What petrol and diesel cost this week, and why your forecourt differs.
The official average for the week beginning 24 August 2026: petrol 161.63p a litre, diesel 182.82p. Both are far above last summer, petrol by 28p a litre and diesel by 41p. Below: the trend, what a litre is actually made of, why supermarkets undercut everyone else, and the law that now makes every station publish its live price.
A litre, week beginning 24 August 2026. A 55 litre tank is £88.90. This week last year it was £73.65.
Up 41p a litre on a year ago, a bigger rise than petrol's. The CMA links this summer's jump to the Middle East conflict, with June's fall still leaving prices well above where they started.
Duty is fixed at 52.95p a litre whatever oil does, and VAT takes a sixth of the pump price, 26.94p this week. The product, delivery and the retailer share the other 81.74p.
The last thirteen weeks
The government's own weekly average, every Monday, most recent first.
| Week | Petrol | Diesel |
|---|---|---|
| Week beginning 24 Aug | 161.63p | 182.82p |
| Week beginning 17 Aug | 161.80p | 182.45p |
| Week beginning 10 Aug | 162.15p | 181.97p |
| Week beginning 3 Aug | 159.89p | 179.19p |
| Week beginning 27 Jul | 156.13p | 173.97p |
| Week beginning 20 Jul | 152.29p | 167.08p |
| Week beginning 13 Jul | 150.53p | 164.52p |
| Week beginning 6 Jul | 149.80p | 164.77p |
| Week beginning 29 Jun | 151.02p | 167.12p |
| Week beginning 22 Jun | 153.26p | 172.47p |
| Week beginning 15 Jun | 155.54p | 176.71p |
| Week beginning 8 Jun | 157.95p | 181.79p |
| Week beginning 1 Jun | 158.74p | 184.11p |
Where fuel is cheaper, without naming your street
June 2026, against 12.0p everywhere else. In the CMA's words, non supermarket retailers are consistently more expensive than supermarket retailers.
Margins are running above last year's average across the board, which the CMA attributes to the continued use of passive pricing strategies by the majority of retailers.
No average can pick your forecourt, but the pattern in the CMA's data is stable: supermarkets cheapest, motorway services dearest, and the spread between two stations minutes apart is often bigger than any weekly move in the national figure.
Every station now publishes its price. That is the law.
The statutory scheme that makes every UK forecourt publish its live prices.
Live since 2 February 2026
Under the Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025, every station must report any price change within 30 minutes, and the scheme's API updates within five. The CMA began enforcing on 1 May 2026, with penalties running to a share of worldwide turnover. The voluntary feeds that preceded it closed the same day.
Anyone can get the data, free
Access is through the government developer portal with a GOV.UK One Login, at no cost, under the Open Government Licence: a live API, or a spreadsheet of every station published twice a day. Price apps now draw on the same feed, so for a one off check, any of them shows every forecourt near you.
Why there is no search box here yet
Our own access registration has not been completed, and this site does not ship a control that answers from stale data. When the feed is flowing, a postcode lookup lands here showing every station around you, cheapest first, with the time each price was reported. Until then, honesty beats furniture.
Driving electric instead
Public charging has a price spread wider than any petrol map, from 39p to 92p a kilowatt hour on published rates, and home charging on the price cap undercuts every public network. What every charging network charges →
Where this comes from, and where it could be wrong
Ways this page could mislead you
The weekly figures are a national average of ultra low sulphur petrol and diesel across the whole UK. Your forecourt can sit well above or below them, which is exactly why the station level scheme below exists.
The series is published every Tuesday for the week beginning the previous Monday. The week shown here began 24 August 2026. If today is much later than that, a newer week exists and this page is behind.
The CMA margin figures are indicators built from retailer data, not statements of profit, and they run two months behind the price series.
Station level prices on this site are switched off until our Fuel Finder access is granted. We do not show a search box that answers from stale data.
Sources
30 price changes logged. Every one had a date you could have known in advance.
Tell us which bills you care about and we will email you when one of them changes, with the figure, the date it starts and a link to the regulator that set it. Free, no account, one click to stop.
Email alerts are not running yet. We would rather say that than take your address and send you nothing. Until they are, the change log carries every dated change the day we find it, and you can bookmark it or follow it in a reader.