Home › Methodology
How this site works
Where the numbers come from
Every price on this site comes from a real source — we never publish an estimated or made-up number. Each price carries a badge telling you exactly which source backs it.
- Metro prices (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata) — Govt source. Read from the Government of India Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell (PPAC) daily price PDF — the most authoritative daily source available.
- Other cities — Aggregator. Read from the Goodreturns commercial aggregator, because no government source publishes a daily machine-readable price for non-metro cities. Medium confidence.
- When today's source is down — Last verified. We show the last verified price (with its date) rather than guess.
- The OMC widgets (IOCL / BPCL / HPCL) are currently not a live source: IOCL's public page is SMS-only, BPCL's site firewall-blocks our server, and HPCL's price page redirects away. Our scrapers detect this and fail honestly — they never invent a number.
- State VAT & central excise — published rates from PPAC and CBIC notifications. The pump price is observed; the tax breakdown (refinery share, excise, VAT) is computed from these published rates — a standard price decomposition, disclosed as derived, not separately observed per city.
The consensus rules
The engine is designed for a 3-source OMC consensus. With the OMC widgets down, the live path today is the PPAC government metro override (Govt source) and the Goodreturns aggregator fallback for other cities (Aggregator). If the OMC widgets ever come back, multi-source agreement reactivates automatically.
What this site does NOT do
- It does not invent or estimate prices.
- It does not provide investment or trading advice.
- It is not affiliated with any oil company, ministry, or government body.