Seattle gas in today’s dollars, August 2026
A gallon of regular cost $5.32 at the Seattle pump in August 2026. The line is deflated to the latest month, so today’s price is its own real price; the work is done on the old ones. A year ago’s gallon is $4.70 in today’s dollars, leaving this month up 13.1% in real terms.
The real number is the one that answers whether filling the tank actually costs more than it used to. Measured this way the record is $6.56 in June 2008, and today sits 19% below it — a very different sentence from the nominal series, which sets a new high every time the dollar shrinks.
Deflated by CPI-U, so “today’s dollars” means the latest period the price index covers. State fuel taxes and the clean-fuel standard are inside the number: this is what drivers paid, not what the crude cost. The line starts in January 1998, where BLS resumed collecting a Seattle price after roughly a decade of not publishing one.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics average-price series, regular unleaded gasoline, Seattle CBSA, via FRED APUS49D74714, deflated by CPI-U to the latest available period. Auto-generated each build.