7 ms·

Tracking Costco gas prices

129 points by lafond 24d ago

Ductapemaster 24d ago
https://archive.ph/qX4vF https://archive.ph/qX4vF
1970-01-01 23d ago
Tracking Costco gas doesn't make much sense as Costco doesn't make money on gas. They use it as a loss-leader for memberships.
- avgDev 23d ago
  I disagree. The prices still move with the price of oil. Their margins are just lower.
  - 1970-01-01 23d ago
    The prices move on dozens of other factors, most of which include the word "supply" however some do not. Using Costco as an example will add "membership retention factor" into the mix of factors for price. Better to track all the Sunoco or BP or Mobil stations directly.
- ssl-3 23d ago
  Watching prices makes sense. People spend money on gas, and sometimes one Costco has cheaper gas than another does. The two Costcos that are nearest to me are listed at $3.65 and $3.79 right now. They're ~25 minutes apart. I think it would be fair to say that there's thousands of people living in-between where the difference in driving distance is irrelevant. But if they decide that buying gas is a thing they're going to do today, and they can quickly compare the prices beforehand, then: They can use that data to help make an informed decision. A 14-cent price delta isn't much, but if 11 gallons are purchased then it's enough to cover the price of a Costco hot dog and Coke (with refill). Not bad at all. --- Additionally: While Costco seemingly doesn't make (much) money on gas, that doesn't mean that they're always cheaper. Suppose I were making a Costco trip today and I also need to buy gas. I'd be heading to the Costco that has gas for $3.65 because that one is much closer for me. But I can get gas for $3.62 right now at the station down the block from my house. There's no line there (there's never a line there), there's no membership proof to futz around with, and it's super easy to get in and out of. Since I have enough easy information to make an informed decision, then: I can tell that the smart move is to plan on skipping whatever line may be present at Costco's gas station and just buy gas down the block. This will save me both time and money. But tomorrow? Who knows. The situation may be different, so I may make a different decision.
  - lafond 23d ago
    Exactly the mentality I had while building the site
  - 1970-01-01 23d ago
    Watching gas prices makes sense. Watching Costco gas prices does not. Their gas is not sold without the membership factor attached. You're selecting for an additional variable of nearby Costco members when you choose to track Costco gas prices. If Costco memberships decline, prices need to slowly rise. If Costco memberships rise, their gas prices can go lower.
  - quickthrowman 23d ago
    I just fill up when I’m low on gas at the nearest gas station. It’s not worth my time to save $1.50 a fill up when I fill up ~50 times a year, that’s only $75. Spending any amount of time to save 20.5 cents per day is not worth it to me.
    - za3faran 23d ago
      What is more important that those $75 is whether or not the gas offered at the other station is Top Tier grade. Costco always is as far as I can tell. (I am not affiliated with Costco in any way shape or form)
    - ssl-3 23d ago
      In my travels, the delta is often much greater than ~15 cents. Today is an unusually-consistent day in this market area. I'd love say that keeping an eye on gas prices and trying to time the market to buy on the right day are things that make poor use of my time. That sounds very nice. I don't have the financial means to turn a blind eye to these kinds of costs, though. Things are rough over here.
    - phil21 22d ago
      People are incredibly irrational about gas prices and have been since I've been alive. I remember listening to AM talk radio back in the late 90's and a common trope was you'd get someone calling in ranting about gas prices and how they couldn't afford to take their kid on vacation due to current $president in the white house. Even back in my early teens I'd pencil out the math and it'd be like a $20 price difference for 6 tanks of gas on their 800 mile round trip with the worst fuel efficiency you could imagine. I thought then - as I do now - that if $20 made a difference in you taking a vacation or not you couldn't afford it to begin with. For most folks it's just an easy topic for people to rant about.
jerlam 24d ago
It's too bad there's no API to find the current wait time at the Costco gas station. I'm not going to spend an extra hour of my day to save $5.
- Sohcahtoa82 23d ago
  [dead]
- lafond 24d ago
  If only they exposed this data!! Would have been so fun adding the display to the site
- deleted 24d ago
  [deleted]
- dominotw 23d ago
  i go befoe costoco opens at 7am . they have different timings.
  - caminante 23d ago
    Or don't go at 9AM with the Executive rush. Wait 30m.
    - phil21 23d ago
      Doesn’t matter at all for my local Costco. It’s busy open to close with very little variance. The only times I’ve seen it relatively empty were during bad storms. That said, it’s not an hour wait. Around 20 minutes is average, but I rarely fill up there since I value my time much more than that.
