Which Black Cab Tour of London Should You Book?

In a search result these tours look almost identical: a black cab, a driver, a few hours, a fare. Read the listings properly and they are four different products with prices from From $304 to $1,286. This guide sorts them by the only two things you actually have — hours free, and who is travelling with you.

Start with the two things you actually have

Almost every wrong booking here comes from starting at the wrong end. People start with the price, or with a theme they like, and end up with three hours when they needed two, or a five-seat cab for a party of six.

Start instead with your hours and your party. Hours decide how much of London fits. Party size decides what the fare works out at each, because the fare hires the vehicle rather than the seat. Everything below follows from those two numbers.

How much does a black cab tour of London cost per person?

It depends entirely on how many of you there are, which is not true of most tours you will book anywhere. A three-hour run at $430 is $215 each for two people and $72 each for six. The same tour, the same day, the same driver.

One exception, and it is the only one: the Cotswolds day tour is quoted per person rather than for the cab. Check that before you compare it with anything else here. The full arithmetic is in what a black cab tour costs.

What do you get that a bus or a walking tour does not?

Four things, and they are the reason the format exists.

• A vehicle that goes where others cannot. A licensed London taxi may use bus lanes and roads closed to most traffic, and it can stand on Horse Guards Parade. It pays neither the Congestion Charge nor the Ultra Low Emission Zone charge.
• A driver who can be redirected. Every one has passed the Knowledge of London, which Transport for London sets at 320 routes and says takes three to four years. Ask for the City churches mid-tour and you get them.
• Door-to-door collection. No meeting point, no walk to a stop, no working out which loop you are on.
• A wheelchair bay as standard. Every licensed London taxi is required to be accessible, which no other sightseeing format in the city can say.

Two hours: what fits, and what does not

Two hours is the shortest block sold here and the cheapest fare on the site. It reaches Buckingham Palace, St James's Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, St Paul's and the Tower of London, with Big Ben, Trafalgar Square and Tower Bridge passed rather than parked at.

What it does not reach is anything west of Westminster. Kensington Palace, the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial are all on the six-hour route and none of them fits in two. Nor does it leave time to go inside anything, though no tour here does that anyway.

Take it on your first morning. Almost every review that mentions timing says the same thing: knowing where everything was changed how they spent the rest of the week.

Three hours: the length most people should book

Three hours is where the format starts to breathe. One three-hour listing publishes fourteen named stops, from the Tower of London round to St Paul's by way of the London Eye and Piccadilly Circus, and every one of them is a photo stop with the cab waiting.

It is also the length every themed route runs to. The film-location tour covers nine stops in three hours; the shorter Christmas lights run does two and a half. If you want a theme, three hours is what you are buying whether you choose it or not.

Four to six hours: when the route becomes yours

At four hours and above the published itinerary stops being the point. The four-to-six hour private tour gives thirty minutes each to Buckingham Palace and St Paul's Cathedral and twenty each to Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square and the Tower of London — and then does whatever you asked for.

Six hours adds the west: fifteen minutes at Kensington Palace, ten each at the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial, half an hour at Guildhall and half an hour at the Bank of England Museum. It usually includes a lunch stop. It is the length that shows you the London most sightseeing skips.

Nine hours: the days that leave London

Two products run to nine hours and both go to the Oxfordshire Cotswolds: Cogges Manor Farm, Asthall, Swinbrook, Burford, Shilton and either Bibury or Bampton. About four hours of that is driving. A third day trip runs six hours to Windsor Castle and back.

These are wonderful days for adults and long ones for small children. If you are travelling with anybody under about ten, the six-hour Windsor run is the outer limit worth attempting.

Should you take a themed tour or an open one?

Take the theme if you have one. The Beatles routes reach more than thirty addresses that a general sightseeing tour never touches, including Abbey Road, Carnaby Street, the London Palladium and 3 Savile Row. The film-location routes reach nine that no walking route joins up.

Take the open tour if you do not. A themed route spends its hours on its theme, so a first-time visitor who books the Beatles day will see the landmarks through a window on the way between studios. Do the landmarks first, then the theme, if you have the days for both.

The four kinds of day, side by side

Who should book something else

Two travellers on a tight budget. A whole cab fare split two ways is a lot for two hours, however good the driver is, and a hop-on hop-off ticket does the orientation for a fraction of it. The comparison is made properly in cab against bus.

Anybody whose plan is to spend the day inside buildings. No fare here covers admission to anything, and one tour says so in its own exclusions block. If the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey are the day, buy those tickets and use the Underground between them.

A party of six looking at the film-location tour or the cheaper Beatles route: both cap at five. Check the cap before the price.

Does the operator matter, or only the driver?

On this evidence, the driver. Nine different operators are represented across these tours and the reviews barely mention any of them by name; what they name, over and over, is the person who turned up. That is not an accident of how people write reviews. A London taxi licence belongs to the individual rather than to a firm, so the company you book through is arranging the booking rather than supplying the expertise.

What the operator does decide is the practical envelope: the pickup zone, whether an airport is served, the passenger cap, whether fuel and parking sit inside the fare, and how quickly a booking is confirmed. Those are the things worth comparing on the listing, and they are exactly the things this site sets out on each card.

What the reviews actually change about this decision

Two things, and both are worth more than a star rating. The first is that almost every warm review describes a route being changed on the spot — a traffic problem worked around, a request added, a stop dropped. If you were choosing between a fixed itinerary and an open one, the evidence says the open one is what people remember.

The second is the complaint. It is always the same complaint: traffic against a fixed clock, and one reviewer who felt rushed and was dropped fifteen minutes from their hotel. That tells you to book the morning rather than the middle of the day, and to agree the drop-off address rather than assume it. The unedited set is on the reviews page.

How to brief your driver so the day works

Every operator here contacts you before the day, and that conversation is the single biggest thing you control. Three things to say in it.

1. Two stops you actually care about. Not a list of twelve. Two, and the rest of the route arranges itself around them.
2. Anything that limits walking. Reviews describe drivers bringing a wheelchair unasked and getting a family to the front of every stop. They can only do that if they know.
3. Where you want to finish. Several operators will drop you somewhere other than where they collected you, and ending near dinner buys you an hour of the evening.

Frequently asked questions

What each landmark gives you from the kerb is on what a tour stops at, and where a cab may collect you is on the pickup and routes page. Every tour is set out with its hours, its cap and its fare on Black Cab London Tours.

The tours this guide keeps coming back to

London Private Black Cab Tour: 2 hour highlights/hotel pick-up

The two-hour answer: six stops, hotel pickup, and the cheapest fare here.

From $304 per group, up to 6

Check Availability

Private London Black Cab Sightseeing Tour – Personalized & Fun

The half-day answer: a blank route, thirty-minute stops, fuel and parking already in the fare.

From $698 per group, up to 6

Check Availability

London: Iconic London Taxi Tour - Private 3-Hour Tour

The three-hour answer with a glass roof, and the only one that meets you at an airport.

From $419 per group, up to 6

Check Availability