Walmart vs Costco: Gasoline Sales Revenue

Charging station. Pexels Images.

This article compares the fuel or gasoline revenue between Walmart and Costco. We will look at several fuel revenue metrics, including the absolute fuel sales revenue, fuel growth, and fuel sales as a percentage of net sales.

Let’s look at the numbers!

For the detailed statistics of Walmart and Costco’s gasoline revenue, you may find more resources in these pages:

Walmart

• Walmart fuel sales revenue and gasoline profit margin,

Costco

• Costco gas station numbers and gasoline revenue,

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Definitions

To help readers understand the content better, the following terms and glossaries have been provided.

Walmart vs Costco in Fiscal Schedules: Walmart’s FY2026 financial results are compared against Costco’s FY2025 results due to differences in their fiscal year reporting.

Walmart operates on a fiscal calendar that ends on January 31, meaning its FY2026 includes February 2025 to January 2026. In contrast, Costco follows a fiscal year ending in August, making its FY2025 cover September 2024 to August 2025.

Since Costco’s FY2026 results are not yet available at the time of Walmart’s latest fiscal report, analysts and industry comparisons often use Costco’s FY2025 as the closest match when evaluating the two retailers’ financial performance.

This approach ensures that the most recent annual results for both companies are used while accounting for their differing fiscal schedules.

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Insight & Summary of Walmart vs Costco in Gasoline Sales

The following analysis consolidates the trends observed across Walmart vs Costco’s gasoline revenue for the 2019–2026 period.

• Costco and Walmart both leverage fuel as a strategic, low-margin mechanism to drive recurring physical foot traffic, but Costco’s absolute volume execution is vastly superior. Over the latest three periods (FY2023–FY2025), Costco generated an average of $29,283 million in fuel sales, nearly triple Walmart’s average of $10,285 million over the same timeframe.

• This massive disparity underscores Costco’s utilization of fuel not just as an ancillary convenience, but as a core pillar of its membership value proposition. Despite the vast difference in absolute dollars, both retailers maintain a remarkably similar reliance on fuel relative to their total revenue profile, with fuel averaging 11.7% of Costco’s net sales and 11.5% of Walmart’s net sales over the last three years.

• Growth metrics in this segment reflect extreme cyclicality tied to global macroeconomic commodity pricing rather than organic retail demand. Following the massive, inflation-driven revenue spikes in FY2021 and FY2022, both companies experienced sequential top-line contractions through FY2025 as fuel prices normalized.

• However, Costco has demonstrated superior resilience during this deflationary cycle. While Walmart saw average fuel revenue growth contract by -9.9% over the last three periods, Costco’s contraction was less severe, averaging -4.6%. This delta suggests that Costco’s membership-gated model commands higher inelasticity and customer retention at the pumps, insulating its volume better than Walmart’s more transient consumer base during shifting commodity cycles.

The table below combines Walmart and Costco gasoline revenue metrics into a single view for the latest three fiscal years.

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Walmart vs Costco: Fuel Sales Revenue

For the definition of the fiscal schedules of Walmart and Costco, you may refer to this section: Walmart vs Costco in fiscal schedules.

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Walmart vs Costco: Fuel % to Net Sales

For the definition of the fiscal schedules of Walmart and Costco, you may refer to this section: Walmart vs Costco in fiscal schedules.

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Walmart vs Costco: Fuel Revenue Growth

For the definition of the fiscal schedules of Walmart and Costco, you may refer to this section: Walmart vs Costco in fiscal schedules.

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References and Credits

1. All financial figures presented were obtained and referenced from Walmart and Costco’s quarterly and annual reports published on the respective investor relations pages: Walmart Investor Relations and Costco Investor Relations.

2. Pexels Images.

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Disclosure

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist us in writing some of the text in this article. However, the data is directly obtained from original sources and meticulously cross-checked by our editors multiple times to ensure its accuracy and reliability.

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