Fuel Prices: How to find the cheapest fuel in your area

If your anxiety about filling your tank up is rising as sharply as the current price per litre, we can certainly empathise. As vehicle owners in the UK, we need to be smart about where we fill up if we want to keep the price down.

Here are all our best tips and tricks for finding the cheapest fuel in your area.

Get ‘App’y

There are some fantastic app options for finding out the best prices for petrol and diesel in your area without even leaving the sofa, and surprisingly, it can be worth a round trip of up to half an hour to score a good price.

Some of our favourites include:

PetrolPrices - a free app that claims users can save over £200 a year by finding the cheapest places to fill up in their area.
Fuel Finder UK - ad-free, no fuss fuel prices taken directly from the UK Government feed.
Waze - offers real-time, crowd-sourced price updates.
Confused.com - pop in your postcode and find out local prices per litre.
Drive Score - an app that provides you with insights on how to improve your driving, and has a new cheap-fuel-in-your area feature.
The AA - combines fuel price checking with journey planning and breakdown support.
myRAC - fill up for less, breakdown support and route planning all in one.

Keep prices small with the big shop

Well, smaller anyway! Supermarkets often use cheaper-than-average fuel as a lure to get you in the door, so they can be a great place to save - and don’t forget your loyalty card to snap up some extra points.

Currently, supermarkets are offering an average saving of 3.1p over the UK average, with ASDA leading the way at 155.2p/l for unleaded and Sainsbury’s at 188.0p/l for diesel.

Tips and tricks

Getting the best price these days may take a little more planning than usual, and if there’s one key thing to avoid, it’s running low on fuel and having to fill up on the motorway where the prices are the least competitive. Particularly on long journeys, plan your stops around the best deals on fuel, and you could save yourself a significant amount.
It’s still generally cheaper to drive than to take the train, but it’s getting so expensive that the often-overlooked steps like making sure tyres are pumped up and removing unnecessary weight like junk in the boot or empty roof boxes are becoming more important if your goal is to squeeze every possible mile out of a tank of petrol or diesel.
Consider filling your tank halfway - did you know that carrying a full (and therefore heavy) tankful of petrol actually means using more petrol than if you filled up halfway more regularly? As long as you plan fill-ups around journeys you’re already making, this tip could save some pennies.
Don’t forget cashback - certain credit and loyalty cards like Shell Go+, Tesco Clubcard and American Express will give you a percentage back that’s not to be sniffed at in the current market.

Ultimately, most of us cannot avoid driving, so we need to use all the tools at our disposal to maximise efficiency and minimise cost.

With a bit of planning and a sprinkling of technological assistance, we can make the best of an increasingly expensive situation.