Every fare guide publishes a route table. Almost none divides the fare by the distance, which is where the interesting part lives. Do that across 24 routes and a clear curve appears: the rate falls from about £14.50 a mile on the shortest run to £1.78 on the longest, a difference of roughly eight times. It also throws up results that look wrong until you understand the pricing — Crawley costing more than somewhere further away, and central London producing four different figures on the same journey length.
Short journeys are the worst value. Horley at 2 miles costs £14.50 a mile. Bristol at 125 miles costs £1.78.
Distance does not always mean more. Crawley at 5 miles benchmarks £39; Redhill at 8 miles benchmarks £35.
"Central London" is four different prices. £70 headline, £81 London Bridge, £85 Victoria, £89 Marble Arch — same trip length.
Three routes get no figure here. Stansted, Luton and Southend have no defensible benchmark, so we have not invented one.
What Does Each Gatwick Route Actually Cost?
Twenty-four routes, ordered by distance, with the fare divided by the miles. That last column is the one worth reading.
| Destination | Miles | From | Per mile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horley | ~2 | £29 | £14.50 |
| Crawley | ~5 | £39 | £7.80 |
| Redhill | ~8 | £35 | £4.38 |
| Reigate | ~8 | £36 | £4.50 |
| East Grinstead | ~12 | £46 | £3.83 |
| Haywards Heath | ~13 | £52 | £4.00 |
| Dorking | ~14 | £49 | £3.50 |
| Horsham | ~15 | £55 | £3.67 |
| Croydon | ~22 | £58 | £2.64 |
| Clapham Junction | ~25 | £70 | £2.80 |
| Brighton | ~27 | £76 | £2.81 |
| Central London | ~28 | £70 | £2.50 |
| London Bridge | ~28 | £81 | £2.89 |
| Victoria | ~28 | £85 | £3.04 |
| Marble Arch | ~30 | £89 | £2.97 |
| London City Airport | ~35 | £90 | £2.57 |
| Heathrow | ~40 | £89 | £2.23 |
| Chichester | ~45 | £105 | £2.33 |
| Portsmouth | ~65 | £140 | £2.15 |
| Southampton | ~70 | £157 | £2.24 |
| Oxford | ~75 | £140 | £1.87 |
| Cambridge | ~90 | £168 | £1.87 |
| Bournemouth | ~95 | £187 | £1.97 |
| Bristol | ~125 | £222 | £1.78 |
Read the right-hand column top to bottom and the shape is unmistakable. It starts at £14.50, halves by the fifth row, halves again by the ninth, and settles below £2 for everything beyond seventy miles.
The two extremes
The two highlighted rows are the extremes. Horley, the closest destination on the table, is the most expensive mile-for-mile by a wide margin. Bristol, the furthest, is the cheapest — at £1.78 a mile it costs roughly an eighth of the Horley rate.
Why Does the Per-Mile Rate Collapse?
Sort those same two dozen destinations into distance brackets and what was an impression turns into figures.
| Distance band | Average per mile | Routes | Against the longest band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 10 miles | £7.79 | 4 | 4.0× more expensive |
| 10–20 miles | £3.75 | 4 | 1.9× |
| 20–35 miles | £2.81 | 7 | 1.4× |
| 35–70 miles | £2.32 | 4 | 1.2× |
| 70+ miles | £1.94 | 5 | Baseline |
A fourfold drop from the shortest band to the longest, and the biggest single step happens early — between the first band and the second the rate more than halves.
What you are actually buying on a short run
The explanation is that distance is the smaller part of what a fare covers. A licensed vehicle and driver dedicated to your journey, positioned at the airport at your time, with the forecourt charge inside the price and the return leg to consider — those costs barely move whether the trip is two miles or twenty.
On a 125-mile run those fixed costs are spread across a long journey and almost disappear into the per-mile figure. On a two-mile run they are the entire fare. Nobody is charging £14.50 for a mile of road; they are charging £29 for a vehicle, and the mile is incidental.
Why Does Crawley Cost More Than Somewhere Further Away?
The table contains a result that looks like an error and is not.
| Route | Miles | From | Per mile | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gatwick → Crawley | ~5 | £39 | £7.80 | Closer, dearer |
| Redhill → Gatwick | ~8 | £35 | £4.38 | Further, cheaper |
Three miles further, four pounds less
Three miles further and four pounds less. If fares rose smoothly with distance this could not happen, and the fact that it does tells you the model is not distance-based at these lengths.
