The end of the "secret" fuel price
From this morning, fuel retailers are legally forbidden from hiding their prices. Here is what that means for your next fill-up.
Quick Summary: The New Law
- Digital Mandate: Retailers must publish prices in a machine-readable format.
- 30-Minute Rule: Price changes must be reported within 30 minutes of hitting the pump.
- Full Coverage: We've moved from 80% data coverage to 100% of the UK.
From today, all fuel retailers in the UK are required to publish their petrol and diesel prices digitally. Think of it like a live flight-tracker (or a price comparison site), but for the petrol station at the end of your road.
Why this matters, a lot
Until now, fuel pricing has been almost completely opaque. Two stations a mile apart can and do charge wildly different prices, and unless you physically drive past both you'd never know. Machine-readable pricing changes that entirely.
Prices can be gathered directly from retailers, not crowdsourced guesses. Updates can happen in near real-time, with retailers legally required to report changes within 30 minutes. Comparisons will now be accurate, local, and instant. For drivers, that means choice which in turn puts pressure on forecourt prices.
The postcode lottery of fuel prices
One of the most striking things we've seen while analysing fuel data is just how uneven pricing can be — not just between brands, but between neighbouring towns.
That's why we maintain our National Price Table. It highlights towns and areas with the largest price differentials — places where drivers are routinely paying far more than nearby alternatives for exactly the same fuel.
Transparency works — and we're already seeing it
We've noticed that in towns where our site is widely used and shared, the price differential tends to narrow. We think that's because when large numbers of drivers can instantly see where fuel is cheapest, behaviour changes, which means pricing has to change.
"High prices are harder to justify, and harder to sustain when the data is public."
This means something important: drivers aren't powerless anymore. If you want to bring prices down in your area, the most effective thing you can do is use the site and share it.
What happens next?
We expect to see better and faster local price competition, fewer high prices in areas with good visibility, and more consistent pricing within towns.
Our role in all of this
Our goal has always been straightforward: make fuel prices easy to see, easy to compare, and hard to hide. Until today, we only had 80% of the picture because some brands chose to stay in the dark. As of today, the blackout is over. Every station is now visible, accountable, and comparable.