How To Travel London On a Budget?! - Travel By Maya (2024)

I’m so excited for this post, because I have been planning on writing it the minute I booked my flight tickets to London!

I’ve been dying to visit London for so long, but I have been really eyeing it for the past year or so.

A while ago I’ve found the cheapest flight tickets I have ever bought! I found a $96 flight to London from Tel Aviv!

After a few months of seeing $300-$400 flight tickets to London (which is expensive for me according to the flight price range from Israel to Europe).

I flew to London with my boyfriend (my travel buddy ;)) to celebrate our 3rd anniversary!

We were planning on going somewhere, not necessarily London. He wanted a cheap destination, the cheapest and nicest as possible.

Well, after I found the $96 flight to London there was no way back and there was no way I was giving up on London.

So, I had a challenge. I needed to make our London vacation the cheapest as possible!

If you didn’t know, London is considered one of the most expensive cities in the world, so it was quite a challenge.

Let’s see how I managed to succeed!

Note: Affiliate links may be used in this post. I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you use my affiliate link.My disclaimer.

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I must say that I was expecting higher prices because I’ve seen almost everywhere online people saying that London is an expensive destination.

I guess it depends on your country, and how you compare the pound to the money and prices to where you live.

As for Israel, this too expensive country, London didn’t seem too expensive as I thought.

Anyways, let’s get on with the tip on how to travel London on a budget?!

Find Cheap Flights

If you find a very cheap flight, you already massively lowered the cost of your trip.

Cheap accommodation

This is the second most expensive part of traveling, so here as well, if you want to lower the costs of your trip, manage to find cheap accommodation!

My go-to hotels/apartments websites are:

Hotelscombined.com –shows you the best hotels and stays on the market.This websitecombines all of the prices to different hotels that are currently on the market, and shows you the cheapest options online for that place!

I always check this websitefirst, to see what is the price range to different places, and see the cheapest options.

Booking.com –I guess most of us are familiar withBooking.com, one of the most famous accommodations websites online.
I like checking out the prices here, sometimes they offer some nice places as well.

Airbnb.com –Airbnb is my second favorite accommodation website. Airbnb is a holiday apartments rental company that is spread all over the world!
I loveAirbnb apartmentsbecause in some places there is a cheaper option, they are more private (if you choose to stay in the whole apartment and not in a shared one), and they are also a great local life experience.

Related:Where to stay? Airbnb VS Hotels

The London Pass

This is one of the biggest money-saving tips I can give you for your trip to London.The main expensive thing in London as tourists is attractions.

Attractions are so high priced, it’s insane! Also, if you’ve already made all your way to London, you wouldn’t want to skip TheTower Of London, or theLondon Eye, or even theHarry Potter’s studios tourjust because it’s too expensive.

Well, I have a way to get around that 😉

Ever heard of an attractions pass?

If you didn’t anattraction passis a card for which you pay a certain amount of money, and you get access to a variety of attractions in the city of your choice.

The best part is that the price you paid for the ticket is much cheaper than buying an entrance ticket for each attraction separately.

This cardis such a money saver during the trip and I really recommend buying one for your next trip.

What is the London Pass?

This is a prepaid sightseeing card that saves you SO MUCH TIME and SO MUCH MONEY.

This pass can save you up to 70% when buying this pass instead of tickets to each attraction.

Besides the free attractions, this pass also includes aHop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour.

I highly recommend buying the pass online, to save extra money off the retail price. Also, buying the pass in advance is a great time saver.

Why you should get the London Pass?

When I decided to purchase the pass I first made a list of the attractions I wanted to visit and how much a full-priced ticket to each of them will cost.

Just to give you an example, a full-priced ride on the London Eye is 27 GBP for an adult.Also, a full-priced ticket to the Tower Of London will be another 27.50 GBP.

And last example – tickets for an adult to the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum will be 65 GBP or 40 GBP if you buy the tickets online.

With these three examples, we made it to 94.5 GBP (and obviously there are more attractions you will want to visit).

A 3-days attractions pass will cost you 113 GBP, and in those 3-days you get:

Unlimited access to 80+ attractions
Shopping and restaurants discounts
Unlimited access to a Hop-on Hop-off bus tour

So I would say that investing another 20 pounds is totally worth it!

Here are 3 different kinds of the London Pass:

I highly recommend purchasing the London Pass, it saves you so much money during your trip!

Food

If you are staying in a hotel that serves breakfast for no extra cost – luck you! enjoy it!

But if you aren’t, or you are staying at an Airbnb apartment,Here are a few tips to save money on food:

1.If you are not a huge breakfast eater, that’s even better. When going to the supermarket, buy only food that you will really eat and is practical to make breakfast with, snacks, and even lunch.

If you are staying at an Airbnb, or any hotel with a small kitchen, you can cook your meals at the place, which is much cheaper than going to a restaurant obviously.

2.If possible, follow the “one restaurant a day” rule. This will also save you so much money!
I will say for myself, we had a bit of a problem because we didn’t know that our hotel doesn’t have a mini-fridge in the room.
We were counting on it because we don’t eat much for breakfast, and usually while traveling we like buying groceries at the grocery store and keeping it in the fridge (small meals like crackers and cheese, fruits, etc).
This time our hotel didn’t have a mini-fridge, so we ate out most of the time.We decided on restaurants that aren’t too expensive, and restaurants that had a high fee for eating inside (that’s a thing in London apparently, in Israel we don’t do that), we ate as a takeaway outside.
Also, if we ate at a restaurant at lunch and were pretty full for the rest of the day, we went to the grocery store and bought a few things for a small light dinner.

Public Transportation

Now, here are the most important tips you need to know for saving money on public transportation.

The first thing you should know is that public transportation in London is SOOOO EXPENSIVE!

Here are a few tips to lower the cost of it:

1.Purchase an Oyster Card – there are a few types of public transportation cards (which I will discuss further in a different blog post), but for us, the best option was the Oyster Card.

An Oyster Card is a permanent reusable electronic ticket, which you pay with for rides on public transportations (underground, overground, trains, etc).

The Oyster Card will cost you 5 GBP, which you will get back along with the rest of the money that is left in the card at the end of your trip. So, technically it’s free (the card itself).

The Oyster fare for any individual journey is the lowest fare available. It is pretty nice and very cheap!

I highly recommend purchasing an Oyster Card, you can get it at any underground/overground/train station.

2.Another thing you should know about the public transportation fares is that the price changes throughout the day.What do I mean?

On the busy hours, when the trains are fully packed, the tickets prices will be higher than in other hours throughout the day that the trains are less packed.

So, keep that in mind and plan your trip’s itinerary according to it.

3.The best way to save money on public transportation – WALK!

Even though not everything is super close to each other, still try to walk around the city as much as possible instead of using the Underground or buses for every drive.

It saves you a lot of money, and also keeps you in great shape 😉

These were my tips for traveling London on a budget. Remember, even though a city is expensive, doesn’t mean you can’t make it cheaper 😉