Gas Buddy Helps You Save at Pump

Are you traveling on the road this summer? Well, don't let the high price of gas get you down.

Wherever you're going in North America, you can save money at the pumps by find the cheapest gas available before you get there, thanks to the Gas Buddy website.

Gas Buddy has been informing travelers and daily commuters on the lowest prices at the pumps for more than a decade. Founded by Regina eye surgeon Dr. Dustin Coupal and programmer Jason Toews, Gas Buddy is actually a collection of websites to which thousands of drivers feed info on the best places to shop for gas.You find actual stations where prices are the lowest in a given city or other locale. You can also find the lowest average prices for a city province or state.

You can also get a Gas Buddy app for your mobile phone so that you get current prices while you're on the move. CBC has also piggybacked on Gas Buddy's service and is publishing its prices on a special news page. CBC breaks the prices down nationally and provincially. You'll need to bear in mind that prices may change quicker than they can be updated, but Gas Buddy's high usage since it was created in 2001 indicates a high level of reliability.

Another cheap-gas-hunting service, SmartFuel, can be downloaded to your iPhone, but it comes at a modest fee after the free-trial period. Its creator, Iridium Development, says the fee is necessary so that the company can access the most current prices from the U.S. Oil Price Information Service database.

Smartfuel's newest mobile app also rates stations according to safety and cleanliness. We're not sold yet on the benefits of SmartFuel, especially since it looks like you need a compatible mobile device for the app. For instance, one wonders what happens if you're a BlackBerry user.
SmartFuel's site is not overly comprehensive either, compared to Gas Buddy. Still, Smartfuel has generated some interesting reviews, including this one on CNET.

The bottom line? We'd likely go with Gas Buddy. But do yourself a favour and check out both. Either way, you're likely to pay less for gas than you are now.