Several things separate two short routes that look similar on a map: the road itself and how long it genuinely takes, how easily a driver can pick up onward work at the far end, and how much demand a particular route carries. On a five-mile job those factors outweigh the mileage completely.
Horsham at fifteen miles for £55 and Dorking at fourteen for £49 make the same point more gently. A mile apart in distance, six pounds apart in price.
Benchmarks Are Not Quotes — Price Your Actual Journey
Locked when you reserve · Kerb levy absorbed · Address to address · Identical price at 3am
Why "Central London" Is Four Different Prices
The single most misleading figure in any Gatwick fare guide is a lone number attached to central London.
| Destination | Miles | From | Per mile | Against the headline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Central London" | ~28 | £70 | £2.50 | The headline figure |
| London Bridge | ~28 | £81 | £2.89 | +£11 |
| Victoria | ~28 | £85 | £3.04 | +£15 |
| Marble Arch | ~30 | £89 | £2.97 | +£19 |
| Clapham Junction | ~25 | £70 | £2.80 | Level |
Nineteen pounds on the same journey length
Nineteen pounds separates the headline from Marble Arch on a journey two miles longer. That gap is not distance — it is where in London the traffic sits and how long the last few miles take.
Gatwick approaches from the south, so anything reached before crossing the river tends to price better than the same distance north or west of it — our executive class follows the same route logic at a higher tariff. Clapham Junction at 25 miles matching the £70 headline while Victoria at 28 reaches £85 is that principle in two rows.
Which Local Routes Are Worth Knowing?
The eight destinations inside twenty miles account for a large share of Gatwick traffic and behave quite differently from the London runs.
| Route | Miles | From | Per mile | Typically used by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Horley | ~2 | £29 | £14.50 | Airport hotels, local residents |
| Crawley | ~5 | £39 | £7.80 | Airport staff, hotel guests, business |
| Redhill | ~8 | £35 | £4.38 | Commuters, local departures |
| Reigate | ~8 | £36 | £4.50 | Residential, business travel |
| East Grinstead | ~12 | £46 | £3.83 | Residential Sussex |
| Haywards Heath | ~13 | £52 | £4.00 | Mid Sussex commuters |
| Dorking | ~14 | £49 | £3.50 | Surrey residential |
| Horsham | ~15 | £55 | £3.67 | West Sussex, families |
Where the ordering breaks down
Two things stand out. Every one of these routes prices above £3.50 a mile, well beyond anything on the longer table, and the ordering by price does not match the ordering by distance at any point in the middle.
Dorking at fourteen miles costs less than Haywards Heath at thirteen. Redhill at eight costs less than Crawley at five. These are not errors — they reflect the roads, the journey times and how readily a driver finds onward work at each destination.
Are Long-Distance Transfers Good Value?
On a per-mile basis they are the best value on the entire table, and for groups the case strengthens further.
| Route | Miles | From | Per mile | Each of 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chichester | ~45 | £105 | £2.33 | £26.25 |
| Portsmouth | ~65 | £140 | £2.15 | £35.00 |
| Southampton | ~70 | £157 | £2.24 | £39.25 |
| Oxford | ~75 | £140 | £1.87 | £35.00 |
| Cambridge | ~90 | £168 | £1.87 | £42.00 |
| Bournemouth | ~95 | £187 | £1.97 | £46.75 |
| Bristol | ~125 | £222 | £1.78 | £55.50 |
Why Oxford beats Portsmouth
Oxford is the standout. Seventy-five miles for £140 is £1.87 a mile — less than Portsmouth at sixty-five miles for the same money, because the road is faster and more of it is motorway.
Southampton carries particular weight because of the cruise terminals. A group heading for a sailing arrives with more luggage than any other passenger type, which alters which class you need rather than the journey itself — detail on the sailings page.
Rail exists on all of these routes and is often cheaper for one person. What it fails to address is run direct — most involve a change in London, which for four people with cases turns a single journey into a logistical exercise. The long-distance transfers page covers how these are priced.
What Do We Charge, Against Those Benchmarks?
Everything above this point describes the market. This section describes us, and the two do not always agree.
