Since 12 October 2018 every filling station in the EU has carried the same set of fuel labels, and the cleverest thing about them is that you can read one without knowing what any of the letters mean. The shape tells you the fuel family. A circle is petrol. A square is diesel. A diamond is a gas. If the shape on the nozzle does not match the shape next to your fuel cap, stop: you are about to make an expensive mistake.
Three shapes, and that is the whole system
The labelling scheme was designed for a driver in a country whose language they do not read. That is why it leads with geometry rather than words.
- Circle: petrol. Contains an E and a number.
- Square: diesel. Contains a B and a number, or the letters XTL.
- Diamond: gaseous fuel. Hydrogen, CNG, LNG or LPG.
Learn those three and you have already eliminated the catastrophic class of error: petrol into a diesel tank and vice versa. Everything after this is refinement.
The number is a maximum, not a recipe
This is the part that trips people up. The number after the letter is a ceiling on the biocomponent, by volume, not a promise of exactly that much.
Petrol, the circles. E5 means fuel containing up to 5% ethanol by volume, and up to 2.7% oxygen by mass. E10 allows up to 10% ethanol. E85 is superethanol, a high-ethanol fuel for vehicles specifically built for it. A car approved for E10 can happily take E5; the reverse is not automatically true.
Diesel, the squares. B7 means up to 7% biodiesel (FAME) by volume. B10 raises that ceiling to 10%, a real difference, and the reason B10 is not simply interchangeable with B7 in every engine. B20 and B30 exist but are intended for captive fleets, vehicles maintained and fuelled by one operator who knows exactly what their engines tolerate. You are unlikely to meet them on a public forecourt, and if you do, they are not for a random passing car.
XTL, also a square. This is synthetic paraffinic diesel, not made by refining crude in the usual way. Its properties differ from ordinary diesel: lower density and lower sulphur content. It behaves as a diesel, but it is a distinct product and labelled as one.
The diamonds. H2 hydrogen, CNG compressed natural gas, LNG liquefied natural gas, LPG liquefied petroleum gas. These are not variants of each other. A CNG vehicle cannot take LPG, and nothing about the diamond shape implies otherwise: the shape only warns you that you are in gas territory, where the fuels are genuinely incompatible with one another.
The one rule that prevents nearly every mis-fuel: do not translate the commercial name on the price board. Match the label on the nozzle to the label on your car. Both are printed in the same standard specifically so that you never have to interpret anything.
Where the labels are legally required to be
The rules do not just cover the pump. Labels must appear in four places, which is what makes the matching trick reliable:
- On the fuel distribution unit and on top of the fuel dispensing nozzle at public filling stations
- On new vehicles, next to the fuel tank door or cap
- In the vehicle instruction manual, including electronic versions
- At motor vehicle dealerships
One important limit: the vehicle-side requirement applies to new vehicles registered after 12 October 2018. If your car is older, there may be no sticker by the filler cap. In that case the manual, or the manufacturer's compatibility list, is the authority, not the attendant's guess and not a forum post.
Why the price board still confuses everyone
The labels are standardised. The commercial names are not, and never were. The same E5 95-octane petrol is sold as SP95 in France, Super in Germany and half a dozen other names elsewhere; diesel appears as Gazole, Diesel, Nafta and more depending on which border you last crossed. Brands add their own suffixes: Ultimate, Excellium, V-Power, Verva, which describe additive packages, not a different fuel standard.
So a driver comparing prices across a border is often comparing two names for the identical product, or worse, two genuinely different products with similar-sounding names. The standardised label is the only reliable cross-border identity a fuel has. Read it, then read the price.
A short cross-border checklist
- Before you leave: photograph the label next to your own fuel cap. It is the one piece of information you will want at a foreign pump and the one you will not remember.
- At the pump: shape first, then code. Circle-to-circle, square-to-square.
- If the code differs: a higher number means more biocomponent. Going below your car's rating is generally safe; going above it is the question worth pausing for.
- With a gas vehicle: never assume one diamond substitutes for another. CNG, LNG, LPG and H2 are four different fuels sharing one warning shape.
- If nothing matches: do not fill. A wasted twenty minutes finding another station costs less than a drained and flushed fuel system.
How this maps onto what you see on Refuelia
Refuelia reads fuel availability from OpenStreetMap's station tags, which follow the same families: diesel, petrol grades, LPG, CNG, electricity, and shows them per station where the data exists. That is the honest limit: the map can tell you a station is tagged as selling LPG, and a driver report can tell you the pump was working an hour ago, but only the label on the nozzle in front of you is authoritative for what is coming out of it.
Which is the point of the whole scheme. The label exists so that the last check before you pull the trigger is something you can verify with your own eyes, in any country, without speaking the language.
Related reference: Where fuel prices actually come from: the official European sources