How UK fuel price data works

The Motor Fuel (Transparency and Pricing) Regulations require every retailer with a fuel forecourt to publish pump prices under an open licence within 30 minutes of any price change. Each operator posts a JSON file which the Department for Business and Trade aggregates into a single Fuel Finder API. Each record carries a price_last_updated timestamp — the operator's own “I set these prices at X”.

StationWatch refreshes its copy of the feed every 30 minutes and keeps 30 days of per-station history.

The rule is “republish within 30 minutes of a price change”, not “republish on a schedule”. A station whose timestamp reads 9 days ago is most likely still charging the price it set 9 days ago — nothing has moved, so nothing has been republished. In stable wholesale periods this is the normal pattern, and an old timestamp doesn't mean the price on the pump is wrong.

Looking at the last 30 days of per-station history gives a sense of how often each kind of update happens:

• Price moved, timestamp didn't — 1,636 stations (21.0%). The unleaded price changed more times than the operator bumped the timestamp. Rare, and suggests the operator is slow to re-stamp its feed after a pump change.
• Timestamp moved, price didn't — 4,576 stations (58.9%). The operator republished the same price with a fresh timestamp. Common — many operators re-stamp routinely.
• Both moved in lockstep — 1,563 stations (20.1%). Either a genuinely unchanged price or an operator that only republishes when the price actually moves. From a single timestamp alone these two are indistinguishable.

Three things are consistent with the same old timestamp, in roughly decreasing order of likelihood:

• The price genuinely hasn't changed since that moment (most common).
• The operator was slow to re-stamp their feed after a pump change.
• The operator did republish, but the aggregator didn't propagate the update.

An old timestamp doesn't mean the price is wrong. It usually means nothing has changed. The pill next to each station shows how old the quote is — if it's more than a few days old, check the price board when you pull in.

Major UK retailers also publish their own pump prices on their websites, separate from the gov feed. StationWatch runs regular checks comparing the two sources as an independent reliability signal.

In most cases, even when the gov timestamp is several days old, the retailer's own current price still matches — i.e. the price really is unchanged, exactly what the regulations predict. A small minority of operators drift further than that. If a station you're about to visit has a timestamp that's more than a few days old, it's worth checking the pump board before committing.