Retailer Petrol

Retailer Petrol Prices

Petrol prices always seem to be increasing, and it is hard to keep up with where the best place to buy your fuel is. Whatgas are here to help by taking a look at how much the major retailers charge on average for Unleaded, Diesel and LPG. It is all well and good trying to keep an eye on the cheapest local petrol station, but what if you are driving out and about and don't know the area? This table below will help you pick and choose which filling stations to stop up just by looking at the brand name. Its not a fool-proof system but it might just help you save a few pennies next time you fill up.

The tables below show the recent average prices for the major petrol retailers in the UK. Prices are based on 1 months worth of data and show the number of sample points used. The tables are sorted by brand name.

Our analysis shows that the Supermarkets are still the cheapest places to buy petrol, with Asda consistently the cheapest, closely followed by Morrisons.

The supermarkets are really doing a good job of selling cheap petrol, with the likes of Asda and Morrisons selling fuel significantly cheaper than the oil companies. At the time of writing our survey shows that Asda is a full 3.7p cheaper than BP on Unleaded and 4.2p/litre cheaper on Diesel. However the larger firms are doing their bit by selling LPG fuel in far greater quantities than the other stations.

Supermarket Petrol Stations

Morrisons isn't far behind whilst Sainsburies and Tescos are still 1-2p/litre cheaper Supermarkets can afford to keep their prices low for a number of reasons. There are suggestions that their fuel is cheaper than the major brands and so your car doesn't perform quite so well when you use their stuff. It is not, however, clear whether this is true or not!

The major reason why supermarkets can afford to be so cheap is that they generally have far lower running costs and do not need to make such a large profit. Consider an out of town Asda store, it already has a large chunk of land to build on, it has good access to cheap staff 24 hours a day, and it is selling a whole host of other goods (and services) to anyone who visits the store. In fact sometimes you could imagine the supermarkets actually sell the fuel at a LOSS, just so that they can pull more shoppers into their store.

At the other end of the scale are the Independent retailers. Their costs are generally a lot higher with their fuel stations being located in places with a higher land rental. Often their throughput of cars is a lot lower meaning that they don't benefit from economies of scale, and they don't have the buying power to negotiate the best deals when trying to buy their fuel off the manufacturers. Despite this they somehow manage to offer reasonable prices, with our in dependant retailers competing well in terms of prices with the likes of Shell, Esso and BP.

Our research looks at fuel stations from Asda, BP, Esso, Independents, Jet, Morrisons, Murco, Sainsburys, Shell, Tesco, Texaco, Total, and some 'unknown' brands. All data is taken using survey samples and the accuracy is not guaranteed.