Tools · Fuel cost calculator
How much will gas cost?
Distance, MPG, price. Every gas calculator asks for the same inputs; this one fills in the hard one for you. The price box holds this week’s U.S. average ($4.48 regular, $6.53 diesel, EIA week of September 21, 2026), and it changes every Monday because the data does.
- Gas needed
- 12.0 gal
- 300 miles at 25 MPG
- Cost
- $53.76
- at $4.48 a gallon
- Per mile
- 17.9¢
- fuel only, no car
- Work time
- 1.7 h
- at the average wage
Other years shown in 2026 dollars, using that year’s average regular price and average hourly pay for production and nonsupervisory workers.
What a road trip costs in gas
The math is short: miles driven, divided by your car’s MPG, times the price of a gallon. A 300-mile drive at 25 MPG uses 12 gallons; at this week’s average that’s $53.76. The number most people get wrong is the price, because they remember the last sign they liked. Prices also swing hard by state; California alone runs well above the national average, and we itemize why.
The commute, by the week and the year
Switch the calculator to “every week” and put in your normal miles. The weekly number will look manageable. The annual one usually doesn’t; 250 miles a week at 25 MPG is 520 gallons a year, about $2,330 at this week’s average, and that’s before the car itself costs you anything. For what a mile really costs once the fleet’s fuel economy enters the picture, the cost-of-a-mile chart runs the whole 46 years.
Cost per mile
Price divided by MPG. At $4.48 and 25 MPG, fuel costs 17.9¢ a mile. That is fuel only. AAA-style ownership figures, the ones that land near 70¢ a mile, fold in depreciation, insurance and repairs; useful for a car decision, misleading for a “should I drive there” decision. The calculator keeps to the gallon.
The same tank in 1981, 1999 and 2008
Sticker prices from different decades can’t be compared straight, so the calculator reprices your drive two honest ways: in today’s dollars, and in minutes of work at each year’s average hourly pay. 1981 was the second oil shock, 1999 the cheapest gas of the whole series, June 2008 the real-dollar record that still stands. Set your own pay and the work-time lens becomes personal: your drive, priced in your minutes, against the driver holding your rank in 1981.
One caveat worth keeping in view: the wage series covers production and nonsupervisory workers, about four in five private employees. Averages hide the commuter earning less and driving further. Every year since 1980 gets this treatment on the year pages, and if the question is really about this week, why is gas so expensive right now?
Curious what gas cost the year you were born? The sign remembers.
Sources: EIA weekly retail prices for regular gasoline and on-highway diesel; BLS CPI-U and average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers (via FRED). Today’s dollars use the August 2026 CPI; the raw series and the full recipe live on the methodology page. This page rebuilds every Monday with the new EIA week.