Event & venue transfers

Strand to Gatwick Airport Taxi - from £160 fixed fare, named pickup point

Around 31 miles door to door, 1h when the roads are behaving. From £160 locked at booking, with no meter running and no surge applied.

A taxi from Strand to Gatwick Airport is £160 in a saloon, £179 in a 6-seat MPV and £294 in a V Class. It is about 31 miles and 1h off-peak, or 1h 30m in traffic. The fare is fixed at the moment you book and covers tolls, the driver's waiting time and your luggage.

Strand to Gatwick Airport pricing

Per vehicle, not per person. Tolls, congestion and crossing charges are already inside the price, and it does not change on the day.

Where the driver waits at Gatwick Airport

Meet and greet in the North or South Terminal arrivals hall. North and South terminals are a shuttle apart, so we confirm which one you land at before the day. Your driver sends the exact standing point and the registration before they set off, so you are not circling a car park looking for a number plate.

Address: Gatwick Airport, Crawley, RH6 0NP.

Parking at Gatwick Airport

Parking at Gatwick Airport is limited and the surrounding streets are metered or permit-only, so self-driving usually costs more in time than the fare saves. A drop-off and a booked return sidesteps it entirely.

What the fare includes

• Your fare locked at the moment you book - no meter, no surge, no event-night loading
• Card, bank transfer or business account, with a VAT receipt
• Licensed private hire operator; drivers hold Enhanced DBS clearance
• Tolls, congestion and crossing charges already inside the quoted price
• 60 minutes' free waiting on airport pickups, with the flight tracked

The road out of Strand

The route from Strand is not complicated. The timing of it is. The run is Waterloo Bridge and the A23 south through Kennington and Brixton, then the M23 from Junction 7, which is about 31 miles and 1h on a clear road.

The part worth planning around is Waterloo Bridge and the Elephant roundabout in both peaks. That is where 1h turns into 1h 30m, and it is why we publish a peak number instead of pretending every hour looks alike.

The bridge and the whole A23 run clear after 22:30.

We would rather the driver took a longer road than a slower one. Neither changes what you pay.

Strand to Gatwick Airport by train, honestly compared

Here is the alternative, with its real numbers. From Strand the public transport route is Thameslink from Blackfriars direct to Gatwick, or Victoria for the Express, with one change, and it runs about 45 minutes station to terminal. The fare is about 17.00 pounds plus 2.90.

The car is 1h off-peak and 1h 30m at its worst, door to door, from anywhere in WC2R, WC2N. That makes the train genuinely quick here - one bag, one person, take it.

Two things the timetable will not tell you. The first train is 04:47 from Blackfriars and the last is 00:05, which rules rail out for a large slice of what Gatwick Airport actually flies - the early bank needs you airside before the network wakes up. The second is luggage: the Gatwick Express is comfortable but Victoria is a long walk with cases at both ends, and the Thameslink alternative involves stairs at several central stations.

The money crosses over at three passengers. Below that rail wins; at three the Saloon works out near enough the same each. The Saloon is a fixed fare of £160 or about £160 each between three.

Gatwick Airport: the kerb, both directions

The departure leg barely needs explaining. Gatwick has two terminals and they are not walkable from each other, so the airline decides your door - North for easyJet and most of the leisure carriers, South for BA and the long-haul operators. Tell us the airline and the driver goes to the right one. Set-down is in the short-stay car park at each terminal and the airport charges for it; that charge is inside your fare.

Landing back, your driver waits at the short-stay car park at your terminal, in the bays marked for pre-booked cars, about three minutes from the check-in hall. The exact bay and the registration reach you by text before you land, so there is no hunting along a rank and no call to a switchboard.

Sixty minutes of free waiting are included from touchdown, which Gatwick needs because the walk from the far end of the North Terminal pier plus border control eats most of an hour on a busy morning. You walk out to a car, which is the whole reason people book the return leg too.

What happens when the flight is late

We track the inbound flight number, so an early landing or a two-hour delay changes the driver's schedule and not your fare. Gatwick runs Europe's busiest single runway and arrivals stack up behind any disruption, so we track the flight rather than trusting the schedule.

How many of you, and how much luggage

The three vehicle classes are not a sales ladder, they are three different amounts of boot. A Saloon at £160 takes four passengers and two large cases. An MPV at £179 takes six and four large cases. An V Class at £294 takes seven and seven large cases.