      - jerlam 23d ago
        I don't live at Costco so it's going to be 30 minutes just back and forth. My Costco does have quieter times, but then I have to plan around it. It never made the slightest bit of sense to make a separate trip for $5.
deleted 24d ago
[deleted]
jmpman 23d ago
[flagged]
- Waterluvian 23d ago
  I’d be amazed if it actually changed anything with him.
  - jmpman 23d ago
    Oh it won't, doesn't mean I'm not planning to rub it in his face.
- hydrogen7800 23d ago
  I've been tracking every fuel purchase I've made for 12 years now across 5 or 6 different cars. Not sure what I'll ever do with that information, but I suppose it may come in handy for a political argument.
0cf8612b2e1e 23d ago
Costco gas is famously a loss leader, typically running 15 to 20 cents below surrounding stations. Is this true? I always assumed that Costco just had better deals/longer horizon commitments so it could undercut local stations. Maybe they even own a refinery just to maintain the best margin.
- wyre 23d ago
  It makes sense. The ~$10 someone saves pumping at Costco is easily made up in the >$100 shopping trip they are making, or compared to lifetime spend.
  - bryanlarsen 23d ago
    No it doesn't. Costco has a gross profit margin of 11% and a net profit margin of 3%. Losing $10 to make $3 isn't viable.
    - basch 23d ago
      Costco isnt losing $10. They can sell gas at cost to run a gas station if they want to. They break even and get people there instead of a normal gas station.
- shrubble 23d ago
  They are selling 10000 gallons a day at some locations, so I find it hard to believe. More like they don’t have a need to make a profit and they run the station in a barebones manner on real estate that they get as part of the larger site. So it would be a loss leader for anyone else.
  - ashley95 22d ago
    If they lose 10c/gal, it still sounds like an incredibly small amount in the grand scheme of things and like a great loss leader?
    - 22d ago
monkeydust 23d ago
Probably a good index for predicting how midterms might go
culi 23d ago
GasBuddy is great for this. You can see average gas prices across all gas stations for a certain region (or nation-wide). https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts The data goes back even over 25 years if you play around with the query params (it started in June of 2000). E.g. https://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=USA&Crude=f&Period=320&Areas=USA%20Average%2C%2C&Unit=US%20%24%2FG https://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=USA&Crude=f&...
- lafond 23d ago
  GasBuddy is great, no doubt! I was well familiar with them before working on the site. The issue is that their data is user reported and not directly reported from Costco's warehouse numbers - so there were a few times that the price was vastly different from what was at the pump.
  - dhosek 22d ago
    When I first bought my current car, I downloaded GasBuddy, intending to use it to find the best gas prices and the reported prices on the app were uniformly wrong. After the first couple times I used it, I gave up and stopped using it.
- art222 23d ago
  The user-reported vs source-reported thing is bigger than people think. I work with car listing prices and the gap between what people say something costs and what the source actually shows is basically the whole reason my product works. Pulling from the warehouse numbers is the right call even if the coverage is smaller.
  - culi 22d ago
    It's an extensive dataset (Gasbuddy is one of the most used apps in the US) and they have sophisticated techniques to prevent fake/incorrect prices. I've used it for years and have only come across incorrect prices twice. Costco prices are great but it should not be used to calculate things like "average national gas prices". You will inevitably over-represent the types of places where Costcos are more likely to be built.
NDlurker 23d ago
I drove from Fargo to Port Angeles recently and hit up Costco for gas as much as possible. Should have written reviews of the Costcos along I94/I90. Billings was the best.
phainopepla2 23d ago
It's crazy to me that gas in Hawaii, 3k miles out into the Pacific, is cheaper than most of California.
- lotsofpulp 22d ago
  It is not crazy if you know that gas prices include taxes that can greatly vary by jurisdiction. The price at the pump may have little to do with cost of procuring it.
  - jerlam 22d ago
    California also has its own special gas that no one else uses, and cannot produce or refine it domestically to meet its own demand.
    - bluGill 22d ago
      Every state has their own gas. Well, you might find the same gas in, say, North Dakota and Minnesota or something, but those are right next to each other and have very similar environment situations. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if Minneapolis, and western Minnesota had different rules for environmental reasons.
      - nkurz 22d ago
