Sure. We’ve all heard it before — you can save money on gas by making your car more efficient and driving less. Inflate your tires to the proper pressure, combine trips, tune-up your car, change your air filter, blah blah blah.

That’s not saving money on gas. That’s using less gas, which does save money. But how do you purchase gas at the lowest price?

Stop Being a Gas Snob

Some people, for whatever reason, feel a loyalty to buying a certain brand of gas. They think their car runs better on it, or that it will create less ‘gunk’ and better preserve the engine. This is marketing nonsense.

More than likely what’s happening is that people have an affinity for certain brand colors. This is what leads them to wheel into one gas station over another.

Of course, sometimes you don’t have a choice. You just need the closest gas station. Also, the high prices of gas in recent years has somewhat shattered the idea of loyalty to a certain brand.

Yet, people are creatures of habits. Whether its due to driving the same route or perhaps the what-you-know of brand colors, people often gravitate back to using a favorite gas station.

What’s the best way to get away from this? Data. Cold, hard, facts. I bet if you knew exactly what gas station had the cheapest gas in your city, you’d make a point of going there. But it’s hard to track, right? Gas stations are always changing their prices. A different gas station could have the lowest price on any given day. And driving around to find the best price, if you even have time for that, would defeat the purpose entirely.

You know what that means. Dust off your internet, because it’s time to go real-time.

3 Cool Sites and Apps to Find Cheap Gas

There are some really interesting — and dare I say fun — websites and iPhone apps devoted to finding the cheapest gas in your neighborhood.

GasBuddy.com is the best website I’ve seen for finding cheap gas. Like Gaucho, it relies on user-generated content. You can search by ZIP code to find the cheapest gas prices at stations near you. You can filter your results by grade and also find prices for diesel. Of course, you can also view maps for locations.

GasBuddy also offers an iPhone app. The app looks like a sweet mobile version of the site. The drawback is that it costs $2.99 at the iPhone app store.

If you really want to save some cash, just download the free Cheap Gas! app by David J. Hinson. It’s extraordinarily cool and free. I’ve used non-augmented reality version for awhile and it’s great. Plus, guess what? This app gets its info from GasBuddy. Win.