzs 8mo ago

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.

notahacker 8mo ago
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...

dang 8mo ago

See also: UK-fuel-price-map: A web UI for the UK fuel price data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46857520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46857520 (no comments there yet though!)

tietjens 8mo ago

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.

noAnswer 8mo ago
It's 22 times a day, according to the Federal Cartel Office. https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/DE/Aufgaben/MarkttransparenzstelleFuerKraftstoffe/MTS-K_Infotext/mts-k_node.html#frage1 https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/DE/Aufgaben/Markttransparenz...
- Nursie 8mo ago
  Here in western Australia, they must publish the price for the day by 2pm the day before, and cannot change it. Definitely very different.

lazzurs 8mo ago

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.

urbandw311er 8mo ago
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.
megablast 8mo ago
Encouraging car use is exactly the sort of things governments should not be doing!!!
- afavour 8mo ago
  This is not encouraging car use

constantcrying 8mo ago

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?

noAnswer 8mo ago
The source for the "private APIs" is the government run MTS-K. https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/EN/Tasks/markettransparencyunit_fuels/markettransparencyunit_fuels_node.html https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/EN/Tasks/markettransparencyu...
p0pularopinion 8mo ago
Remarkable how you can spit out such an ignorant comment and then be wrong about it

gnufx 8mo ago

Good to see. For what it's worth, data were previously available from the Competition and Markets authority, used by https://localfuelprices.co.uk/ https://localfuelprices.co.uk/

alexfoo 8mo ago

Decisions about fuel purchases are often irrational, much like many food purchases or generic medicines. I know someone who avoids their local petrol station that is 10p/litre cheaper than most others nearby (within a mile or so) as they think the cheaper fuel must be lower quality. There are weird status things going on with purchases like this. Only the other day my father refused to buy some branded paracetamol because it was ~5 times more expensive than the local pharmacy brand that was out of stock. (£2.25 vs £0.49 for 16 500mg tablets.) I'd usually agree with him but he was out of paracetamol and has been advised by his doctor to take 2x500mg a day and there was no viable nearby alternative. A digression but for that generation (those born in 1940s/50s) that grew up with rationing I think it is hardwired into their brain to try and minimise the cost of so many things, but with lots of random exceptions. Later on that day he ordered an extra drink but decided he was too full once it had arrived so he left it. So he was worried about spending an extra £1.76 on paracetamol but not about spending £7 on a pint he didn't drink. Many people decide what petrol station to use based on simply how close it is, what kind of shop is attached to it (and the bits of British snobbery around that), whether it also sells whatever else they want (bread, milk, beer, etc), or even whether it is easy to drive in and out of.

aucisson_masque 8mo ago
In France we had such api available for decades, many apps are using it and there are a lot of people using them. I don't know if your experience is from British people but it looks like they just didn't have the mean to effectively compare fuel prices. Once they do, there is a significant part of the British drivers that will most likely be using it.
- Nursie 8mo ago
  This is exactly it. We have a system here in Western Australia and people use it a lot: fuelwatch.wa.gov.au I think it's exactly that, the UK has never had this so people there either choose by brand or just convenience. But since moving to WA I've found that it's really easy to have a quick look when I notice I need to fill up, then I can head to the cheapest station nearby, and the difference can be in the range of 10-15%, occasionally 20%. In a country where fuel is as expensive as it is in the UK, people are going to use that.

adamm255 8mo ago

Anyone able to use the API? The CSV link is dead and I cant get the API to authenticate. The Beta flag doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but I love the idea!

bencevans 8mo ago

This is great news. There's been a pilot study in which each retailer (voluntarily) hosted a JSON file containing their current prices (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/access-fuel-price-data https://www.gov.uk/guidance/access-fuel-price-data). I noticed recently that a few of them had been removed/stopped working. Neither the pilot nor the current API appears to include all fuel stations, but at least they provide (hopefully) more reliable updates from the ones that do. I'd been playing with the pilot study data and set up FuelBelly to aggregate and compare https://fuelbelly.com/explore?lat=51.50740713124398&lng=-0.12772404476481578 https://fuelbelly.com/explore?lat=51.50740713124398&lng=-0.1.... (doesn't include the API updates, yet...) A quick play with the API, the information responses (opening times, addresses etc.) doesn't appear to be working, I just get a 500 (HTML not JSON) response. But the price calls are working, and I'm glad this is being pushed forward post-pilot.