        I think you are wrong about this. My belief is that that most states use "conventional" gasoline, a substantial subset require the same "reformulated" gasoline, and a handful only allow the sale of "boutique" formulations in all or some of their counties. Here's a list of the states that require reformulated: https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/reformulated-gasoline https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/reformulated-gasoline And here's a shorter list of those with areas requiring boutique formulations: https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/state-fuels https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/state-fuels My belief is that all the rest only require the basic federal standard, which results in a map like this with a lot of states in gray: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67464 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67464 But if I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected. What do you have for sources that support your assertion that "every state has their own gas"?
xnx 23d ago
> Tracking Costco Gas Prices During a Global Fuel Crisis 10% more expensive than 5 years ago doesn't seem like a "crisis". Diesel seems like more of a problem: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASDESW https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASDESW
xp84 23d ago
> "a Global Fuel Crisis" Does anyone else find this hyperbolic? Gas prices here in the US are up about 26% from their recent-past price -- it stayed in a very narrow range of about $3.20 for a year or two, and now is at $4.05. A "FUEL CRISIS" is what you are seeing in Moscow right now. People lined up for miles and sometimes when you get to the front the delivery does not happen because the refinery got blown up. Or at least the 1970s oil crisis. A 26% bump in prices is a major annoyance, not a "crisis." I would guess that the person who wrote this headline has some kind of a political agenda. Did he describe it as a "fuel crisis" when gas prices rose from their previous ~2.80 baseline to the peak of $4.93 in June 2022, a 76% increase? Or was it not a crisis then for some reason?
- lafond 23d ago
  Hi! Absolutely zero political agenda here, just someone wanting to track the price of fuel. While Wikipedia isn't always to be trusted (everyone knows that), the situation has been widely described as a crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis. Just want to clear that up that the jargon is selected specifically from a general understanding and not one from a political skew! I also wasn't tracking fuel prices back in 2022, otherwise I probably would have included similar dialog given the nature of what caused the prices to rise.
- tantalor 23d ago
  I'm not sure what you want. There is a global fuel crisis. Wikipedia calls it a "worldwide fuel crisis". Is this in dispute? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_fuel_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_fuel_crisis
  - xp84 23d ago
    It's just an odd choice on a page that's only about USA fuel prices. I wouldn't describe a 26% increase in any price as a ____ crisis. RAM and storage prices, now that's a crisis. I believe OP's earnest statement that he's not trying to be political. I just think that propagandizing - if that was the motivation - would be dishonest by most definitions: If one were just trying to boost Dems in the midterms by the classic "gas prices high -> loss for party in control" method, but they were saying "Inflation isn't that bad and gas prices are fine" during the 76% gas price spike in 2022, that's extreme bad faith. And if one is implying "Fuel prices are higher now, therefore conflict with Iran is bad" I'd argue that's a shitty, cowardly, and selfish metric to base policy decisions on. Surely some battles are worth fighting because an enemy's behavior is too intolerable to allow, and gas prices being temporarily high is annoying, but not reason to capitulate.
jopolous 22d ago
I worked at Costco while in college many years ago and I got to see how the gas price was set for my specific warehouse. Someone would drive out to a few neighboring gas stations, record prices, and set ours ~10 cents lower. That’s it. That’s how the price was set. Aside, working there was very good for a college job and I was treated very respectfully for the summers I was there.
- Aboutplants 22d ago
  I’m betting stores are given a floor price/cost and are given the flexibility to raise above that up to 10 cents cheaper than the nearest competitors in the specific area. All stores do not have the same ability/flexibility
  - otherme123 22d ago
    Some retailers price some products at lost, it those products drive consumers to the store. Say neighboring gas stations sell gas with no profit, and Costco prices 10 cents less, losing the whole 10 cents. A car holds around 15 gallons, so Costco loses $1.5 on the refuel: but then a good chunk of the gas buyers are now with the car in your store, maybe even with a fresh idea of "fuel is so expensive that I need to avoid needless trips", so "as we are already here, lets buy some things I need".
- hiitsmyaccount 22d ago
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- dhosek 22d ago
  Costco has a reputation for treating its workers very well, probably the best option in the retail world.
esalman 22d ago
