Petrol station near me: how to find the cheapest one

Published on 2026-08-10

Searching for a petrol station near you gives you the closest one. It is rarely the cheapest, and the gap between the two is real money on every fill-up.

Nearest and cheapest are not the same thing

The most expensive forecourts tend to sit where filling up is most convenient: motorway services, arterial roads into town, anywhere without a visible competitor. The cheapest tend to cluster where several sites compete — supermarket forecourts and retail parks.

The spread across a single town is routinely 10p or more per litre, and motorway services can sit far above that. On a 50-litre fill, 10p a litre is £5 — repeat it weekly and it is a few hundred pounds a year.

How far a detour is worth it

Weigh what you save against what the detour costs. The saving is the price difference per litre times the litres you put in. The cost is the extra distance, there and back, times your car's consumption times the price of fuel.

Worked through: you fill 50 litres and save 5p a litre, so £2.50. Your car does about 40 mpg and fuel is £1.35 a litre, which works out at roughly 15p a mile. The detour pays for itself up to about 16 miles round trip.

That is wider than most people assume, but the formula leaves out your time. Crossing town in rush hour for a couple of pounds rarely makes sense even when the arithmetic says yes.

Where the prices come from

UK forecourts publish their pump prices, and the government's fuel finder scheme requires retailers to report price changes so they can be compared openly. That means you can check before you set off rather than discovering the price with the nozzle already in your hand.

What none of those feeds do is sort by how far the station is from you, or tell you whether the detour is worth it. That is the gap a map app fills: seeing where they are, what they charge, and which ones are already on your route.

What to check before driving out of your way

That it sells your fuel. Plenty of cheaper sites stock only regular unleaded and diesel — if you need super unleaded or LPG, confirm first.

Opening hours and payment. Unmanned sites are usually pay-at-pump by card only, and some have shorter hours than the forecourt signage suggests.

And bank holidays and getaway weekends, when prices on the main routes out of cities tend to firm up. If you can choose the day, filling up before the rush usually beats filling up in it.

FAQ