Petrol Cost of Driving Between Pakistani Cities

Before a long drive the question is always the same: what will the petrol cost? This page answers it for 21 routes between Pakistani cities, at the official PSO rate of Rs 398.30 a litre. Every figure below is recalculated whenever that rate moves, so the table is never quoting last month's price.

Three vehicles, chosen because they are what people actually drive here: a Honda CD 70 at 50 km per litre, a Suzuki Mehran at 15, and a Honda City at 13. These are the same figures our fuel cost calculator uses, so the two can never disagree about the same car.

What the petrol costs, one way

Read it as petrol and nothing else. A real trip also costs tolls on the motorway, the wear you are putting on the car, and whatever the drive itself is worth to you. None of those are in the table, because we do not hold honest numbers for them and a made-up column is worse than a missing one.

The short drives

On a run like Islamabad to Rawalpindi (15 km) the petrol is Rs 400 in a Suzuki Mehran and Rs 120 on a bike. At that distance the fuel is rarely what decides anything; parking and the hour you lose in traffic matter more.

The long hauls

Karachi to Sukkur is the longest route we price, at 470 km. In a Honda City that is Rs 14,400 of petrol each way, so Rs 28,800 there and back — before tolls. This is the distance at which filling the empty seats stops being a nicety and starts being the difference between an affordable trip and an expensive one: four people in that car pay a quarter each.

Working out a route that is not listed

The arithmetic is simple enough to do yourself: distance divided by your car's km per litre, times the petrol price. For a 300 km drive in a car doing 13 km per litre that is about Rs 9,190. The fuel cost calculator does it for any distance and any car, and splits it by the number of people travelling.

Where the petrol price comes from

Pakistan State Oil publishes the official rate, and we read it every 30 minutes. OGRA now revises fuel prices as often as daily rather than fortnightly, which is why a table like this has to be computed rather than typed. You can see today's petrol price, diesel, and every change we have recorded with the date it took effect.

Splitting the cost

Petrol is the same whether one person is in the car or four, which is the whole argument for sharing a long drive. Shareide runs intercity seats on these routes: you either take a seat in a car already going, or post your own trip and let people share the cost of it. The fares for each route are on its own page, linked in the table above.