Motorway fuel costs 15.2p a litre more: what to do about it
By Anthony Sharkey, Chief Operating Officer, New Reg Limited · 6 Aug 2026
Filling up at motorway services currently costs 15.2p a litre more than an ordinary branded forecourt, which is £8.36 on a full tank.
Unleaded at UK motorway services averages 177.2p per litre, against 162.0p at ordinary branded forecourts. That gap of 15.2p a litre works out at £8.36 on a 55-litre fill, simply for stopping on the motorway rather than a few minutes off it.
The premium is not uniform. Across the 163 motorway sites currently reporting, the cheapest unleaded is 149.9p at Solo, 254 Frosses Road and the dearest is 197.9p at Welcome Break, Hungerford, a spread of 48.0p a litre between one services and another.
The practical answer is planning rather than avoidance. Filling up before you join, or leaving at a junction with a supermarket or branded forecourt nearby, avoids the premium entirely on most journeys. If you do need to stop, the price varies enough between services that it is worth checking rather than assuming.
Use the live search on this site to compare every forecourt near your route before you set off.
**Disclaimer.** Every figure here is computed from official UK government fuel price data (Open Government Licence v3.0) as published by fuel.co.uk, and was correct when this piece was prepared. Pump prices change through the day and may differ by the time you read this. Averages describe groups of forecourts, not every site within a group. This is general information, not financial advice.