Getting around London at night

London’s night transport is better than almost any city in Europe and worse than most people assume, at the same time. The trick is knowing which of the two you are dealing with tonight.

The night bus is almost always the right answer

It runs every night, it goes almost everywhere, and it is the cheapest option by a wide margin. It is slower than you want and it is still the thing that gets most people home.

Everything else — a black cab, an app minicab, two wheels, or walking — is a trade of money against time, and the ranking changes with the hour and the distance. The full comparison, and how to choose between them in about ten seconds, is in how to get home in London after the last train.

The Night Tube is narrower than its name suggests

Three things catch people out, and all three are avoidable.

• It runs on Friday and Saturday nights only. Not every night.
• It does not run on every line, and on some lines not along the whole route. The Victoria and Jubilee lines run in full. The Central, Northern and Piccadilly lines run on part of their route only, so the branch you actually need may not be the branch that runs. The Windrush line also runs.
• “Friday night” means Saturday morning. If you are checking a timetable at 1am on a Saturday, you want the Friday service.

There is also a gap between the last normal train and the first night train, and the trains come less often than a daytime service. All four traps, with what runs where, are in which London Underground lines actually run all night.

The airports

Each of the five behaves differently after midnight, and the difference is not small — one of them can strand you until morning while another has a coach every half hour. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City are covered one by one, with three rules that save the night, in getting to and from London’s airports at night.

Two things worth doing before you need them

Neither takes long, and both are much easier on a normal afternoon than at 1am: work out which night bus route passes near your home, and check whether your usual Tube branch is one that runs.

Getting home is also a safety question

Which taxi you get into matters more than which route you take. The one rule about minicabs, what to do if you think you are being followed, and the phone features you already have are in getting home safely at night in London.

We are not Transport for London and we are not an operator. For live running information, check TfL directly — that is the authority, and it is more current than any guide, including this one.