Costco has a standalone gas station in Mission Viejo, CA - https://www.costco.com/w/-/gas-station/ca/mission-viejo/1772 https://www.costco.com/w/-/gas-station/ca/mission-viejo/1772 I think this is the only one in US without a warehouse. The prices are at least $0.40 cheaper than nearby gas stations.
woeirua 22d ago
It'd be way better if the clusters showed the average price for all the stations underneath each cluster. Then you could get a sense of prices nationally immediately.
walrus01 22d ago
I don't see any need to 'track' costco gas prices in my area, because at least in western washington state, my local costco is always the least expensive option for regular unleaded. My choice of whether I go there to fill up is simply if it happens to be on the way to/from somewhere else I'm going or is not an unreasonable detour. Or I need to do some other costco shopping. Or it's late at night and the costco is closed, so I have to go to a 24x7 place like an ARCO. The gas price savings easily pays for the annnual standard costco membership.
- duzer65657 22d ago
  In Canada I never use Costco gas stations because the line ups are horrendous. Is that true of US Costcos as well?
  - guitarsteve 22d ago
    Depends on the location. It’s fine everywhere I’ve been. The locations near bigger cities have more pumps and the ones in smaller cities have fewer to scale with demand.
  - walrus01 22d ago
    I've never had a problem with lineups at busy ones like the Everett, WA costco. Also keep in mind the costco gas hoses are designed to reach the far side of the car, you don't have to pull up to the side where your gas tank faces. Grab the hose with one hand and the nozzle with the other and pull it over.
  - nightpool 22d ago
    I get gas at a very busy Costco regularly and even though the lines look bad they're actually very efficient, because Costco 1) has longer gas hoses allowing you to reach both sides of the car 2) has a middle lane allowing cars to enter / exit the gas pump even when there's someone in front of them. So even with ~50 cars waiting the average wait time is only like 5 minutes
hackernud3s 22d ago
Another gas price tracker with a heatmap: https://www.fiery.tools/gas-prices https://www.fiery.tools/gas-prices
neuralfog 22d ago
Thanks for sharing, well done on reverse engineering the prices API. I live in Poland and did a similar project tracking fuel prices, however we don't have any data sources with reliable station pump price data, so I ended up tracking the trend and sending signals whether to wait or refuel now. I'm estimating prices based on brent barrel, usd rate, crack spread, wholesale prices (luckily we have local Orlen monopoly), some google maps crowd source data, scraping numbers from fuel station livestreams etc. I built a numeric model that gives 80-92% accuracy on price predictions in the horizon of 1-7 days. That was fun a project and ppl find it useful. Interestingly, my data analysis showed how significantly government decreased crack spread of Orlen before last parliament elections..
meristohm 22d ago
For those who are able (physically and/or mentally able) to go by some proportion of human power, I highly recommend significantly reducing reliance on automobiles. Walk and bicycle instead; less need to make time for exercise, plus a sense of self-efficacy, and, if it sounds distasteful now, it might be enjoyable later as the body adapts to the moderate demands. Start slow and often. Easy for me to say, as bicycling has been my primary "fast-travel" mode since my teens, but at scale, automobiles have significant negative ecological impact, from exhaust (ozone, soot, CO2, etc), to tire particles in the waterways, to mining the lithium and other minerals (and all the attendant impacts there), to however the electricity is converted (including electric cars in my criticism here, though from a harm-reduction standpoint, by all means switch from petrol-powered to e-), to the risks to pedestrians and cyclists from these multi-ton monstrosities taking up so much space on roads and in neighborhoods. Again, harm reduction, not abolition, is what I'm harping on; for those who really need it (medical reasons, mainly; which could happen to any of us, on any frequency), expensive fast travel is key. Ditching convenience for self-efficacy can be difficult. Imagine paying $15 in electricity for ~3,000 miles of cycling with a cargo bike, and the holistic tiredness at the end of the day! That's my life, years ago having given up plane, train, and automobile travel except in the case of medical need and an annual family trip within a few hours' drive of home, and I'm richer for it in so many ways. That said, I'm aware of my privilege here (with a spouse who commutes to work and whose income largely supports us, while I do childcare and caregiving as my main, unpaid-but-compensated work), and how difficult "just switch to bike!" would be without systemic shifts. It's prohibitively expensive to live in some cities now, pushing people further out, and who is going to make the time to bike 5+ miles into town without some significant, tangible incentives? What might help shift culture towards meeting a greater proportion of our basic needs using our own chemical-to-mechanical energy?

