How TipidGas Works
A short, factual explanation of how the prices on this site are sourced, verified, and aggregated. If you want to cite a TipidGas number, this is the page.
Sourcing
Stations are sourced from OpenStreetMap and tagged by brand, with admin-boundary backfill (OSM + PSGC) for city and province. Baseline prices are taken from the Department of Energy weekly oil monitor — refreshed every Tuesday — and are clearly labeled DOE in the per-station tables until the community submits a station-specific price.
Aggregation
City, brand, province, and national averages use the median of verified per-station prices for that fuel type. Range bars show the 5th–95th percentile so a single bad submission cannot blow up the spread. Cheapest-city rankings require at least 3 verified station prices to qualify.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the per-station prices come from?
Drivers log their fill-up in the TipidGas app — usually a photo of the pump or receipt. The app extracts price per liter and submits it tied to the station. Prices show up on the website after lightweight verification, with two community confirmations promoting them above the DOE baseline.
Why does TipidGas use a DOE baseline?
Until two drivers have submitted a price for a specific station, we show the regional DOE weekly bulletin reference price for the station's region as a placeholder. That keeps the map useful day one and makes the staleness explicit (the chip says DOE rather than community-verified).
How do you stop fake or wrong submissions?
Submissions need to be within 300m of the target station and pass typo checks. The submission ledger is keyed by device so a single device cannot vote on the same price twice. Aggregations use the median (not mean), so a single bad row never moves the headline number.
How is the cheapest-city ranking computed?
For each fuel type, we average verified per-station prices in each city and require at least 3 stations to qualify. Cities with fewer prices are excluded from rankings until they accumulate enough community data.
Why aren't all 1,600+ municipalities covered?
Coverage tracks OpenStreetMap data, which is uneven outside major cities. We backfill with admin boundaries from OSM/PSGC and continue adding stations as drivers submit them. Tawi-Tawi and Dinagat Islands are the current frontier.
When does the site update?
The DOE bulletin lands every Tuesday — we re-seed the baseline every Monday. Per-station prices update continuously through the app. The static site rebuilds when station or price data changes.
See also: About TipidGas.