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When do fuel stations change their prices in the United Kingdom?

Price changes over 19 days at 7 926 stations in the United Kingdom, measured one station at a time: which weekday, how often, by how much, and which network moves first. These are not today’s prices — this is the rhythm behind them.

Window: Sep 25, 2026 – Oct 13, 2026 · 19 days · rebuilt every night

• A station in the United Kingdom changes its Unleaded (E10) price 0.68 times a week on average, and a price that has just changed then holds for 4 days before the next one.
• On an ordinary day 10.2% of the stations in the United Kingdom change their price; on the busiest day of the window, 20.2%.
• The busiest weekday is Tuesday, with 21.8% of all changes; the quietest is Sunday, with 6.4%.
• An increase moves the price by 1.4p on average, a cut by 1.6p. Over the window there were 9 514 changes upward and 5 085 downward.
• Half of all the price changes of the last 19 days happened on just 6 of them.
• Across the window the market median went from 173.9p to 173.9p.
• Where the source carries a clock of its own, most changes land between 15:00 and 16:00 — 12% of 3 628 changes carrying a timestamp in the sample.

Which weekday

Each bar is the number of price changes we recorded on that weekday over the whole window, split by direction. The dashed line is what a week with no pattern would look like: one seventh of the changes on each day.

Day by day

Top: the share of stations that changed price that day, above the line for increases, below it for cuts. Bottom: the median price across the market, the same days. The two panels share the same dates — read them as one picture, not as two scales on one axis.

How big is one change

The distribution of the size of a single change at a single station, increases on one side and cuts on the other. The marked line on each arm is the median. “Rocket and feather” asks whether the two arms are the same shape — here they are not.

The hour of the day

Here it can: the source carries a clock of its own. 3 628 changes with a timestamp from the last 7 days, one bar per hour, as a share of them all.

Network by network

Only networks with at least 40 stations in the window. In this market prices move on nearly every day, so there are no separate waves to time; instead each network’s own daily median price is compared with the market’s, at shifts of up to three days, and the shift that fits best is reported. A negative shift means the network turns before the market does. The comparison needs at least 20 days; this window has 19 days, so the last column stays empty for now.

How this was measured

• One price per station per day. One price per station, fuel and day: the Fuel Finder file published at about 16:00 UK time that day, as we import it. A change is dated to the day of the first file that shows it.
• Prices are in pence per litre, as on the pump. Our history keeps each day’s price in euros, so every day is converted back at the exchange rate of the import it came from (1 EUR = £0.8446 to £0.8605 in this window) and rounded to a tenth of a penny. Checked on Oct 10, 2026 against the original Fuel Finder files for Sep 25, 2026 – Oct 8, 2026: 223 120 of 223 127 prices identical; the other 7 have two decimals or a typing error in the source. The series starts on Sep 25, 2026, because before that day our history cannot be converted back exactly.
• A change is two consecutive days in a station’s series with different prices; it is counted on the second of the two. If more than 3 days separate the two readings, the pair is dropped — there is no way to say which day the price moved.
• Prices here move on nearly every day of the window, so there is nothing to call a wave. Leadership is measured the other way round: each network’s daily median price is differenced, and compared with the market’s own differenced median at shifts of −3 to +3 days; the shift with the highest correlation is the one reported, together with that correlation.
• Prices of zero or below are dropped before anything is computed. Everything on this page is about Unleaded (E10) and Diesel; other fuels are not mixed in.
• The figures are rebuilt once a night from the full history, not on every visit.

What this cannot tell you

• At most one change per station per day is visible, because the history keeps one price per station per day. Where we read more often — Romania, every two hours — 9.8% of the station-days that carried a change carried more than one, so a once-a-day measurement undercounts by roughly that much.
• The window contains a real price trend, so the count of increases and cuts is not a fair contest: over these 19 days the market median went from 173.9p to 173.9p. The size of a single step is the fairer comparison, and it is reported separately.
• Networks are read from the station register, so a station whose network is not recorded there falls outside the network table, even though its changes are still counted everywhere else.
• The window covers 7 926 stations with a usable series out of the ones we track; a station that entered or left the register mid-window contributes only the days it was there.

Questions

Does this tell me the best day to fill up?

It tells you when the market moves, not which way it will move. In the United Kingdom the busiest day is Tuesday (21.8% of all changes) and the quietest is Sunday (6.4%). A day with few changes is a day on which yesterday’s price is still standing — useful if yesterday was cheap, useless if it was not.

Do you know the hour at which a price changes?

For the United Kingdom, yes: the source carries a clock of its own, and most changes land between 15:00 and 16:00. Where a source does not carry one, this site writes “the hour cannot be established” instead of guessing, and that is the honest answer for every market whose history keeps one price per day.

How do you know a price changed at all?

By comparing a station with itself. Two consecutive days in the same station’s series with two different prices is one change, counted on the second day. Over 19 days that gives 14 599 changes at 7 926 stations, and every figure above is a slice of that same set.