Our fares are fixed per vehicle at the moment you book. The table below shows three routes across the classes we run, with the forecourt levy already inside every figure.
| Route | Saloon | MPV8 | 10 seat | 12 seat | 14 seat | 16 seat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Croydon | £50 | £81 | £126 | £150 | £160 | £172 |
| Brighton | £55 | £89 | £139 | £165 | £177 | £189 |
| Central London | £68 | £110 | £172 | £204 | £218 | £234 |
Where we sit against the market floor
Comparing our saloon against the third-party benchmarks earlier on this page produces three results, and we have no intention of showing you only the ones that suit us.
| Route | Market floor | Ours | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Croydon | £58 | £50 | £8 below |
| Brighton | £76 | £55 | £21 below |
| Central London | £70 | £68 | £2 below — effectively level |
Central London is the honest row. Two pounds is not a competitive advantage; on that route we are simply at the market rate, and anyone shopping purely on price will find quotes at or near ours from several operators.
The Brighton discrepancy is worth explaining
The market benchmark puts Brighton at £76 against central London at £70 — Brighton dearer, despite being a mile shorter. Our own pricing reverses that: £55 to Brighton, £68 to central London.
The road explains it. Gatwick to Brighton is a clean run down the A23 with predictable timing throughout. Gatwick to central London covers a similar distance, but the last few miles are the slow ones, and a fare has to account for a journey that can take twice as long on a bad afternoon.
A benchmark averaged across many operators smooths that distinction away. Pricing built from the actual road does not, which is why the two tables disagree most on precisely the route where the roads differ most.
How the class multipliers work
Read the first table across and the ratios hold on every route: an MPV8 runs about 1.6 times the saloon fare, a 10 seater about 2.5, a 12 seater 3.0, a 14 seater 3.2 and a 16 seater roughly 3.4.
Those multiples look steep until you divide by the passengers. A 16 seater to central London at £234 is £14.62 each when full, against £22.67 a head for three people sharing a £68 saloon. The larger the vehicle, the better the per-person figure — provided you fill it.
What Does the Word "From" Actually Cover?
Every figure on this page carries it, and it is doing more work than it appears to.
A benchmark of £58 to Croydon means prices for that route start there, for a standard vehicle on a straightforward booking. It is a floor, not a fare — the comparison against app pricing shows how differently the two behave.
| Factor | Effect | How much it can matter |
|---|---|---|
| Exact postcode, not the town | Can move it either way | Up to a fifth of the fare |
| Vehicle class needed | Rises with size | The single largest factor |
| Passenger count | Determines class alongside luggage | Significant at class boundaries |
| Large hold cases | Often decides class on its own | More decisive than passenger count |
| Additional stops | Adds route length | Settled when you reserve, never afterwards |
| Date and time | No surge with us | Varies elsewhere |
| Seats for children | No charge | Chargeable with some operators |
| Mobility equipment | May require a specific vehicle | Mention it while we are quoting |
Rows two and four do most of the work, and they are connected. Published starting prices generally describe a standard saloon carrying three passengers with three cases. Four people with two cabin bags may fit that. Four people with five large cases will not, and the vehicle that does costs more.
This is why stating passengers and hold cases separately produces a better quote than a passenger count alone. The class-by-class breakdown sets out where each class exhausts its luggage space while belts remain free.
Why Does the Headline Fare Mislead Groups?
One price covers the car regardless of how many climb into it. That structural point changes every comparison on this page.
| Route | Vehicle | 2 people | 4 people | 8 people |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central London | £70 | £35.00 | £17.50 | £8.75 |
| Brighton | £76 | £38.00 | £19.00 | £9.50 |
| Southampton | £157 | £78.50 | £39.25 | £19.62 |
Where a vehicle undercuts a single rail ticket
Central London at £8.75 a head for eight people is below a single off-peak rail fare on the same route. Southampton at £19.62 each is well under the cost of eight train tickets plus the connections that journey would require.
The honest qualifier is that eight people need a larger vehicle than the saloon these benchmarks describe, so the real figures sit above them. They also rise far more slowly than eight individual tickets do, which is the whole point — our group transfers page covers where each class starts.
For the full comparison against rail, including where the crossover actually falls, see Gatwick Express versus taxi.
Which Routes Have No Reliable Published Fare?
A fare guide with a gap you can trust is worth more than a complete table you cannot.
| Route | Why no figure | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Gatwick ↔ Stansted | No current cross-airport benchmark | Live quote |
| Gatwick ↔ Luton | Figures exist for London–Luton, not this route | Live quote |
| Gatwick ↔ Southend | No sufficiently current data | Live quote |
Why we left the space empty
There are numbers circulating for central London to each of those airports, and it would be easy to reuse them. It would also be wrong — a cross-airport journey starts somewhere different, runs a different road and takes a different time.
