Fuel Finder is the UK government's open data scheme for road fuel prices. Every petrol station in the country must register with a central database and report each change to its pump prices within 30 minutes; the database then publishes those prices, free of charge, to any app, website, map or in-car system that wants them. There is no official app. The scheme exists because the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) concluded in 2023 that drivers could not easily compare prices, and that the difficulty was allowing retailers to widen their margins without losing customers.

As of October 2026 the scheme is run by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), operated under contract by VE3 Global and enforced by the CMA. Since October 8, 2026, its data has appeared in Google Maps and Waze.

How the scheme works

The legal basis is the Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025, statutory instrument 2025 No. 1356, made on December 17, 2025 under Part 1 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. That Act, which received Royal Assent on June 19, 2025, gives ministers power to create "smart data" schemes compelling businesses to share information in standard formats. Fuel Finder is built on that power.

The regulations define a motor fuel trader as anyone selling petrol or diesel in a retail business, and a petrol filling station as the premises from which that happens. Six grades are in scope: E5, E10, diesel, super diesel, B10 and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO).

The flow has three stages. First, registration: each site supplies the static details listed in Schedule 1 of the regulations, including trading and brand name, address, latitude and longitude, opening hours, amenities, fuel grades offered and the identity of the person responsible for reporting. Changes to those details must be filed within three days. Second, price reporting: under regulation 9, a trader must report a new selling price "before the end of the period of 30 minutes beginning with the time at which the change occurs". Chains report automatically from electronic point of sale (EPOS) systems through an application programming interface (API); smaller sites can use a web portal, text message or a telephone line.

Third, publication. The appointed body, which the regulations call the aggregator, must update its own price API within five minutes of receiving a report, and publish a flat file twice a day. Data users register through GOV.UK One Login and authenticate with OAuth 2.0 using the client credentials flow, according to DESNZ guidance. Each record carries the price per fuel grade, the forecourt's address, operator and brand, amenities, opening hours and a timestamp. The worst-case lag before a price reaches a consuming app is therefore about 35 minutes.

Fuel Finder is the plumbing, not the shop window. A government factsheet dated March 31, 2026 listed 12 services drawing on the feed, including Google Maps, Waze, Confused.com, MoneySuperMarket, PetrolPrices.com and RAC Fuel Watch.

Origin and evolution

The idea is older than the UK scheme. Western Australia began daily price monitoring under FuelWatch on January 2, 2001. Germany's Bundeskartellamt opened its Market Transparency Unit for Fuels on September 12, 2013, requiring stations to report changes "within five minutes". New South Wales followed with FuelCheck in August 2016.

In the UK, the trigger was the 2022 price spike. The CMA opened a road fuel market study that year and published its final report on July 3, 2023. It found that average supermarket fuel margins had risen by 6 pence per litre between 2019 and 2022, and that a typical family car driver could save up to £4.50 a tank by shopping around within a five-minute drive. Sarah Cardell, the CMA's chief executive, said "competition at the pump is not working as well as it should be". The report recommended two things: a statutory fuel finder open data scheme and a permanent fuel price monitor.

While legislation was prepared, the CMA ran an interim voluntary arrangement from 2023. By January 2024, twelve major retailers, including all four fuel-selling supermarkets, were publishing price files. DESNZ opened a consultation on January 16, 2024 on a scheme then called Pumpwatch, proposing the 30-minute reporting window and estimating savings of about 3 pence per litre.

The contract to build the aggregator went to VE3 Global in May 2025. Registration, planned for early December, slipped into January after the system failed reliability testing. Mandatory reporting began on February 2, 2026, followed by a three-month grace period. The CMA's open letter of April 2, 2026, signed by Juliette Enser, executive director for competition enforcement and markets, confirmed that it would prioritise enforcement from May 1, 2026. The voluntary scheme closed that day.

Why it matters for marketers

Fuel Finder turns the most decision-relevant attribute of a fuel station, its price, into a structured, timestamped and legally mandated field that any platform can ingest. That moves forecourt competition into the interfaces where advertising is sold.

Google launched the display on October 8, 2026. Searching "petrol" or "fuel" in Maps or Waze now returns nearby stations with a price overlay and a last-updated time. Sarah-Jayne Williams, director of product partnerships for Google Maps and Waze, told the BBC that prices are shown only when Google has "high confidence" they are correct. Google did not disclose whether price influences ranking, whether the cheapest station is highlighted, or how often it refreshes the feed.

Those questions carry commercial weight. Waze ad inventory, which places promoted pins in front of drivers mid-route, was added to Performance Max store-goal campaigns in November 2025 and extended to 42 countries including the UK in September 2026. Waze's Gemini voice assistant, introduced in July 2026, uses "find me a gas station nearby with the lowest prices" as a sample query. Google Maps also became a Demand Gen placement in May 2026, and paid units in the local pack rose from under 3% to 21.99% of tracked mobile keywords between November 2025 and January 2026, according to Places Scout data cited by Joy Hawkins. When an organic result shows a price and a paid pin sits beside it, the price becomes part of the auction's context.

The data also sits alongside the profile layer. Google Business Profile attributes already feed Maps, Search and AI answers, and Ask Maps draws on 300 million places. Fuel Finder supplies a field forecourt operators cannot edit freely: the price comes from a regulated feed, not from a marketer.