129 points by lafond 24d ago

https://archive.ph/qX4vF https://archive.ph/qX4vF

1970-01-01 23d ago

Tracking Costco gas doesn't make much sense as Costco doesn't make money on gas. They use it as a loss-leader for memberships.

avgDev 23d ago
I disagree. The prices still move with the price of oil. Their margins are just lower.
- 1970-01-01 23d ago
  The prices move on dozens of other factors, most of which include the word "supply" however some do not. Using Costco as an example will add "membership retention factor" into the mix of factors for price. Better to track all the Sunoco or BP or Mobil stations directly.
ssl-3 23d ago
Watching prices makes sense. People spend money on gas, and sometimes one Costco has cheaper gas than another does. The two Costcos that are nearest to me are listed at $3.65 and $3.79 right now. They're ~25 minutes apart. I think it would be fair to say that there's thousands of people living in-between where the difference in driving distance is irrelevant. But if they decide that buying gas is a thing they're going to do today, and they can quickly compare the prices beforehand, then: They can use that data to help make an informed decision. A 14-cent price delta isn't much, but if 11 gallons are purchased then it's enough to cover the price of a Costco hot dog and Coke (with refill). Not bad at all. --- Additionally: While Costco seemingly doesn't make (much) money on gas, that doesn't mean that they're always cheaper. Suppose I were making a Costco trip today and I also need to buy gas. I'd be heading to the Costco that has gas for $3.65 because that one is much closer for me. But I can get gas for $3.62 right now at the station down the block from my house. There's no line there (there's never a line there), there's no membership proof to futz around with, and it's super easy to get in and out of. Since I have enough easy information to make an informed decision, then: I can tell that the smart move is to plan on skipping whatever line may be present at Costco's gas station and just buy gas down the block. This will save me both time and money. But tomorrow? Who knows. The situation may be different, so I may make a different decision.
- lafond 23d ago
  Exactly the mentality I had while building the site
- 1970-01-01 23d ago
  Watching gas prices makes sense. Watching Costco gas prices does not. Their gas is not sold without the membership factor attached. You're selecting for an additional variable of nearby Costco members when you choose to track Costco gas prices. If Costco memberships decline, prices need to slowly rise. If Costco memberships rise, their gas prices can go lower.
- quickthrowman 23d ago
  I just fill up when I’m low on gas at the nearest gas station. It’s not worth my time to save $1.50 a fill up when I fill up ~50 times a year, that’s only $75. Spending any amount of time to save 20.5 cents per day is not worth it to me.
  - za3faran 23d ago
    What is more important that those $75 is whether or not the gas offered at the other station is Top Tier grade. Costco always is as far as I can tell. (I am not affiliated with Costco in any way shape or form)
  - ssl-3 23d ago
    In my travels, the delta is often much greater than ~15 cents. Today is an unusually-consistent day in this market area. I'd love say that keeping an eye on gas prices and trying to time the market to buy on the right day are things that make poor use of my time. That sounds very nice. I don't have the financial means to turn a blind eye to these kinds of costs, though. Things are rough over here.
  - phil21 22d ago
    People are incredibly irrational about gas prices and have been since I've been alive. I remember listening to AM talk radio back in the late 90's and a common trope was you'd get someone calling in ranting about gas prices and how they couldn't afford to take their kid on vacation due to current $president in the white house. Even back in my early teens I'd pencil out the math and it'd be like a $20 price difference for 6 tanks of gas on their 800 mile round trip with the worst fuel efficiency you could imagine. I thought then - as I do now - that if $20 made a difference in you taking a vacation or not you couldn't afford it to begin with. For most folks it's just an easy topic for people to rant about.

jerlam 24d ago

It's too bad there's no API to find the current wait time at the Costco gas station. I'm not going to spend an extra hour of my day to save $5.

