Since February 2026, fuel retailers across the UK have been legally required to publish their prices as open data. It is the biggest change to fuel price transparency in a generation — and it is the reason a site like this can exist at all.
What the law requires
The Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025 require every filling station to report its current price for each fuel grade within 30 minutes of a change. The data is published centrally, and the scheme is enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority.
Why it was introduced
The CMA found that fuel prices moved very differently from place to place, with little relationship to cost — and that drivers had no practical way to compare. Forcing the data into the open was designed to put pressure on the gap between the cheapest and dearest stations locally.
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Compare Local Deals →What it changed for drivers
- Prices are no longer manual crowd-sourced entries that could be days out of date.
- Every station has to report, not just the ones that chose to.
- Comparison is now possible on a like-for-like basis.
What it does not do
The scheme is event-driven: a station reports when its price changes, not on a schedule. So a price showing as a few weeks old is not necessarily broken — it may simply not have moved. That matters when you are comparing, which is why we only use eligible recent reports in our statistics.
You can compare prices near you using the finder, or browse by town.
Written by UKFuelPrices.uk, using open data from the UK Government Fuel Finder scheme. Last reviewed February 2026 · see our methodology.