Will Petrol Prices Go Down? What the Latest Figures Say

This page answers the question from two sources. The first is our daily record of every UK filling station's prices, collected from the government's Fuel Finder feed since 7 Sep 2026. The second is the weekly average the government has published every Monday since 2003, which puts this year's prices next to the last two decades. Every figure here is recalculated from those two series each time the page is served.

Where prices are now

On 6 Nov the average litre of unleaded cost 169.4p across the UK, against 174.4p on 7 Oct. The highest level in our record was 174.5p on 3 Oct, 5.1p above today. Diesel stands at 197.5p, 2.3p below its peak of 199.8p on 3 Oct.

On a 50 litre tank, the gap between the peak and today is worth £2.55 for unleaded. Over the same 30 days, prices were falling on average, and in the last week they were falling.

The official weekly figures

The latest weekly figure, for 2 Nov 2026, puts unleaded at 172.8p and diesel at 198.6p. Unleaded has fallen for 3 weeks in a row. A year earlier, on 3 Nov 2025, it cost 134.4p: today's price is 38.4p higher.

The record for unleaded in the series remains 191.6p, set in the week of 4 Jul 2022, 18.8p above the latest figure. Diesel's record is 200.0p, in the week of 12 Oct 2026; how that record was broken is told in the diesel price record.

Source: Weekly road fuel prices.

Why pump prices fall more slowly than they rise

Of the 172.8p paid for a litre of unleaded in the latest week, 52.95p is fuel duty and 28.8p is VAT: 47.3% of the price is tax. Duty is a fixed amount per litre, so it does not move with the market. VAT, at 20%, is charged on top of everything else, so a fall of 1p in the cost of the fuel itself can lower the pump price by 1.20p at most.

The remaining 91.0p covers the fuel, its refining and delivery, and the margins of the refiner and the retailer. Wholesale costs reach the forecourt with a delay, because stations sell the fuel they bought at earlier prices, and that delay tends to be shorter when costs rise than when they fall. The Competition and Markets Authority's review of the road fuel market found retail margins had grown after 2019, which is the reason the Fuel Finder scheme was set up: with every price public within 30 minutes, a station that keeps its price high while its neighbours cut theirs is now visible.

What to watch in the coming weeks

• The daily average. A fall of 0.5p or more in a week is a direction; less than that is noise. The fuel price trends page tracks it every day, nationally and for every town.
• Diesel against petrol. Diesel costs 28.1p more than unleaded today. Over the last 7 days diesel was down 0.5p and unleaded down 2.1p.
• The supermarkets. They change their prices far more often than other brands (see which brands change their prices), so a fall usually shows there first.

Paying less in the meantime

Whatever the national average does, the gap between stations in the same town is often larger than a month's movement. The cheapest stations near you, your town's page and the price map show where today's lowest prices are, each with the time it was last changed.