Sohcahtoa82 23d ago
[dead]
lafond 24d ago
If only they exposed this data!! Would have been so fun adding the display to the site
deleted 24d ago
[deleted]
dominotw 23d ago
i go befoe costoco opens at 7am . they have different timings.
- caminante 23d ago
  Or don't go at 9AM with the Executive rush. Wait 30m.
  - phil21 23d ago
    Doesn’t matter at all for my local Costco. It’s busy open to close with very little variance. The only times I’ve seen it relatively empty were during bad storms. That said, it’s not an hour wait. Around 20 minutes is average, but I rarely fill up there since I value my time much more than that.
    - jerlam 23d ago
      I don't live at Costco so it's going to be 30 minutes just back and forth. My Costco does have quieter times, but then I have to plan around it. It never made the slightest bit of sense to make a separate trip for $5.

deleted 24d ago

[deleted]

jmpman 23d ago

[flagged]

Waterluvian 23d ago
I’d be amazed if it actually changed anything with him.
- jmpman 23d ago
  Oh it won't, doesn't mean I'm not planning to rub it in his face.
hydrogen7800 23d ago
I've been tracking every fuel purchase I've made for 12 years now across 5 or 6 different cars. Not sure what I'll ever do with that information, but I suppose it may come in handy for a political argument.

0cf8612b2e1e 23d ago

Costco gas is famously a loss leader, typically running 15 to 20 cents below surrounding stations. Is this true? I always assumed that Costco just had better deals/longer horizon commitments so it could undercut local stations. Maybe they even own a refinery just to maintain the best margin.

wyre 23d ago
It makes sense. The ~$10 someone saves pumping at Costco is easily made up in the >$100 shopping trip they are making, or compared to lifetime spend.
- bryanlarsen 23d ago
  No it doesn't. Costco has a gross profit margin of 11% and a net profit margin of 3%. Losing $10 to make $3 isn't viable.
  - basch 23d ago
    Costco isnt losing $10. They can sell gas at cost to run a gas station if they want to. They break even and get people there instead of a normal gas station.
shrubble 23d ago
They are selling 10000 gallons a day at some locations, so I find it hard to believe. More like they don’t have a need to make a profit and they run the station in a barebones manner on real estate that they get as part of the larger site. So it would be a loss leader for anyone else.
- ashley95 22d ago
  If they lose 10c/gal, it still sounds like an incredibly small amount in the grand scheme of things and like a great loss leader?
  - 22d ago

monkeydust 23d ago

Probably a good index for predicting how midterms might go

culi 23d ago

GasBuddy is great for this. You can see average gas prices across all gas stations for a certain region (or nation-wide). https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts The data goes back even over 25 years if you play around with the query params (it started in June of 2000). E.g. https://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=USA&Crude=f&Period=320&Areas=USA%20Average%2C%2C&Unit=US%20%24%2FG https://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=USA&Crude=f&...

lafond 23d ago
GasBuddy is great, no doubt! I was well familiar with them before working on the site. The issue is that their data is user reported and not directly reported from Costco's warehouse numbers - so there were a few times that the price was vastly different from what was at the pump.
- dhosek 22d ago
  When I first bought my current car, I downloaded GasBuddy, intending to use it to find the best gas prices and the reported prices on the app were uniformly wrong. After the first couple times I used it, I gave up and stopped using it.
art222 23d ago
The user-reported vs source-reported thing is bigger than people think. I work with car listing prices and the gap between what people say something costs and what the source actually shows is basically the whole reason my product works. Pulling from the warehouse numbers is the right call even if the coverage is smaller.
- culi 22d ago
  It's an extensive dataset (Gasbuddy is one of the most used apps in the US) and they have sophisticated techniques to prevent fake/incorrect prices. I've used it for years and have only come across incorrect prices twice. Costco prices are great but it should not be used to calculate things like "average national gas prices". You will inevitably over-represent the types of places where Costcos are more likely to be built.

NDlurker 23d ago

I drove from Fargo to Port Angeles recently and hit up Costco for gas as much as possible. Should have written reviews of the Costcos along I94/I90. Billings was the best.

phainopepla2 23d ago

It's crazy to me that gas in Hawaii, 3k miles out into the Pacific, is cheaper than most of California.

