How much do fuel prices vary between stations?
By Matt Burnett ·
The UK average price of unleaded today is 174.5p a litre, across 7,877 forecourts reporting to the Government’s Fuel Finder scheme as of 13 October 2026. The cheapest we can currently see is 149.9p at Corner filling station in Cookstown — £12.31 a tank below average.
Why this page doesn’t quote a “dearest in Britain”
It is tempting to headline the gap between the cheapest and dearest forecourt in the country. We don’t, because the top of the reported range isn’t trustworthy. The highest figures in the feed tend to sit at implausible round numbers, repeat across fuels that would never price identically, and occasionally put premium diesel below standard. Those are data-entry errors arriving from the retailer, not forecourts charging three times the going rate.
We publish the feed unmodified, so those values are visible in the table below and on the station pages — but building a headline on them would be reporting a typo as a finding. The average, drawn from thousands of forecourts, is the number that survives a few bad rows. If you spot a price that looks wrong, it can be reported to the Fuel Finder scheme, which is the only body that can correct it.
Today’s figures, fuel by fuel
- Eight forecourts in ten (10th to 90th percentile)
- Median
Show the figures
| Fuel | 10th percentile | Median | 90th percentile | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unleaded (E10) | 168.9p | 174.4p | 178.9p | 10.0p |
| Diesel (B7) | 194.7p | 199.9p | 203.9p | 9.2p |
| Super Unleaded (E5) | 181.9p | 192.9p | 200.9p | 19.0p |
| Premium Diesel (B7) | 209.9p | 219.9p | 224.9p | 15.0p |
| Fuel | Average | Lowest reported | Highest reported | Forecourts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unleaded (E10) | 174.5p | 149.9p | 209.9p | 7,877 |
| Diesel (B7) | 199.6p | 174.9p | 234.9p | 7,990 |
| Super Unleaded (E5) | 192.3p | 164.9p | 239.9p | 6,204 |
| Premium Diesel (B7) | 218.7p | 187.9p | 249.9p | 4,139 |
Each row counts only the forecourts reporting that fuel, which is why the totals differ. The lowest and highest columns are single forecourts and include the misreported prices described above.
Is it worth driving further?
A station 5 miles out of your way means 10 miles of extra driving. In a car doing 45mpg that burns about £1.76 of fuel at today’s average price — which, spread across a 50-litre fill, is roughly 3.5p a litre. So it has to be at least 3.5p cheaper before you have broken even, and that ignores the twenty minutes. Double the detour and you double the figure.
Set that against the gap actually on offer. Eight forecourts in ten price within 10.0p of each other, so a realistic cheap-versus-dear choice is worth several times the cost of a short detour — and far less than the headline extremes imply. The saving is real; it is smaller and more local than “the cheapest and dearest in Britain” suggests.
Why the same fuel costs different amounts
Fuel duty is a flat rate per litre and the VAT rate is the same everywhere, so neither explains why one forecourt is dearer than another a mile away. What does: wholesale supply, which varies with a retailer’s contracts, volume and how far the tanker has to come; site costs, which are far higher on a motorway with a captive market; and local competition, where a town with four forecourts on one road prices differently from a village with one. Which of those dominates at any given forecourt is not something this page can measure, so it doesn’t claim to — what it can measure is the size of the gap, above.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do UK fuel prices vary between stations?
Eight forecourts in ten price within 10.0p a litre of each other, with a UK average of 174.5p. The very cheapest and dearest reported prices sit far outside that, but those are single sites and include occasional misreported figures, so the middle band is the realistic range.
Is it worth driving further for cheaper fuel?
A 5-mile detour means 10 miles of extra driving, which at 45mpg costs roughly 3.5p a litre spread over a 50-litre fill. The cheaper station has to beat that before you save anything, and double the detour doubles the threshold.
Why is the cheapest reported fuel price so far below average?
Partly genuine regional variation, and partly data quality. The lowest and highest figures in the Fuel Finder feed include prices retailers have misreported — implausible round numbers, or a premium grade priced below its standard one. Averages and percentiles across thousands of forecourts survive a few bad rows; the extremes do not.
Finding the gap near you
National figures cannot tell you where to fill up. The town pages show the nearest forecourts to a given town centre with today’s prices, cheapest first and with the distance to each, which is the comparison the maths above actually needs. The map does the same from wherever you are, and the heat map shows which areas run cheap or dear against the national average.
Prices on this page were read . They refresh on their own; the analysis around them is dated at the top.