Finding Cheaper Gas With Your Smartphone

The GasBuddy app and website rely on crowdsourcing — people across the country sending in gas prices.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: I'm Melissa Block. And it's time for All Tech Considered.

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BLOCK: We're going to take a drive now in search of what many people are looking for these days, the cheapest gas. And, yes, there's an app for that. Several companies have developed smartphone applications to help you search for the lowest price near you.

NPR's Jeff Brady tried out a couple of them.

JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: I'm in my car in Philadelphia with only a quarter of a tank of gas left. I've pulled off the road and have my phone out. Here's the GasBuddy application. I push the big, green button that says: Find Gas Near Me. And it looks like the cheapest station is only two-tenths of a mile away. The price: 3.71 a gallon.

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BRADY: I'm at the gas station now and some good news, the price has actually gone down two cents since it was last updated on GasBuddy. But there's also a problem, that's the cash price. I need to use a credit card and that's eight cents a gallon more, so 3.77 a gallon. That isn't quite the bargain I thought it was.

It turns out that's an issue Jason Toews, co-founder of , is working on.

JASON TOEWS: One of the things that we're going to add to the application and to the website is the ability to enter cash and credit prices. Right now, it's just the cheapest price.

BRADY: Toews says his company receives about 500,000 gas price reports every day.

TOEWS: It's all based on local people in every city across the country logging in to the app or to the website and sending in the gas prices.

BRADY: It's a surprisingly accurate method. While the first station I visited had a lower price, four others I drove past were right on. The key is keeping the prices up to date. Once a report is more than a day or two old, it's kicked out of the system. Toews says his app even saved him a few bucks recently in Chicago.

TOEWS: And I was at one station where the price was 4.68 a gallon and it's not even two miles away - it was at 4.14, that's a 54-cent-per-gallon savings. I'm not saying that you can always save that much, but it's pretty easy to save 10 or 15 cents per gallon.

BRADY: Toews application is free. There are small advertisements on the screen. If you don't like that, there's the Fuel Finder app for just under $3. It was created by the same company that makes NPR's smartphone applications.

Calvin Carter is the founder of Bottle Rocket Apps. His includes a few more features, like an estimate of how long it will take to drive to the cheapest gas station.

CALVIN CARTER: And also, we have the ability to tell you exactly how many dollars per tank you're going to save. So, you can make a really good, quick decision. Is it worth driving extra miles to save what might be three or $4 a tank?

BRADY: And there's a feature that has nothing to do with prices, called On Fumes.

CARTER: This allows you to see a lot more stations and allows you to find the closest station. In the case, obviously, that you're running out of gas, you just want to get to a gas station fast.

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BRADY: So I found that gas station with the cheapest credit card price around, 3.73 a gallon. That's four cents less than the last place I was at. I pumped 11 gallons for a total savings of 44 cents. I'm not sure that was worth driving two miles for. But 44 cents is 44 cents.

Jeff Brady, NPR News, Philadelphia.

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