Fuel 
PetrolSpy is one of the most established fuel price apps in Australia. It's been on the App Store since 2014, holds a 4.8-star rating from more than 170,000 iOS reviews, and covers the whole country plus New Zealand's main cities on the web. If you're comparing it with Fuel Daddy, the honest starting point is that PetrolSpy has earned its reputation. The differences that matter are where the prices come from, and how each app pays its bills.
Disclosure up front: Fuel Daddy is our product. Everything below about PetrolSpy comes from its own website, App Store listing and public user reviews, checked in July 2026.
The quick comparison
| Fuel Daddy | PetrolSpy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. Optional Pro ($4.99/mo, 7-day free trial) adds price-drop alerts | Free with ads. Premium removes ads ($2.89/year or $14.99 lifetime) |
| Ads | None, anywhere, on any tier | Ads on the free tier; removing them requires Premium |
| Data source | Official government feeds in every state and territory, refreshed every 15 minutes | Mix: FuelCheck (NSW) and FuelWatch (WA) official feeds; user-submitted prices in Victoria, per its own App Store description |
| Coverage | 8,100+ stations, all 8 states and territories | Australia-wide, plus New Zealand city maps on the web |
| Platforms | iOS app + full web app on any phone (Android coming soon) | iOS, Android and web map |
| Track record | Launched 2026 | Running since 2014; 4.8 stars from 170,000+ iOS ratings |
| Extra features | 14-day trend charts, live outage tracker, Costco prices, calculators, suburb directories | Price cycle graphs for 8 capitals, cycle notifications, user price reporting, daily fuel-card giveaway |
Checked July 2026 against both products' public pages and app store listings. Prices and features change; always confirm on the current listings.
The data question: verified or reported?
This is the real philosophical difference between the two apps. PetrolSpy grew up in an era when most states had no mandatory price reporting, so it built its coverage on a community of users submitting prices, layered with official feeds where they exist. Its own App Store description spells this out: FuelCheck prices for NSW, FuelWatch prices for WA, and user-submitted prices for Victoria.
Community reporting has a genuine upside: an active user base can flag a price at a tiny independent servo that official feeds describe poorly. The downside is equally real: a submitted price is only as fresh as the last person who typed it in, and in a fast-moving price cycle a stale number can cost you real money at the bowser.
Fuel Daddy only shows prices from the official state government schemes, where stations are legally required to report price changes, in every state and territory we cover. Our system polls those feeds every 15 minutes. (One honest caveat that applies to every app including ours: Victoria and WA publish their official data roughly daily, not continuously.) If you want to understand how these government schemes work, our guide on how fuel prices are set covers it.
The ads question
PetrolSpy's free tier is ad-supported, and it's fair to say the ads have become its users' biggest complaint. Recent App Store reviews describe force-closing the app to escape ads and struggling to find close buttons. PetrolSpy responded in 2025 by launching a Premium tier that removes them, and credit where due, it's cheap: $2.89 a year or $14.99 for life.
Fuel Daddy simply doesn't have ads. Not on the website, not in the app, not on the free tier. There's nothing to remove, so there's no ad-removal tier to buy. The only paid feature in the entire product is push price-drop alerts via Fuel Daddy Pro. If your main frustration with PetrolSpy is the advertising, you have two options: pay PetrolSpy a few dollars a year, or use an app that never shows ads in the first place.
Where PetrolSpy is stronger
Twelve years of history counts for something. PetrolSpy's community is enormous, its price cycle graphs cover all 8 capital cities, and it covers New Zealand on the web, which nothing in our product does. It has a native Android app today; Fuel Daddy's Android app is still coming (the full web app works on any phone in the meantime). And its daily $25 fuel-card giveaway for price reporters is a fun touch that keeps its community active.
Worth knowing: as of July 2026 the iOS app's last update shipped in July 2025, and users have been asking for features like CarPlay and saved postcodes for a while. An app this established isn't going anywhere, but development pace is worth watching.
Where Fuel Daddy is stronger
Everything in Fuel Daddy is verified government data, in every state, with no ads wrapped around it. The live map needs no account. Beyond the map you get 14-day price trend charts by region, a live fuel outage tracker, Costco warehouse prices and trip and budget calculators, all free. If you browse by area, the suburb directories cover every state, down to live prices in individual suburbs.
Verdict
PetrolSpy is a deserved community favourite, and if user-reported prices at obscure independents or NZ coverage matter to you, keep it installed. But if you've had enough of the ads, or you'd rather every price on the map came from a government feed instead of a stranger's submission, that's precisely the product Fuel Daddy is. Try the live map next time you need fuel and compare the two side by side. For the rest of the field, see our full roundup of Australia's fuel price apps.
