Calculate fuel costs for any trip using Australian fuel prices and your vehicle fuel efficiency.
With fuel prices varying by location, time of week, and which servo you walk into, it's easy to lose track of what your car is actually costing you to run. This calculator takes your vehicle's fuel consumption, distance travelled, and the fuel price and gives you an accurate running cost — per trip, per week, or per year.
It's handy for working out whether a longer commute route saves time at the cost of fuel, for comparing the running costs of your current car against a potential new one, for budgeting a road trip, or for deciding whether it's worth driving to a cheaper servo versus the one around the corner.
Fuel consumption figures from manufacturers are tested under standardised conditions that rarely match real-world driving — city stop-start traffic, air conditioning, heavy loads, and highway speeds all affect consumption. If you know your actual fuel economy from your car's trip computer, use that figure for a more accurate result.
Your car's trip computer (usually in the instrument cluster or infotainment screen) shows running average fuel consumption. This is more accurate than the manufacturer's stated figure for your actual driving conditions. You can also calculate it manually: fill up, drive, fill up again, and divide litres used by kilometres driven × 100.
A modern 4-cylinder family sedan typically runs between 7-9 L/100km in mixed driving. Small hatchbacks can be 6-7 L/100km. SUVs and larger vehicles typically run 9-12 L/100km. Hybrids typically achieve 4-6 L/100km. Pure EVs are measured in kWh/100km rather than litres.
Apps like GasBuddy, Fuel Map Australia, and MotorMouth track live fuel prices by location and servo. In Queensland, fuel prices are also published on the Queensland Government's fuel price monitoring website.
In most Australian capital cities, yes. Fuel prices follow a regular cycle — rising at the start of the week and falling by the weekend in most cities, though the pattern varies. Tuesday and Wednesday are often the cheapest days to fill up.