Road Trip Gas Cost Calculator

01Plan Your Trip

02Gas Prices by State This Week

Average price for the week of October 26, 2026. Press play to watch prices move week by week since 2015, or drag the slider to any week. Darker states are more expensive.

Prices include taxes. State tax is the total state taxes and fees on gasoline as of July 1, 2026 (EIA), not counting local taxes or the 18.4-cent federal tax. Diesel for states other than California is estimated the same way, using diesel taxes. Alaska and Hawaii are estimated from West Coast prices and are rough. Click a column heading to sort.

03Gas Prices Since 1990

Weekly average retail prices from the EIA for the US and its regions (regular since 1990; midgrade, premium and diesel since 1994). Switch the fuel, show or hide a region, or press play to watch the history unfold.

04Popular Road Trips

One-way gas cost at this week's prices for a car that gets 25 miles per gallon on regular. Load any trip into the calculator to use your own car.

Driving routes from OpenRouteService. Costs are our calculation from state average prices for the week of October 26, 2026 and will change each week.

05How We Estimate State Prices

• Weekly prices: the US Energy Information Administration surveys retail stations every Monday and publishes average prices, including taxes, for the US, its regions (the PADD districts), and nine states: California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington. For those states we use EIA's figure as published.
• Other states: we start from the price for the state's region (for example, the Midwest for Missouri, and the West Coast excluding California for Nevada and Arizona) and add the difference between that state's taxes and fees on gasoline and the average for the states in the region. Taxes are the biggest reason prices differ within a region, but not the only one, so these are estimates.
• How close the estimates get: as a rough check, for the eight EIA-surveyed states outside California the same method would have been off by 8.6 cents a gallon on average over the last 26 weeks (closest: Massachusetts, 1.6 cents; furthest: New York, 15.9 cents). Those states are part of their own regional averages, so errors for other states may be larger. On a tank of 15 gallons, 10 cents a gallon is $1.50.
• Taxes: EIA's table of state motor fuel taxes and fees, published each January and July. History uses the edition in effect at the time; the current edition is as of July 1, 2026. Local taxes, which some states allow, are not included.
• Routes: driving routes come from OpenRouteService, built on OpenStreetMap. We measure how many of the route's miles fall in each state using simplified US Census state boundaries, and a round trip assumes the same route back.
• Your car: fuel economy ratings come from the EPA's fueleconomy.gov. Highway ratings suit most road trips, but speed, load, air conditioning and mountains all lower real mileage, so enter your own figure if you know it.
• The fill-up plan assumes you can buy at the state average anywhere on the route and keeps 15% of the tank in reserve. It waits to stop until the tank is at least half used, stopping in the cheapest state it can reach on the fuel left. There, if a state more than 5 cents a gallon cheaper is within reach, it buys just enough to get there, or just enough to finish the trip; otherwise it fills the tank. It is compared with starting full and filling up whenever a quarter of the tank is left.

These are DaveManuel.com calculations from public data, not quotes from any station. Prices at a given station can be higher or lower than the state average.

06Frequently Asked Questions

07Sources

• US Energy Information Administration, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update (weekly retail prices)
• EIA, Federal and state motor fuel taxes (January and July editions since 2015)
• US Department of Energy and EPA, fueleconomy.gov web services (vehicle fuel economy)
• Routes: openrouteservice.org by HeiGIT; map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
• City list: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0), US places with at least 5,000 residents. State boundaries: US Census Bureau, via us-atlas.

Prices for the week of October 26, 2026; data last checked October 29, 2026. Figures are DaveManuel.com calculations from public data, for information only.