Apple is absent so far. Its Maps ads went live on August 21, 2026 in the US and Canada only, and as of October 2026 Apple Maps does not display UK fuel prices, according to TechRadar.

Limitations and disputes

The scheme's early months were rough. Forecourt Trader reported invalid activation codes, petrol listed at 1.3 pence per litre, diesel at £19 per litre, sites plotted in the sea and about 1,400 supermarket stations, 19% of the total, labelled as non-supermarket sites. The Times reported that ministers threatened to strip the contract, worth nearly £2 million. VE3 said many claims "are inaccurate or misrepresent the current state of the service".

Coverage figures depend on the denominator. The CMA reported on August 18, 2026 that about 97% of roughly 8,300 UK stations were registered, representing an estimated 99% of fuel sold. The CMA had sent 1,166 warning letters and issued compliance notices for 53 sites by then, and had imposed no financial penalties.

Penalty ceilings are also reported inconsistently. Regulation 19 caps a fixed penalty at 1% of an undertaking's total turnover and a daily penalty at 5% of daily turnover. Forecourt Trader and several consumer sites have cited a maximum of 30% of turnover, a figure that does not appear in the instrument.

The headline saving is contested in method rather than substance. The government's figure of £40 a year per car-owning household comes without published methodology. The CMA's own Fuel Finder data, analysed between March 11 and April 13, 2026, showed price gaps of up to 16 pence per litre for petrol within a ten-minute drive in Sheffield, and up to 26 pence between motorway and other sites.

Fuel Finder and commonly confused terms

The CMA interim fuel price scheme was the voluntary predecessor, running from 2023 until May 1, 2026, with no statutory duty and no 30-minute rule.

Road fuel monitoring is the CMA's separate statutory oversight of margins and pump prices. It uses Fuel Finder data, but it is analysis, not a price feed.

Fuel Finder UK and similar apps are private services that consume the government feed. "Fuel Finder" is also used as a product name by unrelated apps, including a Scandinavian fuel price app.

Foreign schemes such as FuelWatch, FuelCheck and Germany's Market Transparency Unit share the concept.

Recent developments

The CMA's enhanced monitoring report of May 1, 2026 recorded diesel rising from 141.5 pence per litre at the end of February to 191.2 pence in the week of April 20, driven by the Middle East conflict and refining spreads. Diesel later passed £2 a litre, according to TechRadar.

The Google launch on October 8, 2026 is the most visible consequence. It also lands while the CMA holds strategic market status powers over Google's search services, designated on September 30, 2025, and has begun using its consumer enforcement powers to investigate online price transparency at eight firms, with fines of up to 10% of global turnover available. How price-bearing listings are ranked, and how they interact with paid placements, is the kind of question that regime was built to examine. The scheme itself must be formally reviewed within five years of February 2, 2026.

Timeline

  • January 2, 2001: Western Australia begins daily fuel price monitoring under FuelWatch
  • September 12, 2013: Germany's Market Transparency Unit for Fuels starts, with a five-minute reporting rule
  • August 24, 2016: New South Wales launches FuelCheck
  • 2022: CMA opens its road fuel market study
  • July 3, 2023: CMA final report recommends a statutory fuel finder open data scheme
  • August 31, 2023: Government publishes the interim voluntary fuel price data page
  • January 16, 2024: DESNZ consults on the Pumpwatch proposal with a 30-minute reporting window
  • May 2025: DESNZ awards the aggregator contract to VE3 Global
  • June 19, 2025: Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 receives Royal Assent
  • October 28, 2025: Impact assessment for the regulations published
  • December 9, 2025: Parliament debates the Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025
  • December 17, 2025: Regulations made; registration provisions in force the next day
  • February 2, 2026: Mandatory price reporting begins
  • April 2, 2026: CMA open letter announces enforcement priority from May 1
  • May 1, 2026: Enforcement begins; interim voluntary scheme closes
  • August 18, 2026: CMA reports 97% registration, 1,166 warning letters and 53 compliance notices
  • October 8, 2026: Fuel Finder prices appear in Google Maps and Waze

Summary

Who. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero owns the scheme, VE3 Global operates it as aggregator and the Competition and Markets Authority enforces it. About 8,300 UK petrol stations report into it; Google Maps, Waze, comparison sites, motoring organisations and independent apps consume it.

What. Fuel Finder is a statutory open data scheme requiring every UK fuel retailer to register its sites and report each pump price change within 30 minutes, with prices republished through an API within five minutes and a flat file twice a day.

When. The CMA recommended it on July 3, 2023. The regulations were made on December 17, 2025, mandatory reporting began on February 2, 2026, enforcement on May 1, 2026, and Google Maps display on October 8, 2026.

Where. The scheme covers the whole UK, including Northern Ireland. Drivers see the data in third-party apps, map services and in-car systems rather than in any government app.

Why. The CMA found that opaque local pricing allowed retail margins to rise without competitive pressure. Publishing prices in an open, machine-readable form is intended to make shopping around easy enough to discipline those margins, and it turns fuel price into a structured attribute inside the local search and navigation interfaces where advertising is sold.