Fuel prices: Spain vs France vs Portugal

Driving into Spain from France or Portugal, the question is narrow: is it worth arriving with an empty tank? Two different kinds of number answer it, and mixing them up is where most comparisons go wrong. Spain's side of this page is live open data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition; France's and Portugal's is the European Commission's Weekly Oil Bulletin, a weekly average published with a lag.

What Spain costs right now

The ministry publishes what every service station in Spain charges for each product it sells, once a day, as open data - the file that feeds this site, so the figures below move on their own.

Precio de carburantes en las gasolineras españolas - MITECO, updated daily (datos.gob.es)

The national median for road diesel - Gasóleo A on the pump - is 1.919 €/l, across 11,216 stations. Unleaded 95, Sin plomo 95, is at 1.795 €/l. Last snapshot: 19 Oct 2026, 03:31.

The number that decides your route is the spread: today the cheapest diesel on the Spanish network is 1.499 €/l, the dearest 2.299 €/l. That spread is typically wider than the cross-border gaps below. Article 38 of Ley 34/1998 says plainly that «los precios de los productos derivados del petróleo serán libres»: no reference price, only the map.

Ley 34/1998, artículo 38: prices of petroleum products are free (BOE)

What the Weekly Oil Bulletin says for France and Portugal

There is no live feed here for the neighbours, so we use the Commission's own source. Member States send their data on Wednesdays; the bulletin goes out on Thursdays. Its legal base, Council Decision 1999/280/EC, has Member States communicate "the consumer prices of petroleum products net of duties and taxes in force each Monday" (Article 3(2)), and defines consumer prices as "the most representative price levels actually charged to consumers in a given category" (Article 2(5)). The series is published with and without taxes; the table below is with taxes.

Council Decision 1999/280/EC, Articles 2(5) and 3(2) (EUR-Lex)

Published on 3 September 2026 for the week of Monday 31 August 2026, in euro per 1 000 litres with taxes; divide by a thousand for €/l.

Weekly Oil Bulletin - prices with taxes, week of 31 August 2026 (xlsx)

That week petrol was about 0,34 €/l dearer in France and 0,28 €/l in Portugal; diesel, 0,34 €/l and 0,16 €/l - roughly 17 € on a 50-litre fill at the French gap. LPG runs the other way; see below.

Why the three numbers are not strictly comparable

Each country builds its figure its own way in the note it filed with the Commission - which is why a bulletin figure rarely matches your receipt.

• Spain. Since 13 May 2013 the weekly price is "the arithmetic average daily price from Tuesday to Monday (inclusive)", and the daily price is "the average of the prices of all petrol stations on a random time of day". The sample "covers 100% of filling stations", and reported loyalty-card discounts are deducted.
• France. The reference is "average consumer prices on the previous Friday", weighted by each operator's market share, from 24 operators covering 92 % of motor fuel volumes sold. Corsica and the overseas departments are excluded.
• Portugal. The authorities report "the weighted average price for Monday of the week", weighted by the volumes each operator sold, from the Portuguese mainland only.

Oil Bulletin methodological notes - Spain Oil Bulletin methodological notes - France Oil Bulletin methodological notes - Portugal

Three averages, three reference days, three ways of weighting - none a median, none today. The Spanish median at the top of this page is a different statistic from the Spanish line in the table; the difference is not an error in either.

The gap is tax, not fuel

Strip the taxes out and the ranking inverts. The same week, without taxes: petrol 1 059,12 €/1000 l in Spain against 1 037,43 in France and 1 031,58 in Portugal; diesel 1 262,66 against 1 232,96 and 1 186,28 - Spain the dearest on both products.

Weekly Oil Bulletin - prices without taxes, same week (xlsx)

The advantage is fiscal. The Commission publishes the rates separately, per 1 000 litres.

Weekly Oil Bulletin - duties and taxes by Member State (xlsx)

French excise on petrol is about 1,85 times the Spanish rate. Portugal's headline excise looks moderate but is not the whole bill: its note reports the Road Service Contribution (CSR, Law 55/2007) and, since 2015, a CO2 tax under other indirect taxes. Spain taxes diesel below petrol, even when diesel costs more before tax, as it did that week.

LPG: the one comparison that flips

If you drive an LPG car - GLP or autogas in Spain - do not assume Spain repeats the diesel story. In the reference week it reported the highest LPG price of the three despite by far the lowest excise duty, because before tax Spanish LPG was also the dearest: 864,64 €/1000 l against 731,67 in France and 548,52 in Portugal. What counts for your trip is the live figure: the median for autogas is 1.125 €/l, across 995 stations in 50 provinces.

Coverage, not price, is usually the constraint on an LPG run into Spain: see Driving to Spain with an LPG car: coverage, prices, forecourts for routes and Why LPG costs less than petrol in Spain, and what drives it for the price map.

The words you will read on the pump

Spanish forecourts name the product in Spanish:

• Gasóleo A is ordinary road diesel: Real Decreto 61/2006 sets the class A specification for gasoil «destinados a ser utilizados en vehículos equipados con un motor diesel». Gasóleo Premium is the same class with different additives.
• Gasóleo B is the class B grade, for «usos agrícola, ferroviario, marítimo y máquinas móviles no de carretera»: dyed, taxed differently, not for your car.
• Sin plomo 95 is unleaded 95; Sin plomo 98 is the higher octane.
• GLP or autogas is LPG.

RD 61/2006, artículo 3: gasóleo clase A and clase B (BOE)

Two more words matter after dark. An instalación en autoservicio has staff on site, but «el personal presente en la instalación no realiza el suministro al vehículo, que es llevado a cabo por el cliente»; an instalación desatendida runs with nobody supervising the supply, and authorises the pump through a terminal that may accept «billetes, tarjetas bancarias u otro sistema de identificación electrónica» - so carry a card that works abroad. The full label decoder is in Fuel prices in Spain today and what the pump labels mean.

RD 706/2017, ITC MI-IP 04: autoservicio, desatendida and unattended payment terminals (BOE)

What to do at the border

Fill by station, not by country:

1. Coming from France, arrive with room in the tank: that week the bulletin gap on petrol and on diesel was around a third of a euro per litre.
2. Coming from Portugal, do not detour: the diesel gap was 0,16 €/l, narrow enough that the choice of station decides it.
3. Check the actual forecourt: the ministry's Geoportal and the live tables here, prix-carburants.gouv.fr in France, precoscombustiveis.dgeg.gov.pt in Portugal.

Geoportal de gasolineras - MITECO

For diesel, the province table above is the breakdown: this site has no separate diesel pages. For LPG and renewable diesel, today's prices by province and brand are on LPG (autogas) and Renewable diesel (HVO).