The cheapest gas in the world: 20 countries where fuel costs almost nothing

The cheapest gas in the world is in Libya, where a litre of petrol costs about 2.3¢, or $0.09 per US gallon. Iran (2.9¢) and Venezuela (3.5¢) complete the bottom three. In all 20 of the cheapest countries below, a litre costs no more than $0.85, against a world median of $1.55 across the 170 countries tracked by GlobalPetrolPrices (retrieved 2026-10-13).

The 20 cheapest countries for petrol

The ranking is in US dollars at each country’s official or market exchange rate as used by the data provider. The right-hand column shows how much petrol a $20 bill buys, which makes the gaps easier to feel than cents per litre.

Three tiers of cheap

The list is not one group of similar prices. At the very bottom, 3 countries charge less than ten US cents a litre (Libya, Iran, Venezuela). At those prices fuel is effectively free at the point of sale: a 50-litre tank costs at most $5, and the exchange rate used to convert it matters more than the pump price itself. In countries with multiple or fast-moving exchange rates, the dollar figure can swing a lot without anything changing at the forecourt.

A second tier of 5 countries sits between ten and fifty cents a litre; 4 of them are on our list of major oil or gas exporters, which typically sell fuel at home at a fixed, administered price. The remaining 12 places on the list, up to $0.85, are cheap rather than near-free, and the reasons are more varied: smaller subsidies, low fuel taxes, or a weak currency that makes local prices look small in dollars.

How fuel subsidies work

Of the 20 cheapest countries, 16 are significant exporters of oil or natural gas. That is not a coincidence, but it is also not simply “they have oil, so it’s cheap.” Crude oil has a world price, and a barrel sold at home is a barrel not sold abroad. When a government or state oil company sets the domestic pump price below what the fuel would earn on export markets, the difference is a subsidy, paid for in lost revenue rather than a visible budget line.

Governments keep these subsidies because they are popular and because, in many producing countries, cheap fuel is seen as each citizen’s share of the national resource. Removing them is politically risky: sharp fuel price rises have triggered protests in many countries over the years, so reforms tend to come slowly and in steps. The list also includes 4 countries we would not class as major exporters (Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Niger), which shows that subsidies and low taxes are a policy choice that importers make too.

What cheap fuel costs in other ways

A subsidy does not make fuel free; it moves the bill. The money spent keeping pump prices low is money not spent on schools, hospitals or roads, and it flows mostly to whoever burns the most fuel, which tends to be wealthier households with bigger cars. Very low prices also encourage smuggling: when fuel is many times cheaper on one side of a border, tankers and jerrycans find a way across. And with little price signal, people buy less efficient vehicles and drive more, locking in high consumption that makes later reform even harder.

Against local incomes the picture is more mixed than the price list suggests. Using World Bank GNI per capita, one day’s average earnings buys roughly 354 litres in Qatar, 332 litres in Kuwait, 302 litres in Venezuela and 159 litres in Saudi Arabia, compared with about 198 litres in the United States, where fuel costs more but incomes are higher. Very cheap fuel is not automatically the most affordable; it depends on what people earn. We only show countries for which we hold income data.

Per gallon, and where the US fits

For American readers: the cheapest country’s price works out to $0.09 a gallon, while the US average in the same snapshot is $4.65 ($1.23 a litre). That puts the United States at #38 of 170, outside the cheapest 20. US gas is inexpensive for a high-income country because federal and state fuel taxes are low by international standards, not because it is subsidised in the way the countries above are. If you are curious about the other end of the scale, the most expensive gas in the world costs many times more per litre.

Several of the cheapest countries are in the Gulf; we compare all six in petrol prices in the Gulf. For the full explanation of taxes, subsidies and currency effects, read why gas prices differ between countries, or browse every country on the petrol price tracker.