Two people land at Heathrow on the same flight and both want to see Trafalgar Square that afternoon. One taps a bank card at the Tube gates and pays £5.90. The other follows the purple signs for the Heathrow Express, buys a ticket at the machine and pays £26 for the train, plus another £3 for the Tube at the other end. They arrive within about fifteen minutes of each other. A third person gets in a black cab and pays somewhere between £70 and £120, and if it's rush hour, arrives last.
That's London's airports in one paragraph. There are six of them, each has three to six ways into the city, and the price difference between the cheapest and the most expensive option is rarely less than five times and often more than twenty. Fares go up most years, so treat the numbers below as a snapshot from September 2026. What doesn't change is the order: the cheap options stay cheap and the expensive ones stay expensive.
To keep it concrete, every route below ends at one of two places: Trafalgar Square (nearest stations: Charing Cross, Embankment and Leicester Square) or the Tower of London (Tower Hill, with Tower Gateway on the DLR next door). Between them they cover the West End and the City, which is where most visitors sleep anyway.
The Rules That Hold at Every Airport
Before the airport by airport detail, a few things that are true everywhere and will stay true long after this year's prices are out of date.
- Anything called "Express" costs two to four times more - and usually saves you less time than you'd think. The Gatwick Express is literally no faster than the ordinary Southern train on the same tracks. The Heathrow Express is faster than the Tube, but you lose most of the gain changing trains at Paddington.
- Tap a contactless card, never buy a paper ticket - on the Tube, a paper single costs more than tapping a bank card or phone, and it never counts towards the daily cap. A Visitor Oyster card works too, but it has a non-refundable fee, so for most people a normal contactless card is simply cheaper.
- Coaches are the cheapest and the slowest - National Express and friends start at around £6-11 from every airport, but the coaches end at Victoria or Liverpool Street and sit in the same traffic as everyone else.
- Taxis are the most expensive by a mile - a black cab from Heathrow or Gatwick costs roughly what a family of four would pay for the train, several times over. They start to make sense only for groups with a lot of luggage, or after the trains have stopped.
- Weekday mornings cost more - on the trains from Gatwick, Southend and the DLR from City Airport, the fare between 6:30 and 9:30am on weekdays is noticeably higher. Heathrow is the odd one out: its Tube and Elizabeth line fares to central London are the same all day.
One thing that has changed recently is worth knowing: contactless payment now works at Stansted and Southend airports too, since March 2026. A lot of older guides still say it doesn't.
Heathrow: From £1.75 to £120
Heathrow is the biggest airport and has the widest spread of options. From cheapest to most expensive:
| Option | Adult single | To Trafalgar Sq. | To the Tower |
|---|---|---|---|
| N9 night bus (nights only) | £1.75 | About 75 min, stops at Trafalgar Square | Change needed |
| Piccadilly line (Tube) | £5.90 | About 60-70 min | About 75-80 min |
| National Express coach to Victoria | From about £11 | About 1.5 hours or more | About 1.5 hours or more |
| Elizabeth line | £15.50 | About 50-55 min | About 60-65 min |
| Heathrow Express + Tube | £13 (advance) to £29 (on the day) | About 45-50 min | About 55-60 min |
| Uber or minicab | Roughly £55-85, more at surge times | 45 min to 1.5 hours | 45 min to 1.5 hours |
| Black cab | £70-120 on the meter | 45 min to 1.5 hours | 45 min to 1.5 hours |
The Piccadilly line is the default for a reason. It runs straight from all the terminals to Leicester Square, a seven-minute walk from Trafalgar Square, and it's the cheapest thing on rails. The catch is that it takes around an hour, the trains have no luggage space, and from Hammersmith inwards in the morning rush you may be standing with your suitcase between your knees. For the Tower, change at Earl's Court or South Kensington to the District or Circle line for Tower Hill. On Friday and Saturday nights it runs all night (from Terminals 2, 3 and 5, not 4).
The Elizabeth line is the comfortable middle option: new, air-conditioned trains with room for bags, about 10-15 minutes faster than the Piccadilly line. Get off at Tottenham Court Road and take the Northern line one stop to Charing Cross, or ride to Liverpool Street and take the Circle line to Tower Hill. It costs £15.50, which sounds steep next to £5.90, but there's a twist: it counts towards the daily cap on London transport, which is £16.30 for zones 1 to 6. So on your arrival day, every other Tube and bus ride costs you almost nothing. Terminal 5 only gets two Elizabeth line trains an hour, though, so from T5 the Piccadilly line is often quicker in practice.
The Heathrow Express is where the price gap gets interesting. Buy on the day and it's £26 to Paddington, and that doesn't count towards any cap. Then you still need the Bakerloo line to Charing Cross or the Circle line to Tower Hill. Book 30 days or more ahead, though, and advance tickets start at £10, which makes it cheaper than the Elizabeth line. Children 15 and under ride free with an adult. Door to door, the Express and the Elizabeth line end up about the same speed, because of that change at Paddington.
The one real Heathrow surprise: there is no off-peak fare from Heathrow to central London on the Tube or the Elizabeth line. It's the same price at 3am on a Sunday as at 8am on a Monday.
