France Fuel Price Alerts – Cheap Diesel & Price Jumps

Get only the French fuel stations that matter today: stations priced well below their department average, and stations whose price jumped since your last run. Built on the official French government feed prix-carburants (~9,800 stations, updated about every 10 minutes). You pay only for flagged stations, never for the whole dataset.

Who it's for: fleet managers, logistics and transport companies, fuel-card resellers, price-comparison and AI assistants that need "where is diesel cheap in Rhône today?".

What it does

1. Downloads the official feed (optionally only your departments).
2. Computes the average price per department and fuel.
3. Compares each station with the price saved from your previous run (in a named key-value store).
4. Flags well_below_department_avg (default ≥ 5% cheaper) and sharp_increase (default ≥ 3% up since last run).
5. Skips alerts already returned (same reason, same price) – you are not charged twice.

What it does NOT do

• No price history or forecasts; "since last run" only.
• No route planning (yet). No stations outside France.
• Prices come from stations' own declarations to the government; a few may be stale or wrong. Check priceUpdatedAt.
• The first run has no previous prices, so only "below average" alerts appear.

Input example

{ "departments": ["69", "01"], "fuels": ["gazole"], "belowAvgPct": 5, "risePct": 3, "stateKey": "lyon-fleet" }

Output example

{ "alerts": ["well_below_department_avg"], "fuelName": "Diesel (Gazole)", "price": 2.159, "departmentAvg": 2.31,
  "pctVsDepartmentAvg": -6.54, "previousPrice": 2.159, "pctChangeSinceLastRun": 0.0, "city": "Lyon", "postcode": "69007",
  "address": "…", "department": "69", "lat": 45.73, "lon": 4.84, "priceUpdatedAt": "2026-10-14T06:01:00+00:00", "attribution": "Source: …" }

Pricing (pay per event)

• $0.005 per run (start) + $0.002 per flagged station.
• Example: daily run on 2 departments, 10 alerts/day → about $0.025/day, **$0.75/month**.
• Example: all of France, diesel, 5% → first run ~375 rows ≈ $0.76; later runs only new alerts. Use baselineOnly for a cheap first run.
• Set a max charge per run in Apify to cap spending.

Delivery

• Schedule the Actor (e.g. every morning) and use Apify integrations to send results by email, Slack, or webhook.
• AI / MCP: available as a tool via Apify MCP (https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=shelly_fen/france-fuel-price-alerts).

FAQ

How fresh is the data? The government feed refreshes roughly every 10 minutes; each row includes the station's own update time. Why only diesel by default? E85 and LPG prices vary a lot between stations, so they flag many rows. Add them in fuels if you need them. Will I get the same alert every day? No. An alert returns again only if the price changes or the condition clears and comes back. Different watchlists? Use a different stateKey for each.

Data source and license

Ministère de l'Économie – "Prix des carburants en France – Flux instantané v2", data.economie.gouv.fr, published on data.gouv.fr under Licence Ouverte / Open Licence 2.0 (Etalab), which allows commercial reuse with attribution. Each row carries the attribution and the update date. This Actor is not affiliated with the French government.