How far you can drive on R100 of petrol in South Africa

You can expect to get anywhere from 38km to 115km on R100’s worth of petrol in South Africa, depending on your car’s mileage.

The cost of fuel continues to be a thorn in the side of household budgets as prices over R20 per litre has settled in as the new norm over the past few years.

As of October 2025, petrol 95 is currently retailing for R21.63 per litre at inland rates, though coastal users are enjoying a marginally better rate of R20.80 per litre.

Depending on the size of your car’s tank, this is how much you can expect to pay to top up this month, based on the inland rate for petrol 95:

Of course, the fuel bill is only part of the story, as it helps to get a better sense of how much we are paying for petrol on a per kilometre basis.

Right now, R100 will buy you 4.6 litres of petrol, but how far that will take you heavily depends on your car’s fuel consumption.

With that in mind, we calculated how much distance a person can expect to cover on R100’s worth of petrol based on various fuel consumption figures:

The only cars that can travel more than 100km are those with an average consumption under 5.0l/100km.

These models offer a return of over 1km per rand spent, but the unfortunate reality is that very few cars can achieve this level of frugality.

Most of the vehicles that consume less than 5.0l/100km are hybrids, and the only ones that aren’t tend to be small hatchbacks with 1.0-litre engines.

For the average motorist, a fuel stat between 6.0l/100km and 8.0l/100km is more realistic, which means most South Africans are getting anywhere from 57km to 77km of range per R100 note.

The silver lining is that it is also relatively uncommon to see cars with a mileage of 9.0l/100km or higher, as many of these are high-end models with a focus on performance or luxury, and it’s fair to assume that these owners are probably not as concerned with fuel prices as other motorists to begin with.

Petrol price for October

The Department of Petroleum and Mineral Resources’ latest fuel price adjustments came into effect on Wednesday, 1 October 2025.

The changes were rather anemic, with petrol seeing an 8c per litre increase while diesel benefitted from a 10c per litre reduction.

The table below shows the official fuel price adjustments for this month:

While it is good news that prices did not increase by a substantial amount, it is sure to be of little comfort to motorists who are struggling to keep up with the already high cost of fuel.

A TopAuto survey recently found that 74% of motorists refuel more than once a month, which means a person who owns a 30-litre tank is probably budgeting at least R1,297.80 for petrol every month, assuming they only need to refuel twice.