When Someone Actually Builds the Thing We All Needed
There’s something genuinely refreshing when you stumble across a project that exists purely because someone got fed up with the status quo and decided to do something about it. Not for profit, not for clout, just because they could and they thought it might help.
I was scrolling through discussions the other day and came across someone who’d built a fuel price comparison tool that covers all of Australia and New Zealand. Free. No ads. No paywalls. Just straight-up useful information pulled from official government sources and community data. The kind of thing that makes you think “why isn’t this just… standard?”
The creator was pretty upfront about it being a passion project—they were sick of paying ridiculous prices at the servo and figured they had the technical chops to build something better than what’s out there. What caught my attention wasn’t just that it exists, but what it actually does. It’s not just showing you current prices (though it does that across every state and territory). It’s using machine learning to predict when prices are about to spike based on wholesale cycles, so you can fill up before everyone else gets slugged.
That’s the kind of feature that actually changes behaviour. I’ve definitely been caught out before—you drive past a servo on Tuesday thinking “eh, I’ve got enough for another day,” then Wednesday morning every station has jumped 30 cents overnight and you’re kicking yourself. Having something that can spot those patterns and give you a heads-up? That’s genuinely valuable.
What struck me most about the discussion thread was how quickly people jumped to the practical questions. “How are you paying for the API access?” “What’s the catch?” “How is this different from [existing app]?” It’s almost sad that we’ve become so conditioned to expect the rug-pull that when someone builds something genuinely useful without trying to monetize us, our first instinct is suspicion. Though honestly, given how many “free” services have turned into data-harvesting nightmares or ad-riddled hellscapes, I can’t really blame anyone for asking.
The creator’s response was pretty straightforward—they’re covering the costs themselves because they built it for personal use and figured others might benefit. No commercial angle. Just engineers being engineers, I suppose. There’s something very Australian about that approach, actually. “This thing is annoying me, reckon I can fix it” energy.
Someone raised a good point about existing government apps like NSW’s FuelCheck, which is a fair comparison. But that’s kind of the problem—FuelCheck only works in NSW. If you’re driving interstate or you want to compare prices across regions, you need multiple apps or websites. Having everything aggregated in one place with a decent interface isn’t revolutionary, but it is convenient. And convenience is what determines whether people actually use something or just stick with whatever barely-adequate option they’re used to.
The predictive alerts thing is what really sets it apart though. Most fuel apps are reactive—they tell you what prices are doing right now. This one is trying to be proactive. It’s the difference between a weather app that shows you it’s currently raining and one that tells you to bring an umbrella because rain’s coming in an hour.
From a broader perspective, this is the kind of thing that makes me optimistic about what technology can do when it’s not completely captured by commercial interests. Don’t get me wrong—I’m under no illusions that most tech companies are out there to make money, and that’s fine. But there’s still space for people to build things just because they’re useful. The open-source ethos isn’t dead, even if it’s sometimes buried under layers of SaaS subscriptions and venture capital.
There’s also something to be said for the democratization of this kind of information. Fuel companies have always played games with pricing cycles—they know most people don’t track wholesale prices or understand when the “cheap” days are coming. Having tools that level that playing field, even slightly, is a good thing. It’s a tiny act of consumer advocacy wrapped in a web app.
The creator mentioned they’re working on iOS and Android apps, plus hopefully CarPlay and Android Auto integration. That’d be the real test—whether they can navigate the app store approval processes and get it properly integrated into the driving experience. Those ecosystems are notoriously finicky, and getting rejected because of some arbitrary guideline violation would be peak frustration.
Someone in the discussion mentioned using DNS-level ad blocking to strip ads from other fuel apps, which is clever but also proves the point—we shouldn’t have to jerry-rig workarounds to get basic information without being bombarded with advertising. The fact that “no ads” is now a selling point for a fuel price app tells you everything you need to know about how degraded the digital experience has become.
Look, I haven’t used this tool extensively yet (though I’m definitely bookmarking it), but I appreciate what it represents. It’s a reminder that not everything needs to be part of someone’s growth strategy or exit plan. Sometimes people just build things because they see a problem and have the skills to solve it. That’s worth celebrating, even if it’s just a fuel price comparison site.
And honestly, with petrol prices doing their usual chaotic dance—magically all jumping to 220+ cents when there’s even a hint of tension in the Middle East or a refinery sneezes—any edge we can get is welcome. The prices are still going to be frustratingly high, but at least we might be able to find the least-worst option and time our fills better.
If you’re interested, it’s called Petrolmate. Give it a look. Support people building useful things for the right reasons. And maybe, if enough of us use tools like this, the fuel companies might realize their pricing games are becoming more transparent. One can hope, anyway.