Independent developer built a price-change tracker on the mandatory UK Fuel Finder API, storing 90k records across 7,700 stations since January to expose behavioral patterns.
Key Takeaways
Data sourced from the UK Fuel Finder scheme, mandated under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 and enforced by the CMA.
Station operators must legally report price changes within 30 minutes, making the feed high-fidelity for behavioral analysis.
The platform surfaces motorway premium, supermarket discount, and brand comparisons from live price averages.
Built by one independent developer; not affiliated with government, the Fuel Finder scheme, or any retailer.
Hacker News Comment Review
The site went down under HN traffic load, prompting jokes that hosting on Azure was the root cause.
One commenter ran a 10-year personal fuel purchase log and found retail prices tracked spot market prices almost identically after adjusting for currency, units, and taxes, undercutting the “vast station profits” narrative.
Notable Comments
@appreciatorBus: 10-year personal dataset mapped against spot market data suggests station margins are thin, not the profit center commonly assumed.
