Never Overpay for Gas Again: GasBuddy iPhone App

Alert: this app will not track your daily risk of flatulence by adding up the nutritional content of food consumed and dividing by a factor of Bean.

This past week, I stopped over at the gas station for my moment of “Let’s Get Really Depressed About The Economy,” as I put 15 gallons of gas in my car for nearly 60 bucks.

And as I saw my Ideeli and Zulily shopping budget get poured into my gas tank, I realized that NOW is the time to talk about GasBuddy for AppGirl Friday.

GasBuddy does two primary things:

1. It lets you find the cheapest gas near to wherever you are AND

2. It lets you share the price of gas near you so everybody saves money.

Here’s how it works. you open up the app, and enter either as a visitor, or a logged-in user. Your phone will geo-target your location. You can use your current location, if you want to find gas nearby, or search by city and state if you’re planning a trip somewhere.

Once you make your selection, GasBuddy displays a whole list of gas stations near that location. It defaults to reporting by distance away from you, but you can sort by price, too. You can also sort by type of gas – regular, midgrade, premium or diesel (is ANYONE buying premium gas right now?)

If you’d rather see it via a map view, no problem. Click “map” at the top and it displays all the nearby stations via map.

Today, I noticed that there’s nearly a 10 cent swing in gas prices at the stations within a 5 mile radius of my house.

If you click on a specific station in list view, it will take you to an information page for that station – exact address, phone number, an option to get directions, and all of the gas prices at that station and the time the price were last updated. At my closest station, prices were updated just 9 hours ago.

But to make the app work, you not only have to get information, you have to give it. On the station info page,you can click “report prices” and update the pricing for that station on the fly – thereby benefiting the next local user.

Is this awesomeness, or what? Did I mention it’s FREE? Yep. And, it’s available for Droid and Windows phones, too.

But there’s one other really cool thing I want to mention. GasBuddy also has a website which has even more awesome tools for you to use – especially with summer road trips coming up.

They have an AMAZING trip cost calculator that will map out your road trip and tell you WHERE and WHEN to stop for gas to save the most money on fuel during your trip. It actually factors in the make and model of your car as well, so it’s customized to your vehicle. You can even choose to optimize the route for cheapest fuel options OR fewer stops.

We’re going to Baton Rouge, LA for a Tae Kwon Do tournament this summer. I used that as my example. I optimized for cheapest fuel cost. GasBuddy displays my total fuel cost and a whole bunch of other data, and then I can click on links to get driving directions and the exact stations where I should fill up. Love.

So in the wake of out-of-control gas prices, these two tools can be huge money savers for you this summer!

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