About US Gas Gauge
US Gas Gauge publishes U.S. retail gasoline and diesel prices by state, region, and metro area, with history back to 1970. Every price on the site comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical agency of the Department of Energy. This page describes the sources, the calculations we add, and when the data updates.
Latest weekly retail data: week of October 5, 2026 · Latest wholesale day: October 6, 2026
Where the numbers come from
We do not survey gas stations or collect prices ourselves. The site republishes public government data, stores it in its own database, and adds comparisons, rankings, inflation adjustments, and written context.
| Source | What we use it for | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| EIA Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update | Weekly and monthly retail prices for regular, midgrade, premium, and diesel: U.S., regions (PADDs), 9 states, and 10 metro areas, from 2000 onward. | Weekly |
| EIA State Energy Data System (SEDS) | Annual average motor gasoline price for all 50 states and D.C., back to 1970. | Annual, with a lag of about two years |
| EIA spot prices (NY Harbor conventional gasoline) | Daily wholesale price of gasoline at the New York Harbor trading hub, back to 1986. | Daily prices, which EIA releases in weekly batches |
| EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) | The EIA's official forecast of retail gasoline, wholesale gasoline, and crude oil prices. | Monthly |
| EIA Federal and State Motor Fuels Taxes | State excise taxes and other per-gallon fees for all 50 states and D.C., plus the federal tax. | Twice a year |
| BLS Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) | Used to restate historical prices in constant dollars. Retrieved through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). | Monthly |
What we calculate, and how
Headline prices. The price shown for the U.S., a region, a state, or a city is the EIA’s “all formulations” average for regular gasoline: the blend of conventional and reformulated gasoline sold in that area. Where the EIA also publishes separate conventional or reformulated prices, we use them only in comparisons that say so.
Weekly states and estimated states. The EIA publishes weekly retail prices for nine states: California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Washington. Those pages show the EIA figure directly. For the other 41 states and D.C., the EIA publishes only an annual average, most recently for a year about two years back. To put every state on the same current week, we take that state’s latest annual average and move it by the percentage change in its EIA region’s weekly price since that year. Those pages are labelled as estimates. They show the direction and approximate level of prices, not the price at any particular station.
How accurate the estimates are. The same calculation can be checked on the nine states the EIA does publish weekly: we apply it to them as if their weekly price were unknown and compare the result with the EIA figure. Over 828 state-weeks from January 6, 2025 to October 5, 2026, the estimate differed from the EIA price by 9.8¢ a gallon on average; nine in ten weeks were within 18.4¢, and the largest difference was 39.0¢ (Ohio, week of October 5, 2026). The error is mostly a steady offset for each state, because the annual average the estimate starts from covers all grades and includes each state’s own mix of taxes. For that reason, when two states are closer than 9.8¢ and either is an estimate, the site reports them as about the same instead of ranking one above the other. States far from their region’s average, such as Alaska and Hawaii, can be off by more than this figure.
EIA’s own estimates after 2010. For the 41 states and D.C. without a weekly series, the EIA’s annual averages after 2010 are themselves estimated by the EIA from the change in the state’s region applied to its 2010 price. Year-to-year moves in those states after 2010 therefore mostly reflect the region, not events inside the state.
Metro areas. The EIA publishes weekly retail prices for ten metro areas: Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle. The site covers exactly those ten and does not estimate prices for other cities.
Inflation adjustment. Figures described as “inflation-adjusted” or “in 2025 dollars” multiply the price by the ratio of the 2025 annual average CPI-U to the CPI-U for the month (or year) of the price. Weekly prices use the CPI-U for their calendar month. The BLS did not publish a CPI-U for October 2025; that month uses the average of September and November 2025. Months after the latest published CPI-U use the latest value until the BLS releases theirs.
Prices before 2000. The annual state series (SEDS) is published in dollars per million Btu for all grades of gasoline combined. We convert it to dollars per gallon using the EIA’s heat content for motor gasoline in that year, from the same EIA data system: 0.1251 million Btu per gallon through 1992, falling to about 0.1202 in recent years as ethanol blending increased. Because the weekly series starts in 2000 and uses a different basis, the long national history joins two series at that year. Values before 2000 are marked as approximate throughout the site.
Rankings and comparisons. Current-week rankings use the weekly figure for the nine surveyed states and the estimate for the rest. Comparisons across all 51 over a full year use the SEDS annual averages, the only source that covers every state on one basis.
Taxes. State tax figures are state and federal taxes and fees as listed by the EIA. They exclude county and city taxes, so some drivers pay more than the figure shown.
When the data changes
Weekly retail prices: Tuesdays. The EIA collects retail prices as of Monday morning and publishes them on Tuesday, around 10:00 a.m. Eastern (on Wednesday when Monday is a federal holiday). Our ingest runs Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, with a second attempt Tuesday evening and a daily check through Friday in case the EIA release is late. Each run reloads the full weekly and monthly series, the annual state series, the CPI-U, the latest STEO forecast, and the state tax table.
Wholesale spot price: daily values, weekly releases. The NY Harbor wholesale gasoline price is checked for new data every day at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. EIA publishes the daily spot prices in weekly batches, so the latest day shown is usually several days old. Spot markets trade only on business days, so weekends and market holidays have no value.
Forecast and taxes. The EIA releases its Short-Term Energy Outlook monthly and updates its state tax table twice a year. Both are picked up by the next weekly run after release.
Pages. Pages are regenerated from the database after each successful ingest, and otherwise at most once an hour when visited, so new data normally appears on the site within an hour of being loaded.
What is automated, and what is not
Data collection is automated end to end. Each weekly run checks its own output before it counts as complete: it fails if any week is missing from the middle of a series, and it fails if our newest week is older than the newest week the EIA has published. A failed run leaves the previous data in place and is retried on the next scheduled attempt. Figures in charts, tables, rankings, and the numbers inside written sentences are calculated from the database each time a page regenerates, so they change when the data does.
The written material is not generated page by page from a template. Guides, explainers, and the analysis sections on state, tax, and year pages are written for their page and edited by US Gas Gauge. Most figures in them are calculated from the database, as above; the rest were checked against it when written, and automated checks compare written figures with the data before a release. Where they describe causes, such as refinery outages, fuel rules, or tax changes, they cite the EIA, the EPA, state agencies, or other named sources.
The “In the record” sections on state, gas-tax, state history, metro, president and year pages are different: each one was built only from a list of that page’s own figures, with no other source. Before release, an automated check compared every number, year, rank, name and direction word in each section with that list; sections that failed were not published. A section is shown only while the figures it was checked against are unchanged. Those sections state figures and comparisons only, not causes.
One setting is maintained by hand: the label and release date of the current STEO edition, which the EIA does not publish in machine-readable form.
Reporting an error
If a figure on the site does not match the EIA source, or a written statement is wrong, email admin@usgasgauge.com with the page address. Confirmed errors are corrected on the page. The data behind the site is available as free CSV downloads on the gas price data page, and the guide to the EIA survey explains how the underlying prices are collected.