About US Gas Gauge

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.

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.

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 finished motor gasoline (about 0.1203 million Btu per gallon). 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.

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. The NY Harbor wholesale gasoline price is reloaded every day at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Spot markets trade only on business days, so weekends and market holidays have no new 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.

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 automated. Guides, explainers, and the analysis sections on state pages are written and edited by US Gas Gauge. 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. 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.