Gatwick: The Express That Isn't Faster
Gatwick is 45 km south of the city and has no Tube, so everything goes by train, coach or car. This is where the "express" premium is at its least defensible.
| Option | Adult single | To Trafalgar Sq. | To the Tower |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Express coach to Victoria | From about £6 | 1.5-2 hours | 1.5-2 hours |
| Thameslink or Southern (contactless, off-peak) | £10.70 | About 50 min | About 50-55 min |
| Same, weekday morning peak | £19.20 | About 50 min | About 50-55 min |
| Gatwick Express to Victoria | £24 | About 50 min | About 55-60 min |
| Pre-booked minicab or Uber | Roughly £70-110 | 1.25 hours or more | 1.25 hours or more |
| Black cab | Well over £100 | 1.25 hours or more | 1.25 hours or more |
The Gatwick Express takes 31 minutes to Victoria. The ordinary Southern train to Victoria, on the same line, takes 32 or 33. The Express costs more than twice as much on contactless and runs half as often. I honestly can't think of a reason to take it, apart from habit and very good marketing at the airport.
Better still, ignore Victoria altogether. Thameslink trains run from Gatwick to London Bridge in about half an hour, and from there it's an eight-minute hop to Charing Cross, right on Trafalgar Square, for the same £10.70 contactless fare. For the Tower, London Bridge is already there: walk across London Bridge or along the river to Tower Bridge in 15-20 minutes, which is a pretty spectacular first walk in London. Thameslink also runs through the night, roughly hourly.
Stansted, Luton and Southend: The Budget Airline Airports
These three are where most low-cost flights land, and they're further out, so the trip into town can cost more than the flight did.
Stansted
Stansted has only one train into London, the Stansted Express to Liverpool Street, about 47 minutes. On contactless it's £21 off-peak and £23 at peak, but advance tickets start at around £10 if you book early, which is the biggest easy saving on this whole page. Coaches from National Express and Airport Bus Express start at about £7 and take 70 minutes to well over an hour and a half. From Liverpool Street, the Circle line gets you to Tower Hill in five minutes, or you can walk it in fifteen. Note that Oyster cards still don't work at Stansted, even though contactless bank cards now do.
Luton
Luton has an extra step that catches people out: the airport isn't on the railway, so you first ride the DART shuttle to Luton Airport Parkway station. On contactless that costs £4.90 on top of the train fare. Buy a train ticket to "Luton Airport" instead and the shuttle is included. From Parkway, Thameslink runs 24 hours a day through St Pancras, Farringdon and Blackfriars to London Bridge, and the East Midlands Railway "Luton Airport Express" gets to St Pancras fastest, in about 23 minutes. Advance fares start at around £6.50-10; on the day, expect £17-21 including the shuttle. Coaches start at about £7.
Southend
Southend is small, easy and underrated. The station is a hundred steps from the terminal, and Greater Anglia trains reach Liverpool Street in under an hour for £13.40 off-peak on contactless. That makes it one of the cheapest rail trips to the Tower of London from any of the airports. If you land after the last train, the airport's official taxi firm runs a shared taxi to Liverpool Street, priced per person.
London City: Cheapest, Closest and Easiest
If you have the choice, fly into London City. It's inside the city, in the old Docklands, and the DLR driverless train leaves from the terminal every few minutes. The fare is £3.30 off-peak or £3.90 in the weekday morning peak, the cheapest airport transfer in London by some distance.
The DLR from the airport runs straight to Bank. For the Tower, change at Canning Town for Tower Gateway, right next to the Tower, and you're there in about 35-40 minutes. For Trafalgar Square, take the DLR to Canning Town and the Jubilee line to Westminster, then walk ten minutes up Whitehall. It's all step-free, which makes it the easiest airport in London with a big suitcase. A black cab to the Tower is around £35-50, which is about the only airport where a taxi isn't wildly out of proportion.
When a Taxi Actually Makes Sense
The black cab is a London icon and the drivers know the city better than any app, since they spend years learning every street for an exam called the Knowledge. It's also the most expensive way into town from any airport. The official TfL guide puts Heathrow to central London at £70-120 on the meter, and there's a small extra charge for a pickup at the Heathrow taxi rank. Uber and pre-booked minicabs are cheaper, but not by as much as people expect, and surge pricing at busy times closes the gap.
Where it starts to add up is a group of four with big bags. Four Heathrow Express walk-up tickets plus the Tube cost more than £110, which is black cab territory, and the cab takes you to the door. The same logic works late at night, when the trains have stopped. For one or two people traveling light, a taxi is almost never the smart choice, and in rush hour it's often the slowest one too.
The Short Version
If you only remember five things:
- Heathrow - the Piccadilly line if you're on a budget, the Elizabeth line if you want comfort and plan to travel more that day, the Heathrow Express only with an advance ticket.
- Gatwick - Thameslink to London Bridge or Southern to Victoria on contactless. Never the Gatwick Express.
- Stansted and Luton - book the train in advance, or take the coach if you're in no hurry.
- Southend and London City - just tap your card and go. They're the cheap, easy ones.
- Everywhere - use contactless, avoid weekday mornings if you can and save the taxi for a group or the middle of the night.
Prices will have moved by the time you read this, so check TfL's fare finder and the operators' sites before you fly. The order won't have changed.
And if you want to know where all these airports actually sit around the city, or can't place Luton on a map of England, try finding them in Pinpoint, then have a look at our page on the United Kingdom. If you're planning a whole trip rather than just the ride in, our 5 Days In travel guides work the same way this post does: honest, specific and with the prices checked.