Pull off the M6 at Charnock Richard with a quarter tank and you’ll pay roughly 20p more per litre than if you’d come off at the previous junction, driven a mile, filled at the supermarket, and rejoined. On a 50-litre tank that’s £10 — ten pounds, for five minutes of detour. Motorway service stations are the single most expensive forecourts in the UK, and it’s not an accident.
The markup, quantified
Across UK MSAs, petrol and diesel are typically 15-25p per litreabove the nearest non-motorway forecourt. Some of the busier southern MSAs (Beaconsfield on the M40, Cobham on the M25) run 30p dearer during peak periods. On a full tank that’s £7.50 to £15 of premium — every fill.
Unleaded at 140p at a Tesco forecourt might be 158p at the motorway services three miles away. Both prices are published to the government’s Fuel Finder scheme and visible on FuelHawk.
Where the money goes
The MSA markup isn’t pure profit. Four things are legitimately more expensive at a services than at a regular forecourt:
- Lease cost — the big MSAs pay the landlord (typically Welcome Break, Moto, Roadchef or Extra Services) hundreds of thousands of pounds a year for the concession. That has to be recovered in volume.
- 24-hour staffing — MSA forecourts don’t close. Night-shift fuel staff and on-site forecourt managers cost more than a 6am-10pm local Shell.
- Limited competition — the nearest alternative forecourt is usually 5-15 minutes off the motorway. That captive audience supports a wider margin.
- Highways regulatory overhead — National Highways mandates visible pricing signage, 24h opening, specific safety standards, and quick throughput. All cost money.
That said, the markup has been comfortably wider than those costs for years. Select Committee investigations in the late 2010s put the structural cost premium at around 6-8p/L; the observed pump premium is more than double that. The remainder is margin — enabled by captive demand.
The 2025 disclosure rule
The Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025 force every UK forecourt — including MSAs — to publish pump prices within 30 minutes of any change. That’s what makes FuelHawk possible, and it’s what makes the MSA markup visible for the first time. Before 2025, you could only compare prices after filling up. Now you can compare them before you’re committed to the slip road.
How to sidestep it
Three practical rules:
- Fill before the motorway. If you’re starting a long journey, top up at your local supermarket before you join. A full tank will cover 400+ miles — roughly four hours of motorway driving — on its own.
- Take the nearest junction off when you need fuel. Most UK motorway junctions have a supermarket forecourt within two miles; Tesco Extra, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons all run competitively-priced stations close to A-roads.
- Use MSAs only for emergencies. The premium is too high to be a routine choice. Plan fills around supermarkets or independents; let the services handle coffee and facilities.
FuelHawk’s motorway services indexpublishes the current markup at every MSA in the country, side by side with the cheapest nearby alternative and the junction you’d come off at. It’s a five-minute detour to save a tenner; the only reason most drivers don’t is that nobody’s ever made the comparison easy.
Compare motorway prices by junction →
The cheapest unleaded petrol off-motorway →
Or find cheap petrol near you by postcode →