Introducing GasCo.st
GasCo.st helps visitors in foreign countries convert foreign gas prices into familiar terms.
For example, if you’re an American buying gasoline by the liter in Australia, you might wonder what you’re paying in terms of US dollars per gallon. You could manually do the math on your own by Googling for the current exchange rate, punching some numbers into a calculator or doing some mental math… or you could do it faster, more easily, and more accurately with GasCo.st
Screen recording of the app converting BRL per liter to USD per gallon
The web app guesses what you want to convert based on your system settings and connection information, so if you visit the website from an American phone in Australia, GasCo.st will assume you’re trying to convert liters per Australian dollar to US dollars per gallon.
And just in case it guesses incorrectly, GasCo.st supports over 150 different currencies which you can browse through, or search by name or currency code.
Screen recording the app offering currencies in a searchable dropdown menu
Currencies have different ways of being displayed, all of which are supported:
- Most currencies round to two decimal places, like the United States Dollar
- Some currencies round to three decimal places, like the Tunisian Dinar
- A couple of currencies round to four decimal places, like the Chilean Unidad de Fomento
- Some don’t use fractional units at all, like Japanese Yen
Screen recording of different currencies rounding to different decimal places
Rounding can introduce some problems. For example, as I write this, the US Dollar (USD) and the Iranian Rial (IRR) have dramatically different relative values: 1 USD = 42,100 IRR. If I convert the gas price of 1 IRR per liter into USD per gallon, GasCo.st says it's 0.01 USD per gallon… and warns about the difference: 1 IRR per liter is actually 0.00008991477617981734 USD per gallon.
Screen recording of a detailed USD to BTC conversion
Since exchange rates change all the time, GasCo.st updates its rates daily and shows when it was last updated. It also shows you what rate it uses since some countries have multiple rates in common use.
Screen recording showing the app's US Dollar to Argentine Peso exchange rate. Argentina specifically has several exchange rates depending on the type of transaction you are performing
Additionally, GasCo.st supports five different languages. Americans abroad might want to convert liters to gallons, but a foreigner in the US also might want to convert gallons to liters, which is why those languages (English, Spanish, German, Hindi, and Portuguese) correspond to the most common for visitors to the US.
Screen recording showing a language dropdown
Supporting different languages means handling different decimal separators (“,” or “.”) and the iPhone’s on-screen number keyboard only shows one or the other based on the language it’s using. This could lead to a situation where a user can’t type the number they need to, so GasCo.st detects what your system uses and compensates appropriately.
Just in case you somehow end up on GasCo.st in a language you don’t understand, the app will offer you the site in your closest supported translation. If you dismiss the alert, it’ll leave you alone and assume that’s the language you prefer in the future.
Screen recording of an alert offering a translated version of the site
Considering all of this, it should be clear that this is just a calculator… but it’s a really good calculator. There’s no ads or registration or anything like that, it’s just a normal web app that does exactly what it’s supposed to do and nothing else. Wouldn't it be great if more things were built with that goal?
I'd love it if you'd go take a look at what I made and tell me what you think. You can reach me on LinkedIn, through my contact form, or if you have an idea for GasCo.st, you can open an issue.