Australian Fuel Price Trends

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About These Prices

Prices are sourced from official government channels and community-verified data across all Australian states. Updated multiple times daily to ensure accuracy.

Coverage: 33,480+ stations across all Australian states and territories. Prices shown are averages and individual station prices may vary.

How we measure Australian fuel prices

The prices on this page are aggregated from eight government-mandated retail fuel price reporting schemes plus community-verified sources for ACT and New Zealand. Each scheme requires retailers to publish their pump prices to the state regulator: NSW FuelCheck (~3,000 stations), QLD Fuel API, SA Informed Sources, VIC Fair Fuel (real-time `/public/v1/` endpoint, not the 24-hour-delayed open-data feed), WA FuelWatch, NT MyFuel, and Tasmania FuelCheck. Each source reports separately to its respective regulator, who publishes the data via a public API that Petrolmate syncs from twice daily at 6am and 12pm AEST, plus 30-minute boost-window syncs between 6am and 10am AEDT for NSW and VIC during the morning price-flip period.

We deactivate any price older than 7 days regardless of source, and any community price that diverges more than 20 cents per litre from the same station's most recent official report. Only active prices are included in the averages and ranges shown above. Stations with no price reported in the past 48 hours are excluded from the day's national average to prevent stale data from skewing the headline figures.

How to read the Australian fuel price cycle

In Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide, retail petrol prices follow a regular weekly to fortnightly cycle. Prices fall steadily for several days (the "trough" phase) as retailers compete to recover market share, then jump sharply by 20 to 40 cents per litre over a 24-hour period (the "spike"). After the spike, prices begin a fresh decline. The cycle is not a fuel-cost phenomenon. Wholesale fuel prices vary by only a few cents per litre week to week. The cycle is a retail competition pattern.

Perth follows a different pattern under WA FuelWatch: retailers must lock prices for a full 24 hours after publishing, so Perth has no within-day volatility and the cycle is shallower. Darwin and the rest of NT operate under a similar 24-hour publication regime via MyFuel NT, which Petrolmate documents in detail on the NT 24-hour price lock page. Tasmania, regional NSW and regional QLD typically have weak or no cycle because retail competition is too low to sustain it.

The chart above shows the trailing-week trend for each fuel type at the national level. To see your local cycle position, visit your state hub: NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, ACT, NT. Each state page shows the ML-detected cycle phase, the average price across fresh stations, and the cheapest suburbs right now.

State-by-state context

The headline national average masks substantial state variation. Fuel taxes are a fixed federal excise, but freight costs, retail competition, refining proximity, and (in WA and NT) regulatory price-publication regimes drive meaningful price gaps between states. Capital cities are typically 5 to 15 cents per litre cheaper than the corresponding regional areas due to higher station density and stronger price competition. Tasmania has the smallest metro premium because Hobart and the regional centres are similarly sized.

For diesel specifically, state averages tend to track each other more closely than petrol because diesel demand is dominated by commercial fleet customers who negotiate independently of the retail cycle. Premium 95 and Premium 98 show wider state-level variation because the niche customer base (high-end vehicles in metro areas) is concentrated in NSW and VIC.

If you want a single view of every fuel type for one state, use the Australia hub or jump straight into the cheapest stations near you via the near-me locator. The best time to fill up guide adds a day-of-week analysis on top of the state-level averages shown here.

About this dataset

The Petrolmate fuel-price dataset is published continuously and is licensed for citation under our terms. Each pump price record includes a station ID, fuel type, AUD cents per litre value, and a timestamp at second resolution. Aggregate views (state and national averages, cheapest and most expensive suburbs, week-on-week deltas) are computed at request time from the same underlying records. Researchers, journalists, and Home Assistant users can also access raw price data via our REST API. Citation format and licensing terms are published in the llms.txt manifest.

Coverage exceeds 11,000 active Australian stations plus ~1,600 New Zealand stations. The dataset is updated continuously throughout each day. If you spot a price you believe is incorrect, please flag it from the relevant station page so we can verify against the underlying source.