Event & venue transfers
Around 38.0 miles door to door, 1h 10m when the roads are behaving. From £140, locked at booking, with no meter running and no surge applied.
A taxi from St James's to Stansted Airport is £140 in a saloon, £180 in a 6-seat MPV and £200 in an 8-seater. It is about 38.0 miles and 1h 10m off-peak, or 1h 40m in traffic. The fare is fixed at the moment you book and covers tolls, the driver's waiting time and your luggage.
| Vehicle | Capacity | Fixed fare |
|---|---|---|
| Saloon | up to 4 passengers, 2 large cases | from £140 |
| MPV | up to 6 passengers, 4 large cases | from £180 |
| 8-seater | up to 7 passengers, 7 large cases | from £200 |
Per vehicle, not per person. Tolls, congestion and crossing charges are already inside the price, and it does not change on the day.
Meet and greet in the arrivals hall, or the short-stay pickup area. Stansted's drop-off charge and the airport approach fee are already inside the fixed fare. 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: London Stansted Airport, Essex, CM24 1QW.
Parking at Stansted Airport is limited and the surrounding streets are metered or permit-only, so self-driving usually costs more in time than the fare saves. Being dropped at the door and collected at an agreed point removes the whole problem.
There is one sensible way out of St James's and the driver already knows it. The run is Whitehall and the Embankment east, then the Limehouse Link and A12 to the M11, which is about 38.0 miles and 1h 10m on a clear road.
The variable is not distance, it is Parliament Square and the Embankment. That is where 1h 10m turns into 1h 40m, and it is why we publish a peak number instead of pretending every hour looks alike.
Westminster to the motorway is quick and uninterrupted after 22:30.
Re-routing is the driver's job, not your cost. A fixed fare means the traffic is our risk.
The honest comparison, because you can look it up in a minute anyway. From St James's the public transport route is the Jubilee line to Westminster and across to Liverpool Street for the Express, with 2 changes, and it runs about 65 minutes station to terminal. The fare is 24.50 pounds on the Express plus 3.40.
The car is 1h 10m off-peak and 1h 40m at its worst, door to door, from anywhere in SW1A, SW1Y. On time alone the train is competitive, and if you are travelling light and alone it is a fair choice.
There are two catches the journey planner does not show. The first train is 04:40 from Liverpool Street and the last is 00:30, which rules rail out for a large slice of what Stansted Airport actually flies - the early bank needs you airside before the network wakes up. The second is luggage: the Stansted Express has luggage racks but they fill by Tottenham Hale, and the walk from the platform up into the terminal is longer than the signage suggests with two cases in hand.
Three is the number. Two travellers should take the train; three should not. The Saloon is a fixed fare of £140, or about £47 each between three.
Going out, there is little to get wrong. Stansted has one terminal, so there is no wrong door - the set-down bay sits directly in front of departures and the walk to check-in is under three minutes. Set-down is charged by the airport and that charge is inside your fare, not added at the barrier.
Landing back, your driver waits at the short-stay car park opposite the terminal, bays signed for pre-booked cars. 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 the moment the flight lands, which is the realistic figure for a full A320 clearing the hall. You walk out to a car, which is the whole reason people book the return leg too.
We track the inbound flight number, so an early landing or a two-hour delay changes the driver's schedule and not your fare. Stansted bunches its arrivals, so a plane that lands on time can still take fifty minutes to reach the concourse. We build that in rather than start a clock the second the wheels touch.
What separates the three vehicles is luggage, not luxury. A Saloon at £140 takes four passengers and two large cases. An MPV at £180 takes six and four large cases. An eight-seater at £200 takes seven and seven large cases.
Four seats does not mean four suitcases. 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.
The demand here comes from a handful of places in St James's: the Pall Mall clubs, the St James's galleries and auction houses, the Whitehall departments and the Mayfair hotel trade. That mix gives the route three peaks: business before dawn, families through the morning in term breaks, and a steady evening run.
If you are collected near St James's Palace, or anywhere else in SW1A, SW1Y, it is the same fixed fare. No zone splits, no awkward-address premium. Westminster City Council area, one price, quoted before you commit.
A large share of Stansted Airport departures push people out of St James's in the dark. A pre-dawn transfer behaves differently from the same trip at noon.
The roads are the easy part - Westminster to the motorway is quick and uninterrupted after 22:30. What changes is everything around them. 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.
We cover the whole of St James's for this route: SW1A, SW1Y. 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.
Where a building has a proper set-down bay, we use it. 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 Stansted Airport.
£140 in a saloon, £180 in a 6-seat MPV and £200 in an 8-seater. That is the fixed price, agreed at booking.
Door to door the car is about 1h 10m off-peak. The rail alternative is Green Park to Stansted Airport plus the walk, which is competitive going out and considerably slower coming back.
Meet and greet in the arrivals hall, or the short-stay pickup area. 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.
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 £180 and an 8-seater £200. Bigger parties travel in several vehicles routed together.
Card, bank transfer or a business account, before or after the journey. A VAT receipt is issued either way.
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 St James's go first, so a 04:00 pickup is worth locking the night before.
That is the off-peak figure for the 38.0-mile run and it holds outside the rush. In the peak the same road is 1h 40m, mostly because of Parliament Square and the Embankment. 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 St James's 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 £140 Saloon fare from St James's covers the driver, the vehicle, tolls on the route, the airport set-down charge, and the free waiting time. No meter, no booking fee at checkout, no surge at any hour.
Fares are fixed at booking and shown per vehicle. Distances and journey times are approximate and vary with traffic and the exact pickup address. Page reviewed 14 September 2026.