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

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.

## Unleaded (E10)

- Changes per station: 0.68 / week
- A price holds for: 4 days
- Stations: 7 926 · 14 599 price changes

| Which weekday | increase | cut |
|---|---:|---:|
| Monday | 1 575 | 678 |
| Tuesday | 1 838 | 1 350 |
| Wednesday | 903 | 624 |
| Thursday | 955 | 900 |
| Friday | 1 101 | 835 |
| Saturday | 2 476 | 432 |
| Sunday | 666 | 266 |

- increase: 1.4p (n=9 514)
- cut: 1.6p (n=5 085)

| Network | Stations | Changes / station / week | Together | Ahead of the market |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| Esso | 1 444 | 0.59 | 9% | — |
| BP | 1 034 | 0.68 | 10% | — |
| Shell | 869 | 0.74 | 9% | — |
| Tesco | 516 | 0.80 | 9% | — |
| Texaco | 481 | 0.49 | 8% | — |
| Morrisons | 340 | 0.99 | 11% | — |
| Sainsbury's | 316 | 1.94 | 8% | — |
| Jet | 306 | 0.60 | 8% | — |
| Gulf | 280 | 0.55 | 8% | — |
| Valero | 180 | 0.66 | 7% | — |

## Diesel

- Changes per station: 0.70 / week
- A price holds for: 3 days
- Stations: 8 043 · 15 313 price changes

| Which weekday | increase | cut |
|---|---:|---:|
| Monday | 1 729 | 767 |
| Tuesday | 1 899 | 1 562 |
| Wednesday | 986 | 650 |
| Thursday | 657 | 848 |
| Friday | 1 045 | 815 |
| Saturday | 2 713 | 439 |
| Sunday | 937 | 266 |

- increase: 1.6p (n=9 966)
- cut: 1.8p (n=5 347)

| Network | Stations | Changes / station / week | Together | Ahead of the market |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| Esso | 1 439 | 0.58 | 7% | — |
| BP | 1 032 | 0.70 | 9% | — |
| Shell | 870 | 0.88 | 10% | — |
| Tesco | 516 | 0.65 | 4% | — |
| Texaco | 473 | 0.58 | 8% | — |
| Morrisons | 340 | 1.13 | 11% | — |
| Sainsbury's | 316 | 2.01 | 17% | — |
| Jet | 306 | 0.57 | 7% | — |
| Gulf | 277 | 0.53 | 8% | — |
| Valero | 179 | 0.70 | 7% | — |

## 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.
A market-wide move — a “wave” — is a run of days on which at least 15% of the stations with a price changed it; the threshold is not a fixed number but the market’s own median plus half the way to its 95th percentile. Within a wave each network gets the centre of gravity of its own changes; the network whose centre falls earliest moved first. Waves found in this window: 2.
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. A station that changes twice in one day is counted once.

Source of the prices: DESNZ Fuel Finder (OGL v3.0). Analysis: fuel-prices.eu.

Live fuel prices in %s: https://www.fuel-prices.eu/live/uk/

HTML: https://www.fuel-prices.eu/live/uk/price-changes/
JSON: https://www.fuel-prices.eu/live/uk/price-changes/data.json