How Much You Save on Gas with Costco, Walmart, Other Memberships

1 6 minutes read

How Much You Save on Gas with Costco, Walmart, Other Memberships

As if rising grocery prices weren’t enough, the AAA is now reporting that gas prices jumped more than 10 cents per gallon over the last week, reaching their highest level since September.

The current national average hit $3.26 per gallon this week, while some states (California) are paying as much as $4.91 per gallon for regular unleaded gas.

Your cost at the pump typically goes up in the warmer months, so this sudden uptick is likely here to stay through spring and summer. Fortunately, you do have options to fight back against rising fuel prices.

Subscribe to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

Be a smarter, better informed investor.

Save up to 74%

Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free E-Newsletters

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more – straight to your e-mail.

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice – straight to your e-mail.

Alongside gas-saving tips like driving slower and topping off the air in your tires, there are multiple shopping memberships that come with pretty juicy fuel discounts. Costco, Sam’s Club, BJ’s, Walmart Plus and Amazon Prime all offer members ways to save gas money.

But how do their fuel savings perks compare? To help you decide which membership could save you the most, we compared their gas savings side by side.

Along with average savings and membership prices, you’ll also see the number of discounted gallons of gas you’d need to buy in a year to pay for the cost of the membership. This number is based only on the savings at the pump.

All of these memberships come with other perks and ways to save beyond fuel discounts. So, make sure to look at the overall package of perks with each membership to see which one would give you the most total savings.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Gas Savings at a Glance
Row 0 – Cell 0	Costco	Sam’s Club	BJ’s	Walmart Plus	Amazon Prime
Potential savings	$0.05 to $0.25 per gallon	$0.05 to $0.25 per gallon	$0.05 to $0.25 per gallon (+ up to $0.15 extra off per gallon with the BJ’s One Mastercard)	$0.10 per gallon	$0.10 per gallon
Membership fee	$65 per year	$50 per year	$60 per year (or $120 per year to be eligible for extra $0.15 off)	$98 per year	$139 per year
Gallons to break even	260 to 1,300	200 to 1,000	240 to 1,200 (or 300 to 600 with BJ’s One+ Mastercard)	980	1,390
Row 4 – Cell 0	Join Costco	Join Sam’s Club	Join BJ’s Wholesale	Join Walmart Plus	Join Amazon Prime

Costco

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Potential savings: $0.05 to $0.25 per gallon
Membership fee: $65 per year
Gallons to break even: 260 to 1,300

Costco is well-known for its generously discounted fuel. The exact savings on gas vary based on your location. But warehouse clubs – including Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s –typically set their prices between $0.05 and $0.25 below the local average.

To find out exactly how much you’d save on fuel as a Costco member, search for your nearest location on Costco’s website. You’ll be able to see the latest gas prices at your nearest Costco gas station and compare it to the prices where you normally fuel up.

With the average driver using 498 gallons per year to fuel their car, it’s possible to pay for the membership on fuel savings alone if Costco’s prices are at least 13 cents lower than your local average.

If you share that membership with your spouse or kids, it’ll be even easier to earn your membership fee back in fuel savings alone each year.

If you join now, you can save up to $40 on your Costco membership, which will make it even easier to pay for your annual fee in gas savings alone.

Sam’s Club

Cars at a Sam's Club gas station

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Potential savings: $0.05 to $0.25 per gallon
Membership fee: $50 per year
Gallons to break even: 200 to 1,000

Like Costco, actual fuel savings at Sam’s Club vary by location. For more precise estimates of just how much you could save, check Sam’s Club map to find the fuel centers closest to you and check the current gas prices.

Compare those to the stations where you usually fuel up to see how much you’d save as a Sam’s Club member.

Since the annual membership is a little cheaper at Sam’s Club than it is at Costco, you could potentially break even sooner with just fuel savings alone. But, if you’re not just joining for gas savings, make sure to compare Costco and Sam’s Club memberships on all the perks they each offer.

