Regular gasoline is now averaging at least $4.35 a gallon in every state in the country, according to AAA’s daily fuel price survey. Delaware has the lowest state average at $4.3519 a gallon, and Hawaii has the highest at $5.5703. The national average has climbed to $4.4798, more than a dollar higher than a year ago.
Gas above $4.35 everywhere AAA’s survey tracks pump prices, not the heating, cooling and repair costs sitting alongside them in the same budget, which The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit addresses separately. Compare the heating and cooling help options →
AAA’s Daily Fuel Price Survey
AAA compiles its national and state averages from fuel-purchase data gathered at roughly 130,000 filling stations across the country, publishing an updated reading every morning at gasprices.aaa.com. That survey put the national average for regular gasoline at $4.4798 a gallon as of September 27, up from $4.0997 a month earlier and $3.1375 a year earlier, a year-over-year jump of more than a dollar and thirty cents. Premium gasoline averaged $5.3777 and mid-grade $4.9891 on the same day, both moving in step with the regular grade. The current national average remains below the all-time high of $5.0165 that AAA recorded in June 2022, but it has been climbing steadily for months. AAA’s data also showed diesel at $6.4709 nationally, only slightly below the $6.5276 record the survey logged on September 22.
Every State Above $4.35
Delaware’s $4.3519 average is the lowest in the country, just ahead of New Hampshire at $4.3717, Maryland at $4.3739 and New Jersey at $4.3798, according to AAA’s state-by-state table. Rhode Island, at $4.3853, and Vermont, at $4.4540, sit close behind, keeping much of the Northeast clustered near the bottom of the national range. Hawaii, at $5.5703, sits at the opposite end, a gap that AAA and industry analysts generally trace to the state’s higher fuel taxes, stricter fuel-blend requirements and the added cost of shipping gasoline to an island market by tanker rather than by pipeline. California and other West Coast states typically sit near Hawaii on that list for similar reasons involving state taxes and cleaner-burning fuel mandates. What stands out this week is not the size of the spread between cheapest and priciest, but that even Delaware, the cheapest state in the country, has now crossed $4.35 a gallon.
Diesel and the Federal Numbers
Diesel runs on a different market than gasoline, shaped more by freight, farming and construction demand than by everyday commuting, and it has climbed even further than gasoline over the past year. AAA’s reading put the national diesel average at $6.4709, just below the $6.5276 record the survey set on September 22. A separate weekly survey from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, taken September 21, found regular gasoline at $4.478 a gallon and diesel at $6.529 a gallon nationally, figures close to AAA’s own numbers from an independent federal source. Both surveys show regular gasoline up more than a dollar a gallon over the past year and diesel up close to two dollars and eighty cents, increases that work their way into the delivered cost of groceries, building materials and anything else that travels by truck before it reaches a store shelf.
How This Compares With the 2022 Record
The current national average of $4.4798 still sits below the all-time high of $5.0165 that AAA recorded in June 2022, when gasoline prices spiked after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted global oil markets. But this year’s climb has been steadier and broader, with prices rising from $4.0997 a month ago to today’s average, a jump of more than nine percent in just four weeks. That pace, combined with the fact that no state has slipped below $4.35, marks a different pattern than 2022, when a handful of states with lower gas taxes stayed noticeably cheaper even as national prices spiked. This time, the entire map has moved up together, leaving fewer options for a driver looking to cross a state line for meaningfully cheaper gas.
What It Adds Up to for Drivers
The EIA’s most recent weekly reading also showed both fuels still climbing week to week, with regular gasoline adding roughly sixteen cents a gallon and diesel about twenty-four cents in a single week. For a driver who buys 15 gallons of gasoline a week, the roughly $1.34-a-gallon increase in the national average over the past year works out to somewhere near $20 more a week, or close to $80 a month, before any freight-related price increases on other goods are counted. A two-car household covering twice that much fuel would be looking at closer to $160 a month in added gasoline spending alone compared with a year ago. With every state now above $4.35, there is no cheaper corner of the country left to shop around for relief at the pump, and drivers in high-tax states like Hawaii and California are absorbing an even larger share of that increase, and rural drivers who put on more highway miles between fill-ups are feeling the jump the fastest.
Household Costs Beyond the Pump
AAA’s fuel survey tracks pump prices state by state, but it says nothing about the property-tax bill or heating bill landing in the same household budget this fall. A household facing higher gasoline prices at every station in the state is often also carrying rising utility and repair costs, with no single place to track relief options for all three at once.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit lays out the five kinds of property-tax relief and the heating, cooling and home-repair help in one place, organized alongside an application log and renewal calendar.
Compare the heating and cooling section inside The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor before publication.
