GasBuddy: App for cheapest petrol prices launched in Australia

A gas price sign is seen at a Phillips 66 station on Westheimer Road in Houston, Texas December 16, 2014. According to gasbuddy.com the prices shown in the picture are the lowest in Houston. Reuters/Daniel Kramer

Popular smartphone app GasBuddy, which will help you find the cheapest petrol in town, has been launched in Australia. The service works through crowd sourcing and has been functional in the US since 2004. The app reports fuel prices to its users.

For the first time, Australian motorists will get an easy solution to their hunt for cheap fuel. The app will come up with a complete list of fuel providers to choose from at their finger tips.

The GasBudy app, available on both Android and iOS, allows users to report fuel prices in real time with location information.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, in the initial phase, the company will depend on an unnamed third-party data supplier, as mentioned by GasBuddy’s Australian manager Nic Moulis.

It is very popular in North America and has already been downloaded 56 million times. In the US and Canada, motorists generate more than 15 million fuel price reports in a month.

How GasBuddy works: The users feed the prices of the petrol into the app each time they drive past fuel stations. As an incentive, the user gets points every time a price is being added. After the accumulation of sufficient points, users can win fuel vouchers.

Apart from fuel prices, users will be able to submit data on ATMs and car washes.

After the successful trial in the Sydney market, the GasBuddy app aims to capture around 500,000 Australian motorists within a year.

In the US, GasBuddy gave away $100 fuel card every day. The company will replicate the same process in Australia, especially in the initial phase to entice more users.

Created by two Canadian university students , GasBuddy started in 2000 as a community fuel price sharing website. In 2008, GasBuddy launched its own app.