lotsofpulp 22d ago
It is not crazy if you know that gas prices include taxes that can greatly vary by jurisdiction. The price at the pump may have little to do with cost of procuring it.
- jerlam 22d ago
  California also has its own special gas that no one else uses, and cannot produce or refine it domestically to meet its own demand.
  - bluGill 22d ago
    Every state has their own gas. Well, you might find the same gas in, say, North Dakota and Minnesota or something, but those are right next to each other and have very similar environment situations. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if Minneapolis, and western Minnesota had different rules for environmental reasons.
    - nkurz 22d ago
      I think you are wrong about this. My belief is that that most states use "conventional" gasoline, a substantial subset require the same "reformulated" gasoline, and a handful only allow the sale of "boutique" formulations in all or some of their counties. Here's a list of the states that require reformulated: https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/reformulated-gasoline https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/reformulated-gasoline And here's a shorter list of those with areas requiring boutique formulations: https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/state-fuels https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/state-fuels My belief is that all the rest only require the basic federal standard, which results in a map like this with a lot of states in gray: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67464 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67464 But if I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected. What do you have for sources that support your assertion that "every state has their own gas"?

xnx 23d ago

> Tracking Costco Gas Prices During a Global Fuel Crisis 10% more expensive than 5 years ago doesn't seem like a "crisis". Diesel seems like more of a problem: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASDESW https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASDESW

xp84 23d ago

> "a Global Fuel Crisis" Does anyone else find this hyperbolic? Gas prices here in the US are up about 26% from their recent-past price -- it stayed in a very narrow range of about $3.20 for a year or two, and now is at $4.05. A "FUEL CRISIS" is what you are seeing in Moscow right now. People lined up for miles and sometimes when you get to the front the delivery does not happen because the refinery got blown up. Or at least the 1970s oil crisis. A 26% bump in prices is a major annoyance, not a "crisis." I would guess that the person who wrote this headline has some kind of a political agenda. Did he describe it as a "fuel crisis" when gas prices rose from their previous ~2.80 baseline to the peak of $4.93 in June 2022, a 76% increase? Or was it not a crisis then for some reason?

lafond 23d ago
Hi! Absolutely zero political agenda here, just someone wanting to track the price of fuel. While Wikipedia isn't always to be trusted (everyone knows that), the situation has been widely described as a crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis. Just want to clear that up that the jargon is selected specifically from a general understanding and not one from a political skew! I also wasn't tracking fuel prices back in 2022, otherwise I probably would have included similar dialog given the nature of what caused the prices to rise.
tantalor 23d ago
I'm not sure what you want. There is a global fuel crisis. Wikipedia calls it a "worldwide fuel crisis". Is this in dispute? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_fuel_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_fuel_crisis
- xp84 23d ago
  It's just an odd choice on a page that's only about USA fuel prices. I wouldn't describe a 26% increase in any price as a ____ crisis. RAM and storage prices, now that's a crisis. I believe OP's earnest statement that he's not trying to be political. I just think that propagandizing - if that was the motivation - would be dishonest by most definitions: If one were just trying to boost Dems in the midterms by the classic "gas prices high -> loss for party in control" method, but they were saying "Inflation isn't that bad and gas prices are fine" during the 76% gas price spike in 2022, that's extreme bad faith. And if one is implying "Fuel prices are higher now, therefore conflict with Iran is bad" I'd argue that's a shitty, cowardly, and selfish metric to base policy decisions on. Surely some battles are worth fighting because an enemy's behavior is too intolerable to allow, and gas prices being temporarily high is annoying, but not reason to capitulate.

jopolous 22d ago

I worked at Costco while in college many years ago and I got to see how the gas price was set for my specific warehouse. Someone would drive out to a few neighboring gas stations, record prices, and set ours ~10 cents lower. That’s it. That’s how the price was set. Aside, working there was very good for a college job and I was treated very respectfully for the summers I was there.

Aboutplants 22d ago
I’m betting stores are given a floor price/cost and are given the flexibility to raise above that up to 10 cents cheaper than the nearest competitors in the specific area. All stores do not have the same ability/flexibility
- otherme123 22d ago
  Some retailers price some products at lost, it those products drive consumers to the store. Say neighboring gas stations sell gas with no profit, and Costco prices 10 cents less, losing the whole 10 cents. A car holds around 15 gallons, so Costco loses $1.5 on the refuel: but then a good chunk of the gas buyers are now with the car in your store, maybe even with a fresh idea of "fuel is so expensive that I need to avoid needless trips", so "as we are already here, lets buy some things I need".
hiitsmyaccount 22d ago
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dhosek 22d ago
Costco has a reputation for treating its workers very well, probably the best option in the retail world.

esalman 22d ago

Costco has a standalone gas station in Mission Viejo, CA - https://www.costco.com/w/-/gas-station/ca/mission-viejo/1772 https://www.costco.com/w/-/gas-station/ca/mission-viejo/1772 I think this is the only one in US without a warehouse. The prices are at least $0.40 cheaper than nearby gas stations.

