Full guide
From the forecourt to Fuel Finder
From 2 February 2026, motor fuel traders must submit a fuel price update to Fuel Finder within 30 minutes of a change. That is a reporting requirement on the trader. It does not promise that every downstream website will show the change at exactly the same second.
A retailer can submit through the government service or an approved integration. Fuel Finder then makes public price and forecourt data available for services such as PetrolDiesel to use.
From Fuel Finder to PetrolDiesel
PetrolDiesel retrieves the source data, preserves the reported prices and refreshes the website-facing models. Those models provide stable identities, current qualifying comparisons, daily history and coverage signals for public pages.
The label “Prices checked” shows the latest successful refresh of those current website price models. It does not mean every forecourt changed at that time. Read the complete data sourcing process for the operational detail.
Why the site shows two kinds of time
Page-wide freshness and an individual price observation answer different questions. “Prices checked” tells you when PetrolDiesel last refreshed the current price set successfully. “Reported” or “Observed” belongs to one fuel price and tells you when the source last attached that observation to the forecourt.
An unchanged price can therefore have an older reported time even after the site has completed a newer check. Replacing that observation with the site refresh time would make the price look newer than the evidence supports, so PetrolDiesel keeps them separate.
How unusual and missing prices are handled
A source price can be visible without being allowed to influence a ranking. PetrolDiesel preserves unusual values for transparency, labels the public quality outcome and excludes non-qualifying prices from averages, rankings and saving claims.
Missing evidence is not filled with estimates. A section either explains that coverage is limited or does not appear. The data accuracy rules describe the qualifying range, timestamp ownership and per-tank calculations.
Sources and further reading
Primary evidence for the important factual claims in this guide. External links open in a new tab.