What can be said generally is that Stansted is typically the most expensive of the London airports to reach, with central London fares broadly in the £75 to £95 range in 2026 comparisons. That is context rather than a Gatwick fare, and presenting it as one would be exactly the sort of thing this section exists to avoid.
What Should Be Inside the Fare?
Setting one quote against another is meaningless unless you know what sits inside each. This is where a lower headline finishes higher.
| Item | With us | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Gatwick forecourt charge | Inside the fare | Ten pounds per ten minutes, in force since 6 January 2026 |
| Flight monitoring | Included | Decides who absorbs a late landing |
| Meet inside arrivals | Included | An extra with some operators |
| Waiting from touchdown | Included allowance | Ask how long, and what applies after |
| Luggage handling | Included | Rarely itemised, occasionally charged |
| Seats for children | Nothing extra | Chargeable elsewhere |
| Overnight or weekend loading | None | 10–20 per cent is common in the market |
| Additional stops | Priced at booking | Should never appear on the day |
Comparisons come unstuck on the top and bottom rows. Something priced £8 under us, with the kerb fee bolted on at the exit, lands £2 over — and the survey of forecourt pricing lists the current rate at each UK airport.
Row seven repays a direct question. Adding 10 to 20 per cent at weekends is widespread, meaning a midweek number tells you little about the Saturday you actually travel on. Ask outright whether what you were quoted depends on the day.
Does Booking Both Legs Cost Less?
Roughly two thirds of airport bookings involve a journey in each direction, yet almost every published fare describes one leg in isolation.
| Two singles | Booked as a return | |
|---|---|---|
| Headline cost | Two full fares | Frequently a modest reduction |
| Vehicle allocation | Sized twice, possibly differently | One class agreed for both legs |
| Your details | Entered twice | Held once |
| Outbound timing | You set it | You set it |
| Inbound timing | Your estimate of the landing | Follows the tracked arrival |
| If the return date shifts | Cancel and rebook | Amended against the existing booking |
Where the saving actually comes from
Not from a discount code. It comes from certainty — a confirmed second job on a known date is worth more to an operator than an empty slot, and that is reflected in what can be offered.
The size of it varies with the route and how far apart the two legs sit. A same-week return on a busy corridor gives more room than a single journey booked eleven months ahead for an obscure address.
What happens if plans change
The practical advantage outweighs the money on most bookings. A return held as one arrangement can be moved; two unconnected singles have to be unpicked and rebuilt, and the second one gets repriced against whatever the date now looks like.
Find out how late a change can be made while you are still choosing, not once something has already shifted. Knowing that in advance beats a few pounds you notice afterwards.
What Notice Does Each Vehicle Need?
Lead time changes what is available far more than it changes the price, and the gap widens sharply as the vehicle gets larger.
| Booking | Give us at least | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Saloon, daytime, off-peak | 24–48 hours | Widest availability of any class |
| Saloon or estate, before 07:00 | 3–5 days | Drivers working that hour are a smaller pool |
| MPV or 8 seater | Several days | Fewer vehicles in the class |
| Minibus, any size | One week minimum | Scarcest class; no substitution possible |
| Half-term or bank holiday | Two weeks | Every group competes for identical dates |
| Late July to early September | Two weeks | The busiest stretch of the year |
| Christmas and New Year | Two to three weeks | Compressed demand across few days |
Why a minibus cannot be found at short notice
Lose a saloon and another slots in inside the hour. Lose a fourteen-seater and nothing slots in, because whoever drives it needs a D1 entitlement backed by current professional accreditation — and far fewer people hold that than hold an ordinary badge.
The vehicles themselves are also fewer. Between those two constraints, a large-group booking made two days out is a request rather than an arrangement.
Does reserving early lower the price?
Not with a fixed-fare operator, and that is worth understanding. What we charge for a particular route in a particular class does not shift between a reservation made eleven months ahead and one made tomorrow, because it is built from the journey rather than from demand at the moment you ask.
What early booking buys is availability and the class you actually wanted. On a dynamically priced service the calculation is completely different, and booking late is where those become expensive.
Does a Fixed Fare Stay Fixed?
Yes, and the exceptions are worth knowing precisely because they are all things you control.
| Event | Fare effect |
|---|---|
| Heavy traffic on the day | None — the journey takes longer, the price does not move |
| Your flight lands late | None — tracked, and the collection re-times |
| Slow immigration or baggage | Absorbed within the waiting allowance |
| A road closure or diversion | None |
| You add a stop | Repriced — it is a different journey |
| More passengers than booked | May need a larger vehicle |
| Luggage exceeds the vehicle | Upgrade required at the kerb |
| Destination changes | Repriced against the new route |
Road risk against booking changes
The split is clean. Everything in the upper half is a road or airport risk, and under a locked price that risk sits with us. Everything in the lower half is a change to the booking, and it is priced as one.