woeirua 22d ago

It'd be way better if the clusters showed the average price for all the stations underneath each cluster. Then you could get a sense of prices nationally immediately.

walrus01 22d ago

I don't see any need to 'track' costco gas prices in my area, because at least in western washington state, my local costco is always the least expensive option for regular unleaded. My choice of whether I go there to fill up is simply if it happens to be on the way to/from somewhere else I'm going or is not an unreasonable detour. Or I need to do some other costco shopping. Or it's late at night and the costco is closed, so I have to go to a 24x7 place like an ARCO. The gas price savings easily pays for the annnual standard costco membership.

duzer65657 22d ago
In Canada I never use Costco gas stations because the line ups are horrendous. Is that true of US Costcos as well?
- guitarsteve 22d ago
  Depends on the location. It’s fine everywhere I’ve been. The locations near bigger cities have more pumps and the ones in smaller cities have fewer to scale with demand.
- walrus01 22d ago
  I've never had a problem with lineups at busy ones like the Everett, WA costco. Also keep in mind the costco gas hoses are designed to reach the far side of the car, you don't have to pull up to the side where your gas tank faces. Grab the hose with one hand and the nozzle with the other and pull it over.
- nightpool 22d ago
  I get gas at a very busy Costco regularly and even though the lines look bad they're actually very efficient, because Costco 1) has longer gas hoses allowing you to reach both sides of the car 2) has a middle lane allowing cars to enter / exit the gas pump even when there's someone in front of them. So even with ~50 cars waiting the average wait time is only like 5 minutes

hackernud3s 22d ago

Another gas price tracker with a heatmap: https://www.fiery.tools/gas-prices https://www.fiery.tools/gas-prices

neuralfog 22d ago

Thanks for sharing, well done on reverse engineering the prices API. I live in Poland and did a similar project tracking fuel prices, however we don't have any data sources with reliable station pump price data, so I ended up tracking the trend and sending signals whether to wait or refuel now. I'm estimating prices based on brent barrel, usd rate, crack spread, wholesale prices (luckily we have local Orlen monopoly), some google maps crowd source data, scraping numbers from fuel station livestreams etc. I built a numeric model that gives 80-92% accuracy on price predictions in the horizon of 1-7 days. That was fun a project and ppl find it useful. Interestingly, my data analysis showed how significantly government decreased crack spread of Orlen before last parliament elections..

meristohm 22d ago

For those who are able (physically and/or mentally able) to go by some proportion of human power, I highly recommend significantly reducing reliance on automobiles. Walk and bicycle instead; less need to make time for exercise, plus a sense of self-efficacy, and, if it sounds distasteful now, it might be enjoyable later as the body adapts to the moderate demands. Start slow and often. Easy for me to say, as bicycling has been my primary "fast-travel" mode since my teens, but at scale, automobiles have significant negative ecological impact, from exhaust (ozone, soot, CO2, etc), to tire particles in the waterways, to mining the lithium and other minerals (and all the attendant impacts there), to however the electricity is converted (including electric cars in my criticism here, though from a harm-reduction standpoint, by all means switch from petrol-powered to e-), to the risks to pedestrians and cyclists from these multi-ton monstrosities taking up so much space on roads and in neighborhoods. Again, harm reduction, not abolition, is what I'm harping on; for those who really need it (medical reasons, mainly; which could happen to any of us, on any frequency), expensive fast travel is key. Ditching convenience for self-efficacy can be difficult. Imagine paying $15 in electricity for ~3,000 miles of cycling with a cargo bike, and the holistic tiredness at the end of the day! That's my life, years ago having given up plane, train, and automobile travel except in the case of medical need and an annual family trip within a few hours' drive of home, and I'm richer for it in so many ways. That said, I'm aware of my privilege here (with a spouse who commutes to work and whose income largely supports us, while I do childcare and caregiving as my main, unpaid-but-compensated work), and how difficult "just switch to bike!" would be without systemic shifts. It's prohibitively expensive to live in some cities now, pushing people further out, and who is going to make the time to bike 5+ miles into town without some significant, tangible incentives? What might help shift culture towards meeting a greater proportion of our basic needs using our own chemical-to-mechanical energy?