In January 2026, Aramco began supplying a 98 octane grade for the first time, in Riyadh, Jeddah, the Dammam metropolitan area and along the connecting highways. The official announcement was specific about who it is for: it "meets the needs of sports vehicle users and high-performance engines that require a higher octane rating."
For a city with as many Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Porsche owners as Jeddah, that is not a minor footnote. For years, engines designed around a fuel that was not sold here have been running on 95 because there was nothing else. Now there is. So the question every owner is quietly asking at the pump deserves a straight answer rather than a marketing one.
What octane actually measures
Octane is not a measure of power, cleanliness, or quality. It measures one thing: how well the fuel resists igniting on its own under pressure.
Inside a petrol engine, the mixture is meant to be lit by the spark plug at a precise moment. If the fuel ignites early, on its own, from the heat and pressure of compression, that is knock — sometimes heard as a metallic rattle under load. It is destructive. A higher octane number simply means the fuel can take more compression before it does that.
So a higher number is not "better fuel" in the way that a bigger number is usually better. It is more headroom. Whether you need that headroom depends entirely on how much compression and boost your engine puts the fuel under.
What happens when you run less octane than the engine wants
Modern engines do not simply destroy themselves on the wrong fuel. Every one of them has knock sensors — effectively microphones listening for that early ignition. When they detect it, the engine management retards the ignition timing, lighting the mixture later, which reduces the pressure and stops the knock.
The engine protects itself. But it pays for the protection: you get less power, more heat rejected into the cooling system, and slightly worse fuel consumption. The car does not feel broken. It feels a little flat, and you almost certainly do not notice, because the change is gradual and you have nothing to compare it to.
This is the situation many higher-output European engines in Saudi Arabia have quietly been in. Calibrated in Europe around a fuel that was available there and not here, they have been operating with the timing pulled back, permanently, as a matter of routine.
And when you run more octane than it needs?
Nothing. This is the part the marketing tends to skip.
If your engine is calibrated for 95 and is not knocking on 95, higher octane gives it nothing to do. The knock sensors were never intervening, so there is no retarded timing to recover. You will not get more power, better economy or a cleaner engine. You will get a more expensive tank of fuel that behaves exactly like the cheaper one.
Higher octane will not damage anything either — this is a common worry and it is unfounded. It simply will not do anything.
Why the answer is different in Jeddah
Here is the part that a European owner's manual cannot tell you, and it is the reason this matters more here than the specification sheet suggests.
Heat pushes an engine towards knock. Intake air at 45°C is already hot before it is compressed, and hotter intake charge means higher combustion temperatures and a greater tendency to pre-ignite. Add a turbocharger — which heats the air further as it compresses it — and a Jeddah summer puts an engine considerably closer to its knock limit than the same engine in a German winter.
Which means a car that never asks for more than 95 in a temperate climate may genuinely be leaning on its knock sensors here, on a hot afternoon, fully loaded, climbing a ramp with the air conditioning at full load. The margin that felt generous where the car was developed is narrower on Al Andalus Road in August.
That does not make 98 necessary for every car. It does mean the honest answer for a turbocharged European engine in this climate leans further towards "worth it" than the same question would in Munich.
So should you use it? A practical answer
Check the fuel filler flap and the manual first. Manufacturers usually state two numbers, and the distinction between them is the whole answer:
"Minimum 95, recommended 98" — your engine was developed around 98. It will run safely on 95, with the timing pulled back to keep it safe. This is the case where 98 gives you back what the calibration intended, and where the difference is most worth paying for in this climate.
"95 octane" with no higher recommendation — the engine is calibrated for 95. Buying 98 buys you nothing. Spend the difference on the service schedule instead.
Beyond that, the cars most likely to benefit are the high-output turbocharged and performance engines: AMG and M models, Porsche across the range, and the more powerful turbo variants in the ordinary model lines. The cars least likely to notice are the naturally aspirated and lower-output turbo engines that make up most of the everyday fleet.
What 98 octane will not fix
This matters, because higher octane gets sold as a cure for things it has nothing to do with.
It will not fix a misfire. It will not clear carbon build-up on intake valves in a direct injection engine. It will not smooth a rough idle, quiet a noisy engine, or resolve a warning light. If your car has developed a rattle, a hesitation or a flat spot, that is a fault to diagnose — and switching fuel grade will mask nothing while the underlying cause continues.
If something has changed in how your car runs, the useful next step is reading what the engine has actually logged, not changing what you put in the tank.
One note on price
The premium grade is priced separately from 91 and 95, and that price has moved noticeably since launch. We are deliberately not printing a number here that would be wrong within weeks — Aramco publishes current retail prices on its own website, and that is the figure to check.
What we would say is this: if your manual recommends 98 and you drive a turbocharged car in Jeddah heat, the difference per tank is small relative to what you already spend keeping the car properly maintained. And if your manual asks for 95, no price makes 98 a good deal.
If you are not sure what your car takes
Send us the VIN on WhatsApp and we will tell you what the manufacturer specifies for your exact engine — not the model, the engine, because they differ within the same model line. It takes a minute and costs nothing, and it is a better basis for the decision than guessing at the pump.
Update: the price gap narrowed in July 2026
Part of the argument against 98 has always been what it costs. That changed in July 2026, when Aramco cut 98 from SAR 4.51 to SAR 3.93 a litre — a drop of about 13 per cent — while 91 held at SAR 2.18 and 95 at SAR 2.33.
It is still the expensive choice, and the reasoning above has not changed: use what the manufacturer specifies for your engine, and 98 does not buy performance on an engine that does not ask for it. But if your car does call for it, the gap is smaller than it was.