harry8 8mo ago

This sort of thing works well for individuals. Eg. https://www.fuelcheck.nsw.gov.au/app/FuelPrice/ByLocation?latitude=-34.0&longitude=151.0&nearbyme=true&radius=3 https://www.fuelcheck.nsw.gov.au/app/FuelPrice/ByLocation?la... Then you need the integration into home assistant for your local options. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/nsw_fuel_station/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/nsw_fuel_station/ And an app for ease of use when you're out of your local area. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.nsw.onegov.fuelcheckapp&hl=en_AU&pli=1 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.nsw.one... https://apps.apple.com/au/app/nsw-fuelcheck/id1266569551 https://apps.apple.com/au/app/nsw-fuelcheck/id1266569551 How does it affect things across the economy for fuel purchase? Haven't seen a study. It would incentive-ise price cutting to increase sales, especially by the independent operators, by essentially advertising the lower pricing for free, is my guess.

mootothemax 8mo ago

It’s a delight even to have a regulated source of all fuel station locations in the uk! This might be a slight missing woods/trees moment but that aside - there is precious little open geospatial data in the uk that establishes see this dot here? That’s a fuel station, that is. That dot there? Oooooh no, that there’s a pub. The uk govts of the time managed to hand both the address data and the this-is-what-it-is data off to separate commercial enterprises in the name of privatisation, and I genuinely believe it was by accident as it’s… err… quite a niche topic of knowledge. So anything - anything! - that brings some of that back and truly open to the public is very much welcomed.

aaronrobinson 8mo ago

You need a mix of price, availability and trust. I just head for the nearest Sainsbury’s. They have. Reputation to protect, I can do my shopping at the same time and their prices are competitive. I just wouldn’t go to the cheapest place unless it was a hire car.

mlaretallack 8mo ago

The api seems very unstable (or it might just be me) keeps timing out when I try to fetch.

upmostly 8mo ago

I spent the last few hours hacking together PetrolMate using this dataset: https://petrolmate.co.uk https://petrolmate.co.uk A couple of interesting observations while building it: Yesterday the dataset had ~600 stations. Today it’s reporting 6,666 stations from the UK government feed, which is… a slightly ominous number, but according to the data and me asking an LLM, that’s close to full UK coverage already. I deliberately went for a “pure speed” tech stack. Astro, no UI framework, just vanilla JS. Deployed on Cloudflare, with prices stored in D1. I'm not using the API to load the data, I'm cleansing and then importing the CSV (which you can download for free) into the D1 database. There’s also an /insights page with some aggregated stats that genuinely surprised me: https://petrolmate.co.uk/insights https://petrolmate.co.uk/insights Really nice to finally have an official, open dataset to build on. It already feels far more reliable than the old user-reported approaches, and it’ll be interesting to see how coverage and update frequency settles over the next few weeks. Would love to hear feedback by the way. What is this missing to make it a genuinely useful tool?

Mumps 8mo ago
Thanks for putting this together! Couple QoL features I'd love to see: 1. filter slider, decreasing on price, to see places closest to me disappearing 2. on the left panel, when I click on a low priced area, it should highlight it on the map, so I know where it is. The 'go to pump' button, I guess is good. but I'd only want to commit to gmaps if I already know that it's a reasonable place for me to. be going.
bitdivision 8mo ago
Looks great. Interesting to see that a lot of stations are included but without prices. Note, in brave on linux I can't see the map. Console has a lot of 401 on stadiamaps. But works great in chrome.
jaffa2 8mo ago
Doesn't seem to have any data for Morrisons Stations. Is this a glitch in the data, or Morrisons, or the app ?