I drive a manual transmission car and I find my mileage to be comparable if not lower to an automatic transmission car. While activating cruise control, my mileage rises by a few kms because of this I have always wondered which transmission for my next car would be the best, considering mileage to be an important factor.
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Manual used to be when they were 5-6 speeds and autos were 3-5 speeds, but with modern 8+ speed automatics they are more economical due to more gear options. At the end of the day it’s only a couple MPG though and driving style is more of an impact.
It depends entirely on the driver. If you know when to shift, you are more efficient than and automatic transmission.
In addition to all of the great answers, I want to add that in some cases a manual transmission has more gears and a more fuel friendly drive ratio in high gear.
I believe this was the case in my 2006 5-speed Canyon vs. the auto 4-speed.
But for the last decade or so auto transmissions are being produced with 6+ gears so it is not likely to be a factor in the future.
First, as others mentioned, driving style is far more important than transmission type. That said:
CVT > fixed-speed automatic > manual, at least for modern cars.
There used to be tradeoffs of transmission losses for automatics, but this has been almost entirely engineered out in modern cars. Automatics will always shift at the right time, where humans never will. And CVTs can even keep the perfect gear ratio.
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