I’m going to taking a multi-state drive soon. I’d like an app that can tell me the cheapest current gas prices on my route. Does anyone have an recommendations? I’d prefer a free app if possible. One that works along a specific direction and route rather than just within a radius would be good.
Gas Buddy, Gas Guru, and Waze are some apps that I’ve seen mentioned.
I think Google Maps would work just fine for you here. Especially if you are already using it for navigation. You can hit the magnifying glass to ‘search along rout’ and type in gas.
I’ve checked on Google Maps but it has problems. It only lists prices at a few stations. And the prices are not always current.
eta: As an example, I just checked on the gas prices in my town. Google Maps only showed the prices at two stations out of at least seven stations in the area. And it shows a price of $3.07 at a station where I paid $2.99 last night.
Gasbuddy. It’s crowd sourced, so you still may not get all the stations, but it’s pretty good. It defaults to map or radius search, but you can type in a location. It’s not going to know your route.
Seconded, I use Gas Buddy all the time. Like squeegee says, you have to look at its map and overlay it in your mind with your route to figure which stations are along the way, but it does have navigation to the station once you pick one.
Mr. Legend uses Gas Buddy all the time, and he’s recommend it. It tells you how old the last reported price is as well.
Gas Buddy has the most comprehensive database of up-to-date gas prices of all the apps I’ve used. But I usually prefer to look at the website on my laptop before I leave on a road trip to plan my gas stops ahead of time, because the mobile app often performs slowly and/or erratically just when I need it the most. They same company owns [yourstate]gasprices .com (e.g., ohiogasprices.com, newjerseygasprices.com) which in some ways I find easier to navigate than gasbuddy.com or the mobile app. Also, I haven’t discovered how to suppress results that are far from my intended route. That makes prices load slowly and makes it hard to quickly see the most relevant results.
Waze is primarily a navigation app but it has a pretty good gas price tool. After setting your destination, press the search icon in the lower left corner of the app (looks like a magnifying glass), then toward the top of the new screen that pops up, press the gas icon. It will show you only gas stations and prices that are reasonably close to your route. I haven’t done a precise count, but they seem to have more gas stations and updated prices in their database than Google maps (despite being owned by the same company), but fewer than Gas Buddy.
The one feature of the Google maps gas price tool that I love is that they tell you how many minutes out of your way each gas station is. Waze either lacks that information, or I haven’t discovered how to display it.
I also use Gasbuddy but am not willing to install the app, particularly not if it wants access to location data.
If you’re using an iPhone, you have to give it permission to use your location. One of the options is “while using the app”.
For most apps, I choose the never give location access option.
So set it that way for GB, then type in a zipcode if you want stations.
Mostly I only get gas at Costco, so for me, I don’t really need it but when I do, I just access it on my PC.
Android has that, & an even more restrictive “Ask every time” option
I know where cheap gas is in my local area, the only time I use it is when I’m traveling & therefore, almost never know the zip code.
The only problem, like others have stated is that it doesn’t know your route so it’ll show the cheapest gas at a station in the wrong direction as being closer than one along your intended direction of travel even if both have the same price.
So does iOS. I know nothing of Android device settings.
The other problem being that zip codes are vast in less populated areas. You’d need to check individual towns by name along your route, admittedly a pain.
The color-coded Gasbuddy map on their main site can be useful for the pre-planning phase-it will default to showing individual stations past a certain zoom level. But the colors are too strong and “drown out” the map details a fair amount. You might also spy a “cooler” (cheaper) region on the map, only to find out that it is due to just one station, which might have outdated prices or is closed or too far out of your way or something. But it will make it crystal clear which state borders to either stop before or after to get the cheapest deals.
The list view in Gas Buddy isn’t very useful. I always switch to map view, and then it’s fairly easy to see which ones are along your path.