What Day of the Week Do Fuel Prices Change?
By Jacky A. · Published 27 Oct 2026 · Figures updated 6 Nov 2026
The short answer
Tuesday is the day UK filling stations change their prices most often, with 4,800 price changes reported on an average Tuesday. Sunday is the quietest, with 1,122: 4.3 times fewer. A price set on Saturday is likely to stay until Monday.
Since the Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations came into force, every UK forecourt must report a price change within 30 minutes. That makes it possible, for the first time, to count when prices change across the whole country. We compared each station's prices with the day before, every day from 8 Sep 2026 to 6 Nov 2026: 213,077 changes across about 7,920 stations, with at least 8 of each weekday in the count.
Price changes by day of the week
| Day | Average changes |
|---|---|
| Monday | 3,936 |
| Tuesday | 4,800 |
| Wednesday | 3,818 |
| Thursday | 4,021 |
| Friday | 4,711 |
| Saturday | 2,058 |
| Sunday | 1,122 |
From Monday to Friday stations report 4,257 changes a day on average; at the weekend, 1,590. The pattern follows how the trade works. Most forecourts belong to a chain or a dealer group that sets prices centrally, from head office, during office hours, and the wholesale prices they respond to are set on weekdays. Supermarkets, which change their prices far more often than anyone else, do so on working days too. A station run by its owner can change its price at any time, yet independent stations changed theirs on 1.6 days out of 28 on average, against 3.2 for all UK stations.
What it means for when to fill up
A count of changes says when prices move, not which way. When the market is rising, the busy days are when increases arrive; when it is falling, they are when cuts arrive. Two practical rules follow:
- When prices are rising, fill up before the working week starts. A weekend price is the last one set before the weekend lull, and the working week is when head offices pass on the latest wholesale costs.
- When prices are falling, waiting for the middle of the week pays. Cuts arrive with the busy days, and the gap between the first station to cut and the last can be several days.
Which of the two applies this week is on will petrol prices go down?, and the trends page shows the national direction day by day. Either way, the station you choose matters more than the day: the price gap between stations in the same town is usually larger than a week's movement, and cheapest near me shows it with the time each price last changed.
Every day since the start
The busiest day of the whole record was 11 Sep 2026, with 10,923 changes. The daily count rises with the market: when wholesale costs move, stations reprice several times a week, and when prices settle the count falls. In every full week of the record, Sunday was quieter than any weekday.