Seats are the easy number; luggage is the one that catches people. Four adults with four large cases are an MPV booking whatever the seat count says. Tell us the bag count and we size it properly rather than sending a car that cannot close.

Child seats and boosters are free but need naming in advance, with the child's age, because the seat has to be fitted before the car leaves. Skis, bikes, instruments and wheelchairs all travel if you say so at booking. Parties over seven go in several vehicles routed together, so everyone reaches the same kerb within a minute of each other.

Where the Strand demand comes from

Look at who books it and Strand explains itself: the Strand hotels, King's College and Somerset House, the Covent Garden theatres and the Aldwych offices. The result is a route that never fully quietens, which is why we cover it around the clock.

If you are collected near Somerset House, or anywhere else in WC2R, WC2N, it is the same fixed fare. We do not zone the borough or add a surcharge because a street is awkward to reach. Westminster City Council area, one price, quoted before you commit.

Leaving Strand before it is light

Gatwick Airport front-loads its day, and Strand feels that at four in the morning. A pre-dawn transfer behaves differently from the same trip at noon.

The roads are the easy part - The bridge and the whole A23 run clear after 22:30. The building is the problem, not the route. Night entrances replace main doors, barriers that are open by day are down, and a driver who has not been told which side of the block you are on will circle.

So we ask for the door, not just the postcode. The side entrance, the service road, the one with the step - that goes to the driver with the job. They message rather than ring a bell at four in the morning, and the free waiting time runs from the booked hour, not from whenever they happen to arrive.

Where in Strand we collect from

We cover the whole of Strand for this route: WC2R, WC2N. Homes, hotels, offices, hospitals and station forecourts all work as pickup points, and the fare from any of them is the one you were quoted.

If there is a legal bay, that is where the car waits. Where there is not, the driver names a spot a few steps away that a car can legally stop in and messages you with it, rather than parking on a red route and hoping. It is a small thing, and it removes most of the stress from the first five minutes of a journey to Gatwick Airport.

Strand to Gatwick Airport: common questions

£160 in a saloon, £179 in a 6-seat MPV and £294 in a V Class. That is the fixed price, agreed at booking.

Door to door the car is about 1h off-peak. The rail alternative is Charing Cross to Gatwick Airport plus the walk, which is competitive going out and considerably slower coming back.

Meet and greet in the North or South Terminal arrivals hall. You get the exact point and the registration by text beforehand.

No. The fare is fixed when you book. Traffic, tolls and the hour are our problem, not a line on your bill.

Card, bank transfer or a business account, before or after the journey. A VAT receipt is issued either way.

Yes, and it is the leg worth booking. The driver is in position before you come out instead of you joining the queue that forms the moment it ends.

A 6-seat MPV is £179 and a V Class £294. Bigger parties travel in several vehicles routed together.

Twenty-four hours is comfortable and gets you the vehicle you asked for. Same-day works when a car is free, but the early slots out of Strand go first, so a 04:00 pickup is worth locking the night before.

That is the off-peak figure for the 32.5-mile run and it holds outside the rush. In the peak the same road is 1h 30m, mostly because of Waterloo Bridge and the Elephant roundabout in both peaks. We set the airport cutoff from the worse of the two, not the better one.

Nothing happens to the fare - it was fixed when you booked. If the road goes badly wrong the driver re-routes, and on an airport run we would rather you left Strand half an hour early than argue about whose fault the A-road was. Give us the flight time and we set the pickup from it.

Card, bank transfer or cash, and nothing is added at the end. The £160 Saloon fare from Strand covers the driver, the vehicle, tolls on the route, the terminal set-down charge, and the free waiting time. No meter, no booking fee at checkout, no surge at any hour.

Yes. Gatwick currently charges £10 to use its terminal drop-off zones. That charge, and car park fees when we collect you, are already in your fixed fare, so there is nothing extra to pay on the day.

Other London pickups for Gatwick Airport

More transfers via Gatwick and Strand

• Taxi Strand to Heathrow from £125
• Strand to London City Taxi from £111
• Strand to London Stadium Taxi from £88
• Taxi Strand to Luton from £174
• Streatham to Gatwick Airport Taxi from £94
• Sutton to Gatwick Airport Taxi from £85
• Taxi Tower Hamlets to Gatwick from £146
• Vauxhall to Gatwick Airport Taxi from £130
• Gatwick Taxi & Airport Transfers

Browse every route we cover →