App Reviews
Best UK Petrol Price Apps Compared (2025)
There are several apps and websites that claim to help you find cheap petrol. But most of them only answer half the question. We look at what's available in 2025 — and the one crucial thing the others miss.
TL;DR
PetrolPrices, RAC Fuel Watch, and AA Fuel Price tools all show you the cheapest nearby station. None of them tell you whether driving there saves you money. WorthThePump is the only tool that answers the actual question: after accounting for the detour fuel cost, is this station really cheaper for your car?
PetrolPrices.com
PetrolPrices.com is the longest-running UK petrol price comparison website and app, and it has a large user base that reports prices at thousands of stations. You can search by postcode, filter by fuel type, and see a ranked list of cheapest stations in your area.
What it does well: Large database of stations. Good for getting a quick overview of local prices. Website and app are both reasonably functional.
The catch: Prices are largely user-reported, which means they can be hours or even days out of date. The website earns money through advertising and referrals, which influences how it presents information. And crucially — it shows you a station is 5p/litre cheaper, but tells you nothing about whether driving there is actually worth it.
RAC Fuel Watch
The RAC publishes weekly and daily fuel price reports that are genuinely useful for understanding national and regional price trends. Their Fuel Watch data is sourced from the government Fuel Finder API and BEIS (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) datasets, making it reliably accurate.
What it does well: Excellent for understanding the national picture — is fuel generally rising or falling? Which regions are cheapest? Is diesel or petrol moving more? The RAC advocacy work on fuel pricing is also genuinely good for consumers.
The catch:RAC Fuel Watch is more of a data publication than a real-time station-finder. It's less useful when you're standing at a junction deciding whether to turn left to the Asda or carry on to the Shell.
AA Fuel Price data
The AA publishes price data and commentary similar to the RAC. Their fuel calculator on the website lets you estimate fuel costs for a journey — which is useful for trip planning — but it doesn't help with the "is this station worth the detour?" question.
Both the RAC and AA tools are at their best as journalistic/advocacy resources rather than practical real-time tools for saving money at the pump.
GasBuddy
GasBuddy is a popular app in the US and Canada for finding cheap fuel, but its UK presence is limited. Coverage of UK stations is patchy, prices are largely user-reported, and the interface isn't optimised for UK pump formats. We'd suggest UK drivers skip it entirely.
WorthThePump: the question the others don't answer
Every one of the above tools has the same fundamental limitation: they tell you the price at a nearby station, but not whether it's worth going there.
Knowing that the Asda is charging 130p/litre while the BP round the corner is at 140p/litre is useful. But it doesn't tell you whether a 2-mile detour to that Asda is a net gain or a net loss for your specific car. A 50 MPG hybrid can afford to go further than a 28 MPG SUV. And filling 20 litres changes the equation versus filling 60.
WorthThePumpis built around this exact calculation. Enter your number plate — we look up your vehicle's real-world MPG automatically via the DVLA. Tell us roughly how much you're filling. We geolocate you, pull live prices from the UK Government Fuel Finder API, and calculate the actual net saving for every station within your chosen radius, after deducting the cost of the detour.
Green pin: worth it. Red pin: false economy. It's the only UK petrol tool that answers the actual question.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best app to find cheap petrol in the UK?
For simply finding the lowest price nearby, PetrolPrices.com and the RAC Fuel Watch tool are solid. But if you want to know whether the cheaper station is actually worth the detour for your specific car, WorthThePump is the only tool that answers that question.
Does PetrolPrices.com still work in 2025?
Yes, PetrolPrices.com is still active and shows prices from across the UK. However, it relies heavily on user-reported prices, which can be outdated. Apps using the government Fuel Finder API tend to be more accurate for real-time pricing.
Is there an app that tells you if cheap petrol is worth the drive?
Yes — that's exactly what WorthThePump does. Enter your number plate and we fetch your car's real-world MPG, then calculate whether any nearby cheaper station is genuinely worth the detour. No other UK petrol price app does this calculation.
How often are petrol price apps updated?
It varies. Apps using crowdsourced data can have outdated prices hours or days old. Apps using the UK Government Fuel Finder API get real-time prices that stations are legally required to update continuously. WorthThePump caches these prices for up to 1 hour, refreshing regularly.
See if it's worth the trip
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