GasBuddy heat map: what regional colours can tell you

Red and green blotches on a gas price heat map are good for one thing: spotting which broad areas tend to be cheaper. They can’t tell you which pump to pull into. Read the heat map as a planning overview, decide roughly where you’d like to fill up, then switch to a station lookup for the actual purchase.

Where to find the GasBuddy heat map

GasBuddy’s gas price map is its heat map. According to the page, areas are colour-coded by their average price for regular unleaded, it covers both the US and Canada, and you can look at it by state or zoom to county or ZIP-code level. Zoom in far enough and it shows individual stations with their reported prices. On the website, GasBuddy’s help also points to the Gas Tools menu for Maps. Source. Layouts change, so if the page looks different from this description, trust what’s on screen.

If you’d rather see numbers than colours, GasBuddy publishes average regular prices as tables: US averages by state and Canadian averages by province. Its historical chart tool compares averages over time and offers unit choices. A line chart and a heat map answer different questions: one shows change over time, the other shows variation across places.

Read the legend before the colours

Before you trust a colour, find out:

Which fuel. GasBuddy describes the map’s colours as regular unleaded averages. Diesel and premium can follow a different pattern.
Which area unit. A state-level colour and a ZIP-level colour are averaging very different numbers of stations.
Which currency and volume unit. Canadian areas are in cents per litre; US areas in dollars per US gallon.
What range the colours span. Red means expensive relative to the range on screen, not necessarily expensive in absolute terms. Change the zoom and the same price can land in a different colour band.

If the map doesn’t explain whether a colour is a simple average or something else, don’t read more precision into it than it gives you.

A regional average is not a station offer

Picture Area A averaging C$1.55/L and Area B averaging C$1.60/L. You can’t conclude that every station in A beats every station in B; individual prices overlap. The cheapest station in B could easily undercut a busy highway station in A. An average also can’t tell you whether a station on your route is open or sells your grade. These numbers are illustrative only.

Using the heat map to plan a trip fill-up

The heat map is most useful when you have a choice about where along a trip to buy fuel. Here’s a hypothetical example, with illustrative averages rather than current prices:

	Area you’re leaving	Area 100 km ahead
Average colour shown	C$1.62/L	C$1.52/L
Fuel you plan to buy	45 L	45 L
Cost at the average	C$72.90	C$68.40

On averages, waiting saves C$4.50. Before acting on that:

Check your range. Only wait if you can comfortably reach the cheaper area with fuel to spare. Running low to save a few dollars is a bad trade.
Look at stations, not colours. Once you’re near the cheaper area, use a station search or the app’s route search; our GasBuddy map guide explains how.
Top up rather than fill if you’re unsure. Buying just enough to reach the cheaper area keeps most of the saving without the risk.
Count the detour. A cheap area is only cheap if a station there is on or near your road. The trip fuel cost calculator handles the extra distance.

Avoid mixing countries and units

For a cross-border comparison, convert volume first, then currency. A US gallon is 3.785 litres and an imperial gallon is 4.546 litres, according to Natural Resources Canada’s 2026 Fuel Consumption Guide. Gas is sold by the US gallon in the US; the imperial gallon only matters if you’re reading older Canadian or British figures.

Hypothetical conversion	Working	Result
US$3.50/US gal to C$/L, at C$1.35 per US$1	3.50 × 1.35 ÷ 3.785	about C$1.25/L
C$1.55/L to US$/US gal, same rate	1.55 × 3.785 ÷ 1.35	about US$4.35/gal
The mistake: dividing by an imperial gallon	3.50 × 1.35 ÷ 4.546	about C$1.04/L (about 21¢ too low)

The exchange rate here is illustrative. Use a current rate for a real decision, or let the fuel price converter do the arithmetic. And remember the trip itself: a cheaper fill across the border has to cover the extra driving.

Does the GasBuddy heat map cover Canada and the USA?

Yes. GasBuddy’s gas price map page says it shows average unleaded prices for both Canada and the US, and the map has a Canadian view. Source. For a province-by-province or state-by-state table instead of colours, use the Canada and US average pages. Our Canada hub and locations list add local context such as fuel taxes.

Is there a GasBuddy heat map near me?

Zooming the map into your own area does the job: at a local level it shows stations rather than just shaded regions. For deciding where to fill up today, though, a nearby station search with report times is more useful than any colour. See GasBuddy near me for how to check whether a cheaper station is worth the drive.

Is there a diesel heat map?

GasBuddy describes its map colours as regular unleaded averages. We couldn’t confirm whether the current map offers a diesel colour view, so check the map’s fuel options yourself. For diesel at specific stations, the GasBuddy app lets you search any fuel type, including diesel, according to its official store listing; our GasBuddy app guide links to it.

Fuel Route Guide is an independent publication and is not affiliated with GasBuddy. Examples use hypothetical prices and exchange rates.