Event & venue transfers
Waterloo to Gatwick Airport runs to roughly 31.5 miles and 1h off-peak. We quote £120 and that is the number you pay, whatever the traffic does.
A taxi from Waterloo to Gatwick Airport is £120 in a saloon, £150 in a 6-seat MPV and £170 in an 8-seater. It is about 31.5 miles and 1h off-peak, or 1h 25m 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 £120 |
| MPV | up to 6 passengers, 4 large cases | from £150 |
| 8-seater | up to 7 passengers, 7 large cases | from £170 |
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 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 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.
There is one sensible way out of Waterloo and the driver already knows it. The run is the A23 south through Kennington and Brixton, then the M23 from Junction 7, which is about 31.5 miles and 1h on a clear road.
The part worth planning around is the Kennington one-way system and Brixton in both peaks. That is where 1h turns into 1h 25m, and it is why we publish a peak number instead of pretending every hour looks alike.
A straight southbound run once the West End empties out.
We would rather the driver took a longer road than a slower one. Neither changes what you pay.
Worth doing the sums rather than taking our word for it. From Waterloo the public transport route is Southern or Thameslink from nearby Waterloo East, or the short hop to Victoria for the Gatwick Express, with one change, and it runs about 45 minutes station to terminal. The fare is about 18.00 pounds.
The car is 1h off-peak and 1h 25m at its worst, door to door, from anywhere in SE1. 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 04:35 from Victoria and the last is 00:32, 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.
Split three ways the car matches the train, and that is before the bags you did not carry up a staircase. The Saloon is a fixed fare of £120, or about £40 each between three.
Outbound is simple. 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.
Coming the other way, the driver meets you 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.
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.
We cover the whole of Waterloo for this route: SE1. 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.
The classes differ by boot space far more than by comfort. A Saloon at £120 takes four passengers and two large cases. An MPV at £150 takes six and four large cases. An eight-seater at £170 takes seven and seven large cases.
Almost every mis-booking comes from counting people only. 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.
Most of what Gatwick Airport flies before 08:00 means a pickup nobody enjoys. A pre-dawn transfer behaves differently from the same trip at noon.
The roads are the easy part - A straight southbound run once the West End empties out. It is the first hundred metres that goes wrong, not the next thirty miles. 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.
The regulars on this run come from: the South Bank arts venues, St Thomas' Hospital, the county hall hotels and a heavy commuter flow through the terminus. The result is a route that never fully quietens, which is why we cover it around the clock.
If you are collected near the London Eye, or anywhere else in SE1, it is the same fixed fare. One price across the borough, whatever the street looks like. London Borough of Lambeth area, one price, quoted before you commit.
£120 in a saloon, £150 in a 6-seat MPV and £170 in an 8-seater. That is the fixed price, agreed at booking.
Door to door the car is about 1h off-peak. The rail alternative is Waterloo 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.
A 6-seat MPV is £150 and an 8-seater £170. Bigger parties travel in several vehicles routed together.
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.
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 Waterloo go first, so a 04:00 pickup is worth locking the night before.
That is the off-peak figure for the 31.5-mile run and it holds outside the rush. In the peak the same road is 1h 25m, mostly because of the Kennington one-way system and Brixton 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 Waterloo 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 £120 Saloon fare from Waterloo 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.
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.