London transport for visitors: what it actually costs in 2026
Tap the contactless card you already own. A day in Zones 1–2 is capped at £8.90, while the paper Day Travelcard for the same journeys costs £16.60 — nearly double for nothing extra.
Most advice written for visitors to London is years out of date, and the mistake is expensive. Here is what Transport for London charges in 2026, and which of the four ways to pay is worth using.
Use the card in your pocket
Any contactless debit or credit card works on the Tube, DLR, London Overground, the Elizabeth line, buses, trams and most National Rail services in London. It does not need to be a British card. You tap the reader on the way in and again on the way out — except on buses and trams, where you tap only once, on entry.
You do not need to buy anything before you arrive, and you do not need an Oyster card. A foreign contactless card earns the same fares and the same caps as a British one. Check with your own bank about foreign-transaction fees, because that is the one cost TfL does not control.
Use the same card all week. Caps are calculated per card, so a couple tapping one card for two people breaks the cap and pays more. Two travellers means two cards, every time. Switching between your phone and the physical card counts as two different cards for the weekly cap.
The 2026 caps
You are never charged more than the cap, whatever number of journeys you make. These are adult pay-as-you-go rates.
| Zones | Daily cap | Monday–Sunday cap |
|---|---|---|
| Zone 1 only | £8.90 | £44.70 |
| Zones 1–2 | £8.90 | £44.70 |
| Zones 1–3 | £10.50 | £52.50 |
| Zones 1–4 | £12.80 | £64.20 |
| Zones 1–5 | £15.30 | £76.40 |
| Zones 1–6 | £16.30 | £81.60 |
Nearly everything a first-time visitor wants to see sits inside Zones 1 and 2, so £8.90 is the realistic daily ceiling. Heathrow is in Zone 6.
The Day Travelcard is a trap
An Anytime Day Travelcard for Zones 1–2 costs £16.60. The contactless daily cap for the same journeys is £8.90. You would have to be doing something unusual for the paper ticket to make sense, and for ordinary sightseeing it never does. It is still sold, still displayed at ticket machines, and still recommended by old guidebooks.
Peak and off-peak
Peak fares apply Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays, from 06:30 to 09:30 and again from 16:00 to 19:00. Everything else is off-peak. What matters is the time you touch in, not the time you finish.
One exception catches people out: every Tube and Elizabeth line journey to or from Heathrow is charged the peak fare if it starts, ends or passes through Zone 1 — including on a Sunday morning.
Two services sit outside the caps entirely. Heathrow Express and Southeastern high-speed trains are not included in any cap or Travelcard. A Heathrow Express ticket is charged on top of everything else, and the Elizabeth line reaches the same airport for the price of an ordinary fare.
When an Oyster card is still worth it
Rarely, for a visitor. An Oyster card costs money to obtain and has to be topped up, and it earns you the same fares as the card you already carry. It is genuinely useful in one case: if your bank card is not contactless, or you want to hand a fixed budget to a child or a companion.
Buses are cheaper than the Tube, and flatter
A single bus fare is the same wherever you travel and however far, with no zones involved, and the daily bus-and-tram cap is lower than the Tube cap. For a short hop in central London the bus is often both cheaper and quicker than descending to a platform, and you see the city on the way.
Checked against the official sources below on 3 September 2026.