About three weeks ago, I bought a new car. For those of you who love cars in addition to pocketable technology (like me), then you might be interested to know that it’s a 2012 Mazda3 hatchback.
It’s a wonderful car with tremendous gas mileage to boot, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in saving as much money as possible when I do have to fill it up. In fact, quite the contrary has happened: I’ve become incredibly aware of how efficiently I’m driving, and how much gas is in the different parts of the state that I may have to drive to.
Still, I’m a forgetful human being. No matter how many mental notes I make about gas prices in each city, I will inevitably forget them and end up spending just a little more on gas than I wanted to – or than another station was selling it for. Luckily, I have a smartphone and there are plenty of apps to help you find the best gas prices around. I’ve used plenty of them, but my absolute favorite is GasBuddy.
The premise of GasBuddy is very simple: it finds your location, looks for gas stations near you, and then looks up the prices that are entered by other GasBuddy users.
To find gas near you, all you need to do is either enter your zip code, state, or city; or, more easily, you can simply hit the Find Gas Near Me button and have your device automatically find gas stations that are near you.
After it’s loaded up the nearest gas stations, you’ll be presented with prices and how far away the station is. All prices are entered by users of the app, and you can also see how long ago the prices were updated. For the most part, prices are incredibly accurate, no matter how long ago they were updated.
GasBuddy is a free app – and I’m sure most of you use (or have used) it – but it’s a powerful tool in my arsenal of iOS apps and it is definitely worth a mention – I don’t know any car owner who likes to spend more on already-expensive gasoline, and I’m sure none of you like it, either.
You can download the app through the QR code or download link below. Are there any other money-saving apps that you use?
[Download]
Hey, does it tell you which one is least expensive for you? I know it lists prices, but does it tell you how much money you’ll spend driving to that gas station – like can you set “I’m passing through / destination is X” and it will come up with actual savings based on traffic conditions?
Or does it just throw up prices and you have to figure out which is going to be the most economical to get to?
Saving $4 a tank doesn’t do much if you wasted 30 minutes and spent that in gas to get there…
Unfortunately, no.
That would be a fantastic feature for the team to add in the future, though!
For what it’s worth, do you know of any gas-finding apps that do show that information?
no, I remember about a year ago someone was planning on making one that would take your car’s mpg and figure out your maximum savings, don’t think they ever got that far though.
Was hoping to see that by now so that people would stop flocking to the cheapest gas station and wasting gas, money and time doing so.
I’m sure they will add that soon or later, although you can’t be exactly sure in estimating prices to get somewhere as it would vary from car to car…I think in terms of Time saving this apps might do the trick http://www.mevvy.com/tools/where-is-my-car/, if you’re the kinda of guy who often forgets where he has parked…