Finally! An app that helps you find cheap gas nearby as price per gallon continues to skyrocket

Americans are facing high prices at the pumps as gas prices have risen to an average of $3.88 per gallon – but some states are seeing more than $6.

Fortunately, there is an app that can direct you to cheaper stations.

The navigation tool Waze uses crowdsourcing, allowing the public to share gas prices along routes.

Users select the “Where To” option and a gas icon appears with nearby stations and how much they cost per gallon.

The Gas Station feature in Waze must first be activated in Settings to allow users to select their preferred gas type, brand, and distance from their current location.

Then users can see nearby gas stations, distance, address, price, and the last time the price per gallon was updated.

The rise in gas prices has been driven in part by oil supply cuts from Russia and Saudi Arabia and the warm weather in the US, which has hurt production at many refineries.

As usual, California had the highest prices in the country, averaging $5.17, and pump prices over $6 in remote Mono County, bordering Yosemite National Park.

In contrast, in Texas, the average price for a gallon of unleaded was $3.46, compared to about $3 just a month ago. They were the cheapest in Mississippi and Louisiana, at $3.32 and $3.42 respectively.

Over the past month, national average gas prices have increased by 28 cents and by about 32 cents since July 4.

But prices are still much lower than the peak average of $5 in June 2022 – about four months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Last summer around this time, the national average was $4.28 per gallon.

The Gas Station feature in Waze must first be activated in Settings to allow users to select their preferred gas type, brand, and distance from their current location. Users can see nearby gas stations, distance, address, price, and the last time the price per gallon was updated

“We appear to be at a crossroads when it comes to the direction of gas prices — up or down,” said AAA spokesman Andrew Gross.

“The summer heat that kept people home and stifled refinery production has eased for now, so we need to look to oil prices to determine whether the recent price hike will come to an end.”

Sustained increases in fuel prices are likely to push inflation up through August, an expert said Business Insider.

A spokesperson for the AAA noted last month that “the primary culprit is higher oil prices.”

The high price of gas comes with oil prices approaching $90 a barrel, and some analysts are predicting it could surpass that level.

In February, Goldman Sachs predicted that oil could hit $100 a barrel this year thanks to production restrictions imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).