That distinction is the substantive difference between a fixed fare and a metered or dynamically priced journey. On a meter, an hour in traffic is your problem. On a fixed price it is not.
What Is Bundled Into the Price?
A fare is a package rather than a number, and the contents differ enough between operators that two similar figures can describe quite different products.
| Element | Question to ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting allowance on arrivals | What duration, measured from when? | Border control alone can run 45 minutes |
| Rate after the allowance | Charged how, in what blocks? | Rarely volunteered unless asked |
| Driver coming into arrivals | Standard or an extra? | Priced separately by some operators |
| Terminal levy | Inside the figure or at the barrier? | Turns a cheaper quote into a dearer one |
| Unsocial-hours loading | Does 03:00 cost more than 15:00? | Common practice; not universal |
| Weekend uplift | Is this figure day-specific? | 10–20 per cent is widely applied |
| VAT and receipts | Itemised invoice available? | Matters for expenses and accounts |
| Amendment and cancellation | What window, what cost? | Ask before booking, not after |
The two rows nobody asks about
Whether a late landing hurts your wallet comes down to the first two lines. Free waiting appears in everyone's marketing; the actual duration appears in far less of it, and the post-expiry rate in less again.
Ask both halves. A firm that responds to each without pausing has thought its pricing through; one that covers the duration and goes quiet on the rest has revealed more than it meant to.
Why the day of the week is a fair question
A Saturday premium of ten to twenty per cent runs through much of the trade, so a Tuesday figure tells you little about the day you are actually travelling. One sentence — does this depend on the date? — can turn a comparison on its head.
The same applies to unsocial hours. A pre-dawn collection priced identically to a mid-afternoon one is a deliberate policy rather than an oversight, and it is worth confirming which you are being offered.
Documentation for business travel
Business travellers do better settling the paperwork question while reserving, instead of pursuing documents weeks down the line. An itemised document showing the journey, the date and the amount is straightforward to produce in advance and awkward to reconstruct weeks later.
How Do You Get an Accurate Quote First Time?
A good quote is mostly a function of the information behind it. Nine details produce a figure that will not move.
| Give us | What it decides | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Full destination address, not the town | The route, and a fifth of the fare |
| 2 | Large hold cases, counted separately | The vehicle class |
| 3 | Passenger count, exact | Class alongside the luggage |
| 4 | Flight number | Terminal, tracking and collection timing |
| 5 | Cabin bags and hand luggage | Fits alongside, but not without limit |
| 6 | Buggies | Forgotten more often than anything else |
| 7 | Bulky or sporting kit | Measurements are more use than a label |
| 8 | Seat requirements and children's ages | Installed at base ahead of dispatch |
| 9 | Any additional stops | Priced now rather than on the day |
The two details that matter most
Rows one and two account for most of the variance between a benchmark and a real quote. A town name and a passenger count will produce a figure; an address and a case count will produce the right one.
Row six deserves its flag. One collapsed buggy occupies real volume; a pair occupies considerably more. It is nonetheless the thing left out of luggage counts more than any other item, largely because nobody thinks of it as a case. We fit seats for children at no charge, though each one claims a belt that would otherwise hold an adult.
Why a town name is not enough
Croydon is a useful example of why row one carries so much weight. The borough covers a wide area, and a fare quoted to one end of it is not the fare to the other. The published benchmark describes a representative journey; your postcode describes yours, and between the two sits a meaningful sum.
The same applies with more force in London, where two addresses three miles apart can sit on opposite sides of a river crossing and produce quotes fifteen pounds apart. Giving a full address costs you nothing at the quote stage and removes the largest single source of variance between a benchmark and a real price.
The question worth asking any operator
Whether the figure quoted is fixed for the journey or an estimate that can move. Those are different products presented in similar language, and the distinction only becomes visible when something goes wrong — which is precisely when you least want to discover it.
A fixed fare should survive traffic, a diversion, a delayed flight and a slow baggage belt without changing. If an operator will not commit to that in writing before you travel, the number they gave you is an estimate regardless of what it was called.
Common Questions About Gatwick Fares
Related Guides
A Benchmark Is Not Your Fare — Get the Real Number
Where you are going · How many of you · What you are carrying · Settled in advance