If you are only interested in the fuel discounts at Sam’s Club, check out the Walmart Plus membership discussed below. Walmart’s membership is more expensive than Sam’s Club basic tier, but it includes access to Sam’s Club gas stations.

So if you like the other perks Walmart Plus has to offer, you can skip the Sam’s Club membership and still use the warehouse club’s gas stations.

BJ’s

Cars at a BJ's Gas station

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Potential savings: $0.05 to $0.25 per gallon (+ up to $0.15 extra off per gallon with the BJ’s One Mastercard)
Membership fee: $60 per year (or $120 per year to be eligible for extra $0.15 off)
Gallons to break even: 240 to 1,200 (or 300 to 600 with BJ’s One+ Mastercard)

Like other warehouse clubs, the savings at BJ’s gas stations depends on locations. Use BJ’s club locator to find your nearest BJ’s fuel station and see current gas prices.

The lowest tier membership costs $60 per year, which gets you access to member’s prices at BJ’s gas stations.

If you spring for the Club+ membership ($120 per year), you’ll get an extra $0.05 off at the pump. But the deepest discounts are reserved for those who sign up for Club+ membership and get the BJ’s One+ Mastercard.

The credit card carries no annual fee of its own and grants you an extra $0.15 off per gallon at BJ’s Gas locations. With that combo, you could see up to $0.40 in total savings per gallon.

For those who don’t want to fork over $120 per year, Capital One also offers the BJ’s One Mastercard. This one can pair with the cheaper $60/year BJ’s membership and shaves an extra $0.10 off the gas price at BJ’s gas stations.

Walmart Plus

Cars at a Walmart Gas station

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Potential savings: $0.10 per gallon
Membership fee: $98 per year
Gallons to break even: 980

Walmart has one of the best fuel savings programs outside of the warehouse club world.

With a Walmart Plus membership, you can get $0.10 off per gallon at over 13,000 gas stations nationwide.

That includes Walmart’s own gas stations along with thousands of Exxon, Mobil and Murphy stations. As mentioned earlier, you can also use Walmart Plus membership to pay member’s prices at Sam’s Club gas stations.

To get the lower prices, you’ll need to install the Walmart app on your phone. If you’re paying at the pump, you’ll have to pay through the app. But you can use any available payment method in the app that you like.

If you want to pay cash, the app has a “pay inside” option that will display a barcode the associate behind the counter can scan to give you the discounted price.

If you want to try out the fuel savings before committing to the annual fee, you can try Walmart Plus free for 30 days right now.

Amazon Prime

A car filling up at a bp gas pump

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Potential savings: $0.10 per gallon
Membership fee: $139 per year
Gallons to break even: 1,390

Amazon Prime members enjoy a similar fuel discount perk as Walmart Plus members. You can get up to 10 cents off per gallon at participating bp, Amoco and ampm locations.

To activate the perk, you’ll need to join Amazon Prime. Then, download the free earnify app and link your Prime account to it.

It’s worth noting that, with just over 7,000 locations, Amazon Prime’s fuel savings program has a little over half as many participating gas stations as Walmart Plus.

Of course, if you’re not regularly driving across the country, the total number of participating stations doesn’t matter as much as which participating locations are closest to you.

So, if you’re deciding between Amazon and Walmart, you’ll want to see which one has the most eligible gas stations in your area.

To do that, you’ll need to download the earnify app now to access its map of participating locations. To find the nearest gas stations where you’d be able to use a Walmart Plus discount, just search for Walmart, Sam’s Club, Exxon, Mobil and Murphy locations in your area.

Note that not every Walmart location has a gas station.

Bottom line

All five shopping memberships offer worthwhile fuel discount programs to its members. But, before you sign up for any, make sure to factor in location.

Maybe BJ’s gas prices look like the better deal, but the nearest station is 20 miles away, while Costco has a location just up the street from you.

You should also compare the other perks each membership offers so you can factor in any additional savings on groceries, prescriptions and other services you might take advantage of when you sign up.

Source link