One number, several consequences
Your zone decides what a week costs
London's fares work on concentric rings. Zone 1 is the centre, and the numbers climb outwards to 9. The zone you touch in and out at sets your single fare, your daily cap and your weekly cap — so it quietly decides what a week of travel costs before you've booked a thing.
It matters most when you're choosing a hotel. A room in Zone 3 looks cheaper than the same room in Zone 2, and sometimes it is. But the cap for Zones 1–3 is £1.60 a day higher, every day, for every person in your party. Over a week that's about £8 each if you reach the weekly cap, and up to £11 each if you don't — so two adults hand back a useful chunk of that cheaper room rate.
One thing to get out of the way: your postcode tells you nothing about your zone. They're unrelated systems. Find the nearest Underground station instead — that's what you'll actually be tapping at.
A hotel two stops further out has to be genuinely cheaper per night to beat one inside Zone 2.
The finder
Look up any station or area
Every London Underground station, plus the neighbourhood names hotels advertise themselves by.
Search by station or neighbourhood — not hotel names, addresses or postcodes, which don't map to zones. Mostly Underground stations; for Overground, DLR, Elizabeth line and National Rail, use the official TfL zone map.
Did you mean
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Start typing above and your zone appears here.
Booking advice
Which zone should you book?
What you actually gain and give up in each, for a typical sightseeing trip.
Zone 1
The centre. Most of what you came to see is within walking distance, and you may barely use the Tube at all.
- Daily cap £8.90, and you'll often not reach it
- Walk to the West End, Westminster and the South Bank
- The most expensive rooms, and the smallest
- Bloomsbury and Victoria are the softer-priced corners
Best if your trip is short and packed. Time saved beats money saved.
Zone 2
The sweet spot for most visitors. Rooms cost noticeably less and the cap is identical to Zone 1.
- Daily cap £8.90 — the same as Zone 1
- Ten to fifteen minutes into the centre
- Camden, Shoreditch, Hammersmith, Greenwich, Islington
- No fare penalty whatsoever for moving out of Zone 1
If you take one thing from this page: Zone 2 costs the same to travel from as Zone 1.
Zone 3 and beyond
Cheaper rooms, but now you're paying for it daily and spending longer on trains.
- Zones 1–3 cap £10.50, Zones 1–4 £12.80
- Zone 3 costs about £8 more a week per person
- Zone 4 about £20 a week per person
- More if you don't travel every day and miss the weekly cap
- Multiply by everyone travelling with you
Worth it for longer stays, families needing space, or if the room is much cheaper.
The boundary trick. Some stations sit in two zones at once, and TfL charges you the cheaper of the two. A hotel by a boundary station can get you outer-zone room prices on an inner-zone fare. The finder above flags these.
Every station
Browse by zone
Every station in TfL's published list, grouped by zone. Tap any of them to load it into the finder.
Zones from Transport for London's published station data, with post-release changes applied. Underground only. TfL's zone map and single fare finder are definitive.
Good to know
Zone questions
The ones people ask before booking.
How do I find out which zone my hotel is in?
Find the nearest Underground station and look up its zone, because fares are charged on the stations you touch in and out at, not on where you sleep. Most central London hotels are in Zone 1 or Zone 2.
A postcode won't tell you: London postcodes and fare zones are entirely separate systems, so a W2 address and a W12 address sit in different zones despite both starting with W.
Is it cheaper to stay in Zone 2 or Zone 3?
Hotel rooms are usually cheaper the further out you go, but travel costs rise and the daily cap goes up with them. Zones 1–2 has a daily cap of £8.90, Zones 1–3 is £10.50 and Zones 1–4 is £12.80.
Over a week that works out at roughly £8 more per person for Zone 3 and £20 for Zone 4 if you travel every day and reach the weekly cap, or up to £11 and £27 if you don't. So a Zone 3 hotel needs to be a pound or two a night cheaper to break even — and proportionally more if you're travelling as a family.
What zone is central London?
Zone 1 covers central London, and it holds most of what visitors come to see: the West End and Theatreland, Westminster and Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the South Bank, the City, Covent Garden, Soho, Mayfair and Kensington's museums. Zone 1 is a ring rather than a point, so two Zone 1 stations can still be a long way apart — Tower Hill to Paddington is right across it.
How many zones are there?
Nine on paper, arranged in rings from Zone 1 outwards, but visitors rarely see beyond Zone 6. Zones 7 to 9 exist only on the Metropolitan line out into Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, and Heathrow Airport sits in Zone 6. Almost every hotel a tourist books is in Zones 1, 2 or 3.
What if a station is on a zone boundary?
A number of stations sit in two zones at once, and Transport for London charges you at whichever of the two is cheaper for your journey. That's quietly good news: a hotel by a boundary station can give you an outer-zone room price with an inner-zone fare. Stratford, Turnham Green and Earl's Court are examples, and the finder flags them.
Do zones apply to buses?
No. Buses and trams are a single flat fare of £1.75 anywhere in London, however far you travel and whichever zones you pass through, with a separate daily cap. Zones only matter for the Tube, DLR, Overground, Elizabeth line and National Rail. If you're staying further out, the bus can flatten the cost of a long journey.
Which zone is Heathrow, and does it count?
Heathrow is Zone 6. One trip there and back doesn't mean you need a Zone 1–6 hotel or a Zone 1–6 Travelcard — it just means those two journeys are charged at the Zone 1–6 rate on the days you make them. Gatwick, Stansted and Luton sit outside the zone system entirely and are priced separately.
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