London by Night Sightseeing Open Top Bus Tour with Live Guide
Live guide12 audio languagesMax 72
From $39 per person
Which London Night Tour Should You Book?
Short answer. Five formats, fourteen departures and one decision. This sets them against each other on the things that actually differ — price basis, length, whether it stops, whether you are warm, and how many of you there are — so you can pick before you open a booking page.
Start with the month, not the tour
Every other decision here is downstream of one number: what time it gets dark. London sunset moves from 15:52 in mid-December to 21:19 in mid-June, so the identical 7.30pm departure is three hours into the night in winter and in broad daylight in summer. Both open-top operators say so in their own small print.
If you are visiting between October and March, everything below applies and any departure time works. If you are here between May and July, you are choosing between the latest departure of the night and a private vehicle you can start at nine. The month-by-month page has the figures.
What are the actual choices?
Five, and they are not tiers of one product. A bus seat buys coverage; a private cab buys control; a walk buys a story; a photography tour buys a skill; and doing nothing buys the evening back. The prices only look irrational until you see which of those you are paying for.
| Format | Price | Length | Stops | Warm? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-top bus | $39–$42 pp | 1h 30 | None | No | First visits, couples, short stays |
| Private black cab | $356–$633 per vehicle | 2–4h | Wherever you ask | Yes | Groups of four to six |
| Ghost or Ripper walk | $27–$31 pp | 1h 45–2h 30 | On foot | No | Solo travellers, story over skyline |
| Photography walk | $337 pp | 3h | Eight viewpoints | No | Camera owners |
| Private minibus | $247 pp | 3h | Seven stops | Yes | Comfort with a guide |
How many of you are there?
This is the question that decides more of it than budget does, because two of the five formats are priced for the vehicle rather than the seat.
- One or two: the walks and the buses. A private cab for two is an expensive evening per head and nothing about it gets cheaper.
- Three or four: the crossover. A four-hour cab at $547 divided by four is $136 each, against $156 for four bus seats — for two and a half times the duration.
- Five or six: the cab, without much argument. Under $92 a head, door to door, four hours.
- Seven or more: two cabs on the same route, or the private Ripper walk, which takes fifteen on one booking.
Useful tip. Decide the month before the format. A 7.30pm departure is a night tour in December and a daylight tour in June, and no amount of choosing well fixes that. The darkness table takes two minutes.
Do you want to get out and stand in front of things?
If yes, the open-top buses are out. Both routes are a single continuous circuit and neither stops; one of them says in its own listing that you cannot hop on and hop off. You see everything and you touch nothing.
If that sounds like the wrong evening, the cab tours stop wherever you ask, the walks are entirely on foot, and the photography tour stops at eight riverside viewpoints in three hours. The trade is coverage: nothing that stops covers as much ground as the bus does in ninety minutes.
How cold are you prepared to be?
An open top deck at twenty miles an hour in January is colder than the pavement outside your hotel, and the single commonest criticism across both bus routes is the temperature rather than the tour. It is solvable with a hat, gloves and one more layer, and it has to be solved before you leave rather than after.
A cab has heating. A walk keeps you moving. If you are travelling with children in December, this is not a small consideration, and it is the reason the same two formats sell to different people in different seasons.
Which format handles accessibility?
The private cabs, clearly. Their listings describe the vehicle, the surfaces and the transport as wheelchair accessible, and one carries infant seats. The private minibus tour does the same and adds air conditioning and WiFi.
Both open-top bus routes state that they are not wheelchair accessible, and the Ripper walk with projections says the same. The royal-parks ghost walk does describe itself as accessible, which is unusual for a walking tour and worth knowing. What to expect has more.
Should you book a walk or a ride?
Ask what you want to remember. A ride gives you the skyline: Westminster gold on the water, Tower Bridge lit from both ends, St Paul's above an empty street. A walk gives you a story told properly in one district, and on this market the walks are the cheapest thing available by a wide margin.
The reviews are unusually clear about this. The walking tours are praised for their guides by name; the bus routes are praised for the city. Both are correct, and they are different purchases.
Is a private tour worth the money?
For four or more people, straightforwardly yes. For two, only if what you want is something the shared formats cannot give you: collection from your own door, a route you control, warmth, or step-free access.
What you are actually buying is a driver who has passed the Knowledge, which is the examination London taxi drivers sit on the street layout of the whole of central London. It is why a cab tour can be rebuilt halfway through on your say-so without anybody consulting a map, and why travellers name their drivers as often as the landmarks.
Did you know? Every departure on this market refunds in full up to 24 hours ahead, which means you can book the format you want now and change your mind when the forecast lands. The FAQs cover the rest.
What if you only have one evening?
Take the river. Westminster, the Illuminated River bridges, St Paul's and the Tower are all on one stretch of it, and it is the only part of London where the lighting was designed as a single thing. A two-hour cab route covers exactly that; so does an hour on foot, for nothing.
The open-top bus is the alternative if your list is longer than the river and your time is shorter than two hours. The format page sets out what each covers.
Which departure should you actually book?
Between October and March, the 7.30pm on anything. It is fully dark, it is the busiest and best-staffed departure of the evening, and it leaves your night open afterwards.
Between May and July, the last departure of the night on the buses, or a cab you start at nine. Between April and September generally, the later half of the timetable. That is the entire timing rule, and it is worth more than any other advice here.
What if the weather is bad?
It changes less than you expect. The walking tours advertise that they operate in all weather conditions, the buses keep an enclosed lower deck, and a cab is a cab. There is very little British weather that cancels an evening in this city.
What weather does change is which format you enjoy. An open top deck in driving rain is a poor evening even with a coat, and that is the one case where paying more for an enclosed vehicle is straightforwardly worth it. If the forecast is poor on the morning of your booking, the 24-hour refund window is there precisely so you can move it.
Photographers should read the forecast the other way round. Wet roads double every light in the city and the long exposures that make London look like the brochure depend on them. The weather page has the month-by-month detail.
Can you book on the day?
Often, outside the busy windows. Between January and March, and again between late September and November, most of these departures have same-day availability on a weekday evening. December and the summer school holidays are the exceptions and they are firm ones.
The products that go first are the private cabs, because one vehicle serves one booking a night, and the Christmas routes, which have a six-week season and no second chance. Everything refunds in full a day ahead, so there is no reason to leave a decision late except indecision. The planning page has the booking windows in full.
What do repeat visitors choose?
Something narrower. The pattern in the reviews is clear enough to be worth naming: first-time visitors take the bus and love the sweep of it, while people on their third or fourth trip take a walk, a cab or nothing at all.
That is not a criticism of the bus. It is that once you have seen the skyline you start wanting a subject, and the walks are all subject. Several travellers describe an evening in the East End as the first time they had seen a part of London they did not already know. A circuit of the landmarks cannot offer that.
If you have been here before, the honest recommendation is a Ripper or ghost walk plus a free hour on the river, and the self-guided guide covers the free half.
The decision, in four lines
- Two people, first visit, short stay: the open-top bus with a live guide, latest departure available.
- Four to six people, one free evening: the four-hour private black cab, collected from your hotel.
- Travelling alone, on a budget, like a story: the Ripper walk with projections.
- You brought a camera: the private photography walk, and bring a tripod.
Anything still undecided is in the FAQs, and every departure with live availability is listed with its price.
What next
Decided? Every departure with live prices is on London Night Tours. Still weighing the money, the cost guide does the arithmetic in full.
One departure from each of the three formats above
