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I have a friend traveling a couple of weeks in France and Spain. He was asking me about the better places to fill up the tank and I sent him this answer:

Petrol price comparison in Europe. Which resources are there?

The problem is that he is not so much worried with price difference between countries but more about the price inside the country, since it may vary from station to station up to 12 cents/liter or even more. Considering he uses Diesel, this means over 10% difference.

Are there resources that compare petrol station prices in France and Spain?

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    short answer : no. long answer : there are many websites that take average price in route, and then you can look up at the stops, etc. good answer : fuel prices in spain are always 2/3rds of the prices in france, as a rule of thumb, if petrol is 1,5 in france, it's 0.9 in spain. – CptEric Aug 1 '16 at 11:38
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    For France, you have this government website prix-carburants.gouv.fr but the user interface is not very friendly. – audionuma Aug 1 '16 at 12:07
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    @audionuma the interface is a bit poor, but that is really the kind of thing I am looking for. You should make that an answer. – nsn Aug 1 '16 at 12:58
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    In France (just as in the UK) supermarkets are often have decent pricing, and certainly better than motorway services. So if a "centre commercial" is signposted off the motorway as you pass s town, that could help. The sign is no guarantee it's got a petrol station, but the supermarkets that are signposted off the motorway are usually the big ones, and big supermarkets usually have petrol stations. Don't forget the cost of going out of your way and getting stuck in traffic - it's often only worth avoiding the expensive outliers. – Chris H Aug 1 '16 at 14:51
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    @JoeBlow this is not about exiting the highway to find a stationtion and reentering. It's more about planing and understanding the price disrtibution and filling wherever there is a cheap station. – nsn Aug 2 '16 at 7:43
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Waze (as someone pointed out in a recent question of mine) has communiy supplied fuel prices. Providing a sufficient number of Waze users are in the area, then you have a fair chance of being able to find the petrol station with the lowest price, at least relatively to other nearby petrol stations.

I tried using it near an airport in Italy and it showed be fuel prices that were 4 days out of date, but I didn't validate them.

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    Having been using Waze in France and Germany over a few weeks in June I can tell you that user community of Waze is very small in comparison to US or Israel. Plus with no feature to add or remove a Gas Station it's not a very popular reporting feature (in the US at least). – Karlson Aug 1 '16 at 13:00
  • Thanks @Karlson. I'll leave it open at least until someone comes up with an alternative site/app – Berwyn Aug 1 '16 at 13:08
  • For an American, worrying about tiny differences in fuel prices in Europe, would be like someone buying a rolls royce and worrying about tiny differences in dealer prices. Fuel is insanely expensive in Europe, and there's no difference to speak of anywhere. – Fattie Aug 1 '16 at 15:59
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A partial answer for France : the government website http://www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr/ does maintain a data set of fuel prices around France.

(Notice that the data set is licensed under a free and open license so there might be other websites offering a better end user experience.)

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For Spain, the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism publishes data about fuel prices here: http://geoportalgasolineras.es/#/Inicio

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  • Are you aware of any thumb rules like for France, where usually supermarket pumps are usually cheaper? – nsn Aug 2 '16 at 21:13
  • @nsn yes, the same applies for Spain. In general to avoid high prices you should stay away of motorway petrol stations, those in city centers and those run by big petrol companies. – orique Aug 2 '16 at 21:17

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