The Receipt

What a Gallon of Gas Costs, State by State

The national average sits near $4.34, but the gap between the cheapest and priciest states is more than two dollars a gallon. Here is the map of the pump.

Gas is the price everybody watches, because the number is six feet tall and lit up on a sign you drive past every day. According to AAA, the national average for regular sits right around $4.34 a gallon. But the national number hides how different the pump feels depending on which state you are standing in.

The spread is bigger than people think

The gap between the most and least expensive states is more than two dollars a gallon. At the top, California runs about $6.03. At the bottom, Indiana comes in near $3.69. Same gallon of gas, wildly different receipt.

What that means at the pump

Put it in terms of a real fill-up. On a 15 gallon tank, the difference between Indiana and California is more than $35 a tank, every single time. For a family filling up weekly, that gap is real money over a month, and it is mostly about where you live, not how you drive.

The big drivers of the spread are state fuel taxes, local regulations, and how far the fuel has to travel to get there. The states way out at the ends, like Hawaii and Alaska, pay extra largely because everything has to be shipped a long way.

The caveat

These are statewide averages on a single date, and gas moves fast. Your corner station can sit well above or below your state’s number, and prices swing week to week with the season and the oil market. The point is not the exact penny. It is the shape: where you live sets the floor, and the floor is two dollars apart from one end of the country to the other.

What does regular cost at your usual station right now?

Turn the map into trip math

The state average is not a promise for the station off your exit. It is a planning number. Use it to decide whether the trip still makes sense before the car is already pointed at the highway.

Useful source trail: the chart uses AAA State Gas Price Averages. For background on what moves gasoline prices, the U.S. Energy Information Administration has a plain-English guide to gasoline prices and outlook.

Keep going

If this price check hit the same nerve as your last grocery run, A Bag of Starbucks Costs How Much Now? keeps the receipt math going.

For a cheaper table-level fix, How the House Got Out of Reach turns the same pressure into dinner.

And when you want a break from the numbers, How Your Coffee Quietly Doubled is the kind of small outing that still works.

Source: AAA State Gas Price Averages (regular unleaded), national and per-state averages as of 5/31/26.

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