The price of petrol in the United Kingdom moves every few minutes, in every postcode, for reasons that most drivers never see. A refinery goes down in Rotterdam; the pound weakens against the dollar; Tesco drops a penny at a forecourt in Derby and the three stations within half a mile follow within the hour. Until recently you had no way to watch that happen. Now you do.
The data
Under the Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025, every forecourt in the country must publish its pump prices and forecourt information to a government scheme within thirty minutes of any change. The scheme — the Fuel Finder service — exposes that data as a public API. FuelHawk polls it every five minutes, diffs the result against what we already have, and writes the changes to a time-series table.
The numbers you see on the site are never more than a few minutes stale. Prices are displayed in pence per litre, which is the unit the government publishes and the unit you see on the pump.
The forecast
"Cheapest station" is easy. "Should I fill up today or wait?" is the interesting question. FuelHawk's forecast engine reconciles six signals into a single decision:
- Wholesale trend — the seven-day moving average of the rack price retailers pay.
- Brent crude — the daily change in the global benchmark.
- Sterling — a softer pound makes imported crude more expensive.
- Day of week — Tuesdays have historically been the cheapest day at the pump.
- Retailer lag — the gap between a wholesale drop and when forecourts pass it on.
- Regional momentum — a region trending above the national average.
Each signal votes between -1 and +1 and carries a weight. The weighted sum becomes the direction and, indirectly, the confidence. When the signals agree strongly, we say fill now or wait. When they don't, we say so — "no strong signal" is a real answer.
We regenerate the forecast every six hours. Accuracy is tracked against realised prices in the time-series table; over rolling 90-day windows we target a figure we can write in public.
True cost
The price on the pump isn't the price you pay. Shell Go+ takes 3p off every litre into a cashpot. Tesco Clubcard converts points into fuel vouchers. Nectar pays back on Esso and Sainsbury's. When you set up your loyalty cards in the dashboard, FuelHawk applies the best card that matches each station's brand and shows the adjusted figure on search results. The pump price is still there — we just tell you what it actually costs you after the small print.
Margin transparency
For every station we also compute the retailer margin: pump price minus wholesale, minus fuel duty, minus VAT. That leaves the number the forecourt keeps. We compare it to the average margin of stations within a five-mile radius and publish a fairness score from 1 to 10. It doesn't tell you anywhere is ripping you off — forecourts carry real costs — but it tells you where sits above average, and where doesn't.
Commute alerts
If you're a Member, you can add up to two daily routes — home to work, the school run. FuelHawk watches the stations along each route and emails you when one drops below your threshold. The email lands before your alert time, not at a random moment during your day.
Principles
FuelHawk takes no money from the brands listed on the site. Pricing data is open-government under OGL v3.0. The site works and mostly looks the same whether you're signed in or not — Member features unlock the personal and the predictive, not the public-good information. If we ever take a retailer payment or put a display ad that isn't marked as one, we'll say.