Guide

London, England

Getting around London

Tube, bus, taxi — paying as little as possible between neighbourhoods

London is a big city, and the distances between its neighbourhoods are long. Several options help you make the most of your time. But before choosing how to travel, you need to choose how to pay: that's where most of your transport budget is decided.

✎ fares checked in September 2026 — daily and weekly caps are frozen until 2027, while single fares are revised every year on 1 March

01How to pay for your journeys

This is the question I asked myself on every trip, and the answer has changed in recent years. Today, for the vast majority of visitors, it's the simplest one: your own contactless bank card, or your phone. Same fares as an Oyster, same caps, nothing to buy, nothing to top up, nothing to hand back.

Contactless (card or phone)

Free · identical fares and caps to Oyster

You tap in and out with your own bank card, and the system works out the best fare on its own, caps included. Always use the same card or phone for every journey, or the caps won't add up. One thing to check: some banks charge a fee on each foreign transaction — find out before you travel, or a dozen small taps will cost you more than the travel itself.

Oyster Card

£10.50 card fee, non-refundable

A rechargeable card valid on the Tube, buses, trams, DLR, Overground, Elizabeth line and Thames Clippers river boats. Note how much this has changed: the old £5 was a refundable deposit, which stopped being the case in 2022, and the fee has since risen to £10.50. It's still worth it in three cases: if your bank charges for foreign transactions, if you're travelling with a child aged 11 to 15 (the Young Visitor discount takes 50% off), or if you hold a UK Railcard. Leftover credit is refundable up to £10 at a machine — the card fee is not.

Paper Travelcard

Rarely necessary these days

The paper unlimited-travel pass still exists, but the automatic caps on contactless do the same job with nothing paid upfront. It only becomes worthwhile if your week doesn't start on a Monday, since the weekly cap runs Monday to Sunday.

✎ what to avoid entirely — the paper single ticket: around £7 for a Zone 1 journey, against £3 on contactless. More than double, for exactly the same train.

02The London Underground

The London Underground, known to everyone as "the Tube", is one of the oldest in the world — 11 lines across 9 fare zones. The network has grown since: the Elizabeth line, opened in 2022, crosses the city from east to west and serves Heathrow, and the Overground lines have carried individual names since late 2024 (Lioness, Mildmay, Windrush, Weaver, Suffragette, Liberty) instead of a single undifferentiated orange. All of them work with the same ticket.

Tap in and tap out: forgetting to tap out triggers the maximum fare for that line. Most attractions sit within Zones 1 to 3.

Zone 1 (peak / off-peak)£3.10 / £3

Zones 1-2£3.60 / £3.10

Zones 1-3£3.90 / £3.30

Zones 1-6 (incl. Heathrow)£5.90 / £4

Peak hours run Monday to Friday, 6:30-9:30am and 4-7pm. Everything else is off-peak.

The cap is where it all happens. Once you've reached the cap amount in a day, every further journey is free. It's automatic, there's nothing to activate, and it's what makes contactless unbeatable on a sightseeing trip where you're hopping between places all day.

Zones 1-2 · day / week£8.90 / £44.70

Zones 1-3 · day / week£10.50 / £52.50

Zones 1-6 · day / week£16.30 / £81.60

Bus and tram only · day / week£5.25 / £24.70

✎ the daily cap resets at 4:30am, not midnight — so a night out ending at 2am still counts towards the previous day. The weekly cap runs Monday to Sunday: if your trip starts on a Thursday, it won't help you.

03The bus

The iconic red double-decker is a great way to get around while taking in London's architecture — and it's by far the cheapest transport in the city. Tap on as you board, and only as you board: unlike the Tube, there's nothing to do when you get off.

Flat fare

£1.75 per journey, all zones

However far you go, the price doesn't change. The daily bus and tram cap is £5.25, which makes a whole day of buses cheaper than a single return on the Tube.

The Hopper fare

Unlimited transfers within one hour

This is the tip nobody knows. Your £1.75 buys you as many buses and trams as you like within the hour that follows your first tap — no extra charge. Two, three, four buses: still £1.75. Just tap as normal each time you board.

✎ head upstairs and sit right at the front: it's the best free view in London, and routes 11, 15 and 24 pass a good share of the landmarks without detouring

04Taxis

London's famous black cabs remain a good option, especially late at night or with luggage. Two choices exist side by side, and they don't suit the same situations.

Black cab

Hail on the street · metered

Drivers have passed "The Knowledge", a famously brutal exam requiring them to memorise London's streets — which is why they can slip around a jam without a satnav. They all take cards. Pricier than a ride-hailing app, but unbeatable when you have no signal and no patience, and the only one you can hail with a raised hand.

Uber, Bolt and the rest

Via app · price known upfront

Usually cheaper, with the fare confirmed before you get in, which spares you the anxiety of watching a meter. On the other hand, prices surge hard at rush hour and when theatres empty out, and the pick-up point can be awkward in the West End where stopping is banned on many streets.

✎ for a short journey across the centre during working hours, the Tube is almost always faster than a taxi — London is one of Europe's most congested cities, and the congestion charge applies on weekdays in the centre

05Walking, the underrated option

This is the advice I wish I'd read before my first trip. The Tube map is a masterpiece of design, but it lies about distance: it's geometric, not geographic. The result is that people take the Tube for journeys that are quicker on foot.

The clearest examples: Leicester Square and Covent Garden are four minutes apart on foot, while the Tube between them requires a change. Charing Cross and Embankment practically touch. And walking the Thames from Westminster to Tower Bridge is still one of the finest strolls in the city — you'll see more than you would stringing three stations together.

The TfL Go app shows walking times alongside its route suggestions: more often than not, it's the app itself that will talk you out of the Tube, and rightly so.