UK fuel price history
Every weekly UK pump price since 2018 in one chart — from the Covid collapse of 2020, through the July 2022 record of £1.92, to the £1.70 a typical forecourt is charging today.
Where today sits in the record
Measured across 464 readings from January 2018 onwards.
Petrol has risen 37.3p a litre over the past year — £20.51 a tank more than a year ago. The volatility figure is worth reading alongside it: it says how much a normal week moves, so a change smaller than that is noise rather than a trend. See when to buy fuel for what that means for timing a fill-up.
What you are actually paying for
One litre of petrol at today’s £1.70, broken into its parts.
Tax accounts for 48% of the pump price. Duty has been frozen at 52.95p since the 5p cut in March 2022, so when prices move, it is the 88.6p of wholesale cost and retail margin doing the moving — 52% of the total. Because the taxed part sits still, a swing in the oil price reaches the pump diluted: a 10% move in the wholesale cost shifts a litre by about 8.9p. How UK fuel prices are set walks through the whole chain.
Petrol price by brand today
Average E10 across every forecourt of each chain. Brands with fewer than a dozen UK sites are left out, so a single cheap station cannot top the table.
The gap between Costco and Welcome Break is 24.8p a litre — £13.64 on a 55-litre tank, or about £355 a year filling up fortnightly. Read the top of the table with the map in mind: several of the cheapest names are chains concentrated in Northern Ireland and the border counties, where fuel runs 5.0p below the UK median whatever the sign over the forecourt. A chain is only cheap for you if it has a site near you.
Among the big supermarkets the order today is Sainsbury's at £1.68, Morrisons at £1.68, Tesco at £1.68 and Asda at £1.69 — 0.7p between the cheapest and dearest of them, which is the comparison most drivers can actually act on.
Whether a cheaper brand is worth reaching depends on how far it is: the break-even maths is simpler than it looks, and supermarket versus branded fuel covers whether the cheaper litre is the same litre. Compare the chains on the brand index.
Petrol price by region today
Median E10 across the forecourts in each of the twelve UK statistical regions.
7.0p separates Northern Ireland from East of England — but the spread within most regions is wider than the spread between them, which is why a postcode search beats a regional average. Compare all 12 regions.
The motorway premium
163 motorway service forecourts against the national average.
Motorway services are charging £1.90 against £1.71 elsewhere — 18.6p more a litre, or £10.23 on a tank. Services pay far higher rents and have a captive market, and there is no requirement to price in line with the surrounding area. Leaving at the next junction almost always beats it. See motorway prices by service area.
How to read this history
The shape of the chart is mostly the oil price, delayed. Crude is bought in dollars, refined into petrol and diesel, and delivered to forecourts over roughly two to six weeks, so a move in the oil price shows up at the pump with a lag — and, famously, faster on the way up than on the way down.
Three episodes dominate. In spring 2020 the pandemic collapsed demand and petrol fell to £1.05, the cheapest in years. In July 2022 the invasion of Ukraine pushed it to £1.92 — an all-time record — with diesel higher still because Europe had been buying much of its diesel from Russia. Prices fell back through 2023 and 2024, but today’s £1.70 is 44.1p above the £1.26 of February 2020 — the drift is upward again, not down.
Since the Fuel Finder scheme opened on 2 February 2026, every UK forecourt has been legally required to report a price change within thirty minutes of it taking effect, with the CMA enforcing from 1 May 2026. That feed is where the recent end of this chart comes from, and it is why the spread between forecourts is now measurable rather than guessed at — the full distribution by grade shows how wide it really is.
Common questions
Answered with today’s figures, not last year’s.
What is the average petrol price in the UK today?
The typical UK forecourt is charging £1.70 a litre for E10 unleaded — £93.44 for a 55-litre tank. That is a median across every forecourt reporting to the government Fuel Finder scheme, so it is what a normal filling station charges rather than an average pulled upward by a handful of very dear motorway sites.
What is the average diesel price in the UK today?
Diesel is about £1.94 a litre, 24.0p more than petrol. Diesel has carried a premium over petrol since 2022, when European refiners lost Russian diesel supply and had to buy it from further afield; the same duty and VAT apply to both fuels, so the gap is entirely in the wholesale cost.
Are UK fuel prices rising or falling?
Over the past twelve months UK petrol has risen by about 37.3p a litre. Prices peaked at £1.92 in July 2022, and today's £1.70 is 20.5p below that.
What was the highest ever UK petrol price?
The record in this series is £1.92 a litre in July 2022, when diesel reached £1.99. The cause was the global energy shock that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which pushed crude and refined product prices to levels not seen since 2008.
How much of the price of fuel is tax?
At £1.70 a litre, 52.95p is fuel duty and 28.3p is VAT — 81.3p of tax, or 48% of what you hand over. The remaining 88.6p covers the fuel itself, delivery to the forecourt and the retailer's margin. VAT is charged on the duty-inclusive price, which is why it works out at a sixth of the pump price rather than a fifth.
Which fuel brand is cheapest in the UK right now?
Costco has the lowest average petrol price at £1.62 across 22 forecourts, against £1.86 at Welcome Break — a spread of 24.8p a litre, or £13.64 on a tank. Only brands with at least a dozen UK forecourts are ranked, so one unusually cheap site cannot top the table.
Why does fuel cost more in some parts of the UK?
Right now Northern Ireland is the cheapest region at £1.65 and East of England the dearest at £1.72 — 7.0p apart. The driver is local competition rather than distance from a refinery: a town with two supermarket forecourts within a few miles of each other prices lower than a rural area where the nearest alternative is a twenty-minute drive.
How often do these figures update?
Forecourt prices refresh live throughout the day from the government Fuel Finder feed, and every change is recorded so the history builds day by day. The long-run series before that comes from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero weekly road fuel price statistics.