Fuel Prices in Germany 2026: When and Where to Fill Up Cheap — A Traveller's Guide

As of 2026-06-22, petrol (Super E10) in Germany costs around €1.870 per litre and diesel about €1.729 per litre. That's above the EU average of €1.733/L for petrol and €1.741/L for diesel — Germany sits among the pricier half of Europe at the pump.

The contrast with the eastern and western borders is large: petrol costs around €1.381/L in Poland and €1.648/L in Luxembourg. If your route passes near a border, a short detour to fill up abroad can save €20–30 on a single tank. But within Germany there's a smarter lever than crossing borders: timing.

Germany is unusual: petrol stations change their prices up to five or six times a day. The pattern is remarkably consistent:

• Most expensive: early morning, around 06:00–08:00.
• Cheapest: the evening, roughly 18:00–22:00.

Filling up in the evening instead of the morning can save 8–12 cents per litre — that's €4–6 on a 50-litre tank, for doing nothing but waiting a few hours. Germany has a unique transparency system: the Markttransparenzstelle für Kraftstoffe (MTS-K) at the Federal Cartel Office, to which every station must report each price change within minutes. Apps like ADAC Spritpreise and clever-tanken — and our own live map — are fed by this data, so you can always see the cheapest station nearby right now.

Two choices matter most:

• Pick brand-free stations. Independents like Jet, HEM, Star, Raiffeisen and bft are usually several cents per litre cheaper than the big brands (Aral, Shell, Esso, Total).
• Avoid the Autobahn. Motorway service stations charge roughly 15–25 cents per litre more than a station just off the next exit. Leaving the motorway to refuel almost always pays off.

And if you're near a border, neighbouring Poland, Czechia, Luxembourg and Austria are all cheaper than Germany — worth a stop if you're heading that way anyway.

The German names at the pump:

• Super E10 — 95-octane petrol with up to 10% ethanol; the cheapest petrol and fine for almost all modern cars.
• Super E5 / Super 95 — 95-octane with up to 5% ethanol, a few cents dearer.
• Super Plus / 98 — premium 98-octane.
• Diesel — simply 'Diesel'.

The E10 question trips up visitors: roughly 99% of petrol cars built this century run on E10 without issue, but if you're driving a hire car, a quick check of the fuel-flap label or manual settles it.

A few things that differ from other countries:

• You fill first, then pay inside at the counter (Kasse) — German pumps are not pre-pay at the nozzle like in some countries.
• Girocard and the major credit cards are widely accepted; a handful of unmanned automated stations are card-only.
• Fuel stations stay open on Sundays and through the night, even though normal shops are closed on Sundays in Germany.
• Everything is self-service.

For up-to-the-minute prices on your route, check our live Germany fuel-station map — it covers around 14,000 stations nationwide.

• Germany has roughly 14,000 filling stations, and the Federal Cartel Office actively monitors their daily price cycle for signs of coordination.
• By law, every price change must be reported to the MTS-K within five minutes — which is exactly why live price apps work so well here.
• The evening-cheap, morning-dear rhythm is so reliable that economists study it as a textbook example of price cycling.
• E10 launched in 2011 to a wave of public distrust ('E10-Angst'), and many German drivers still instinctively avoid it at the pump — even though it's perfectly fine for the vast majority of cars.

Heading south for the holidays? See our Spain fuel guide, or read why fuel is so cheap in Luxembourg.