GasGuruMerged

It’s the first week of Spring, and that means road trip season is right around the corner. Getting on the road can be costly, since gas prices are creeping back up from their absurd lows. Thankfully, your smartphone is here to help.

geekwireapp2Gas Guru is an app for iPhone and Android designed by YP to help users get the most bang for their buck while driving a car. The app, which recently got a snazzy redesign on iOS, pulls in data about service station gas prices, and then lays it all out on the map to take the guess-work out of finding the cheapest fuel. The app color codes prices – yellow for “good,” green for “best” – so it’s easy to get a quick idea of where to stop. (Of course, for safety’s sake, be sure to pull over before puzzling out where you want to fuel up.)

That’s about it, really. This is one of those apps that does one thing particularly well. Users pick their preferred fuel grade (the app defaults to regular) and can scroll around the map to find locations. In areas where the gas stations are more spread out, Gas guru also has a list view that lets people search by price or distance for the best deal.

mzl.sdhhskya-D0777CD5-C44F-49E6-85A1-C89ADB302324Road trippers who want to plan out their pit stops for the day can view different cities using the app’s search function. One improvement I’d love to see with the app would be the ability to plan out a road trip and find the cheapest fuel stops along the way for a car’s given gas mileage and time between breaks. That’s by no means essential, though.

Right now, the only thing that really seems wrong with Gas Guru is that the Android app is still stuck in a world before Google’s Material Design overhaul. But now that the iPhone app has received its design update, YP’s engineers may finally turn to Android.

Overall, Gas Guru is a must-have companion for getting the best deal on fuel.

Gas Guru is available for free from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

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