With the price of fuel soaring thanks to a weaker rand and soaring international oil prices, South Africans drivers are feeling the pinch.

A new website, which provides user-generated details about where the best discounts on fuel are available, hopes to help save consumers a bit of money at the pump.

The website, PetrolPrices.co.za, shows where the best deals on diesel are to be had. Petrol will be added to the platform if government goes ahead with its recently communicated plan to deregulate the price of 93-octane unleaded petrol.

Developed by Ilan Meltz, a programmer at software house DVT, explained in a blog post that news of government’s plan to deregulate the price of petrol prompted him to develop the platform. Although this promised deregulation hasn’t happened yet, it will be easy to integrate petrol prices into the solution when it does.

“It is a website that tracks the prices of fuel at stations and allows the user to see which nearby fuel stations are the cheapest based on their location. Each filling station added to the website will be displayed as a marker on the map. Each marker displays the logo of the fuel company and the diesel price at that petrol station without having to click on it. As a result, it is possible to locate nearby options quickly. In addition, the user can see which brands of fuel stations are nearby if they prefer a particular brand,” said Meltz.

“When clicking a marker, a pop-up will be displayed, showing the prices for all the fuel types available at the selected fuel station. From the pop-up, the user can get directions to the fuel station by clicking the ‘go here’ button or see more details about it by clicking the ‘view more’ button.”

FuelBounty

The website relies on users to update fuel prices. If someone finds a petrol station that isn’t on the map, they can add it themselves. Similarly, if they find an incorrect price, they can correct it.

“Whenever a user requests a price change, the price won’t go live immediately (unless they have enough FuelBounty) because another user must first validate the request. Earning FuelBounty gains users their reputation on the website. In exchange for contributing to PetrolPrices.co.za, users earn FuelBounty, which they can use to enter occasional competitions and place them on the leaderboard as the most active contributors on the website,” Meltz explained.

He said he is now working on an Android app, with a version for iOS to follow later.

Update: In response to this article, a company called Value App pointed out that it has had a similar solution in the market for several years already. Its app, called PitStops, is available for both Android and iOS. PitStops allows drivers to find the cheapest diesel within a 10km radius of their location, with filling stations listed by price and distance. It also uses crowdsourced data to keep prices current. – © 2022 NewsCentral Media