Let’s not beat around the bush – fuel prices are crazy high at the moment.
This is a phenomenon being felt across the world, but here in little old New Zealand there is a great deal of “sensitivity” to the current cost of living crisis.
With that in mind, every sensible consumer – myself included – is looking for ways to cut down on everyday costs, with petrol/diesel being one of those.
Enter Gaspy.
Gaspy is an app specifically for the NZ market, designed to help you find the lowest priced fuel in your area.
I’d never used Gaspy until recently, but decided to give it a try and share my review here.
Table of Contents
What Is Gaspy?
It’s an app you install on your smartphone (android or iPhone) that helps you find the lowest priced petrol in your local area within New Zealand.
The app has been around for a few years now, and apparently has over a million users – or at least installs of the app.
How Much Does Gaspy Cost?
It’s free to install and use. You do have to register an account though, which I’m not a huge fan of for what should ultimately be a simple app.
There are also a fair few ads throughout the interface and there is an option to upgrade to an ad-free experience called ‘Gaspy Gold’ if you so wish.
The ads are definitely on the more intrusive side, to be honest, although not as bad as some apps I’ve seen. Let’s just say you won’t miss them.
How Does It Work?
Long story short, Gaspy “crowd sources” fuel price information (although feel free to drop a comment below if I’ve somehow got this wrong).
Users submit the price for fuel at petrol stations in their area, for example when they are filling up, and then Gaspy will show other users an ordered list of the lowest priced petrol or diesel in their area.
For example, if I log in right now here is the lowest priced 91 in my immediate area:
You can also use a map system to focus in on a different part of town and see pricing. What’s good about this is that you can use it to identify where is going to be the best price if you are travelling across town. For example, I frequently go out to Sumner in Christchurch to visit family, so I could check before leaving where has the cheapest petrol en route (it’s usually one of the NPD self fill stations)
How Much Money Will You Save With Gaspy?
That’s a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string question.
Gaspy won’t inherently save you any money … it’s not like some kind of super special fuel discount card.
The idea behind it is that it shows you the lowest priced fuel in a given area, so for example if you have more expensive petrol in your neighbourhood but happen to be driving down the road through an area where 91 unleaded is 20-30c less expensive per litre, you can take advantage of that fact.
It’s really an informational tool, and a clever one at that as it utilises the crowd sourced data to help you make a decision about where to fill up.
Is Gaspy Worth Using?
Do you like paying more than you need to for petrol or something? If so, then maybe Gaspy is a waste of time and effort. Otherwise if you can bear seeing a few in-app ads and you have a smartphone, it’s a helpful tool to save a few dollars per fill which all ads up.
The main complaints I see about Gaspy, from eyeballing the app store reviews (where the app has about a 3 star rating) relate to:
- Platform bugs/crashes – I haven’t noticed any yet, but will report back if I do. There seem to be a fair few complaints relating to connectivity issues and the app chewing through data (I can’t comment on that as I have unlimited data for work)
- Inaccurate pricing – This one is always going to be a challenge for any app provider. As mentioned, the way Gaspy works is that you are able to report pricing at petrol stations. So for example if I go past my local NPD station to grab some 100 Plus on the way to a meeting I can tell everyone what that price is. However, many of the negative reviews/complaints about Gaspy relate to issues where people have arrived at a fuel station expecting to see a certain price and finding it is higher. Sometimes this is because the price has changed in the interim (I recall around the time the Ukraine war started seeing petrol prices climb about 15c per litre in the time it took me to go to the gym and come home) but also because there can be accidental and/or deliberate wrong pricing information. Honestly, I think sometimes customers can be a bit unreasonable with this kind of thing – I know that times are tough, but there is a cohort of people out there who will drive an hour each way to save an extra 20c per litre, and become very irate if the claimed saving doesn’t materialise. At the same time, it is annoying to not get the price you think you’re going to get. Basically don’t expect 100% reliable pricing, I’m using it to find the cheapest stations overall in relative terms, which doesn’t tend to change much.
- Intrusive advertising – The in-app ads are quite aggressive. I don’t think the worst I’ve ever seen, but judging from reviews and social media commentary it sounds like as the developer has increasingly tried to commercialise the app they have added more and more advertising. You’ll have to make a call for yourself as to whether or not the ads are too much for you to bear. I can tolerate it when I’m quickly checking.
- Paywalling features – This piece I don’t understand completely. Looking back over the user reviews it seems that at some point in time the developer introduced a paywall for certain features (which also removes advertising). Something to do with allowing you to plug in retailer discounts where you can use supermarket vouchers, fuel cards etc. I’m not 100% sure as I’ve just been using the basic functionality. It seems this update alienated a lot of early adopters, particularly as Gaspy relies on user inputted data and a lot of people don’t like the idea of giving a business free information and then being charged to access the output when you were getting it for free (I understand that). I can’t see how paying for a premium app licence would save you any more money on petrol, so it seems like a waste.
Gaspy Review – Is This App Worth Using?
All things being considered, if you want to find cheaper petrol or diesel in your area then it’s worth trying Gaspy. Don’t expect to save a fortune on petrol, and don’t expect the data to be accurate all the time. However, it is also a handy way to at least gauge where might be the best value place to fill the car.
If you don’t like the interface, the in-app ads are too intrusive, or you find it doesn’t work well on your device, then you can just uninstall it.
