About Our Data

What Is Check Petrol?

Check Petrol is a free Australian fuel outage tracker and petrol price comparison tool. It aggregates data from official government APIs and community reports to show which service stations have fuel available and what they're charging — across all states and territories.

Unlike apps that only show prices, Check Petrol also tracks fuel outages — stations that have run dry or are experiencing supply issues. This is especially valuable during fuel shortages, natural disasters, or supply chain disruptions when knowing which stations actually have fuel matters more than finding the cheapest price. View the live fuel outage tracker for a national overview of current outages by state and fuel type.

Data Sources & Update Frequency

Check Petrol pulls fuel pricing and availability data from official government APIs — the same sources that power each state's official fuel price website. We re-poll every feed continuously, so how current a price is comes down to how often its government feed changes:

NSW, Queensland and South Australia require retailers to report a price change within 30 minutes, so those feeds move throughout the day. WA prices are fixed a day ahead and don't change until the next day. Our own national snapshot rebuilds every few minutes, but it can never be fresher than the feed it reads. Community outage reports are reflected immediately.

How Outages Are Detected

Check Petrol uses three methods to detect fuel outages:

• Direct API signals — Some state government APIs report fuel availability directly, including per-fuel-type availability flags and sentinel values for unavailable fuel.
• Staleness detection — If a station stops reporting price updates while nearby stations continue to update, it likely indicates the station has run out of fuel or closed. Check Petrol uses conservative thresholds (10+ days of no updates) to avoid false positives.
• Community reports — Users can report outages they encounter at any station. Reports expire after 24 hours to ensure the data stays current.

Coverage

Check Petrol tracks over 8,000 service stations across all 8 Australian states and territories. Coverage includes all major fuel brands — BP, Shell, Caltex, Ampol, 7-Eleven, United, Metro, Liberty, Puma, and independent operators — as well as rural and regional stations.

The site also provides granular views by city (18 metro areas), 2,654 suburbs, and 347 local government areas — all browsable from the locations directory.

Fuel Types Tracked

Check Petrol tracks pricing and availability for the following fuel types:

Data Accuracy & Limitations

Check Petrol sources data from the same government APIs that power official state fuel price websites. However, there are inherent limitations:

• Data delay — Prices reflect the latest government data, but there may be a delay between a station changing its price and that change appearing in the API. Victorian data has approximately a 24-hour delay from retailer submissions.
• WA fixed pricing — Western Australian fuel prices are set daily, so prices don't change throughout the day.
• Outage estimation — Staleness-based outage detection is conservative to minimise false positives. A station flagged as a potential outage may have simply stopped reporting temporarily rather than running out of fuel.
• Community reports — User-submitted outage reports are unverified and expire after 24 hours. They supplement but don't replace data from official sources.

Data is provided for informational purposes. Always confirm fuel availability at the station before making a special trip, especially during known supply disruptions.