Cheapest Airlines from London in 2026, Airport by Airport

Cheapest Airlines from London in 2026

Your £19 fare to Barcelona quietly becomes £79 by the time you have added a cabin trolley, a seat and a return leg on a Sunday. Then you discover the flight leaves from Stansted at 06:15, the first train does not get you there in time, and the taxi costs more than the ticket. That is the London budget-flying trap in one paragraph, and it has almost nothing to do with which airline advertises the lowest number.

So here is the useful version. London has five airports, and each is effectively a separate market with its own price setter: Ryanair owns Stansted, Wizz Air and easyJet split Luton, easyJet and now Jet2 own Gatwick, Heathrow has no meaningful budget presence, and London City is a business airport that happens to fly somewhere nice. Get the airport right and the fare almost picks itself. For the wider European picture, see our ranking of the best budget airlines in Europe .

Before you pick an airport, see what your dates actually cost across every London terminal at once.

Who Flies Cheap from Which London Airport

Each London airport has a dominant low-cost carrier, and that carrier sets the going rate for its part of the map.

Stansted (STN) is Ryanair’s largest UK base and its busiest single route system-wide is Stansted to Dublin. The network is heavily weighted to Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Eastern Europe, with easyJet also flying from here and Jet2 running seasonal leisure routes such as Olbia in Sardinia and La Palma from November 2026. Pegasus also serves Stansted for Turkey.

Luton (LTN) is shared between easyJet and Wizz Air, both of which base aircraft there. Wizz Air’s Eastern European network (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and the Balkans) is the reason Luton is usually unbeatable for those countries, while easyJet covers leisure and city-break routes. TUI also operates some Luton leisure flying.

Gatwick (LGW) is easyJet’s largest UK base and a major British Airways short and medium-haul base. Jet2 opened a substantial new Gatwick base in March 2026 with six aircraft and 29 routes across Spain, Greece, Portugal, Turkey, Malta, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria and Cyprus. Wizz Air, Vueling and Norwegian all serve Gatwick too, and Pegasus added Gatwick in June 2026.

Heathrow (LHR) is dominated by British Airways and its long and short-haul alliance partners, with essentially no ultra-low-cost presence. It is the priciest and least relevant London airport for cheap short-haul leisure fares, so skip it unless you are connecting.

London City (LCY) is effectively a BA Cityflyer operation, running Embraer 190s to roughly 24 to 30 European destinations for summer 2026, including new Mediterranean leisure routes. It is fast to reach and pleasant to use, but the fares are pitched at business travellers, not bargain hunters.

The Airport Transfer Trap: What Getting There Really Costs

A cheaper fare from the wrong airport regularly loses once the ground journey is priced in. Here is what each London airport costs to reach from the centre.

Read that table as money, not logistics. A £15 saving on a Stansted fare disappears the moment you buy a walk-up Stansted Express ticket at £22 instead of the £9.90 advance one, and Gatwick Express at £24.10 each way adds roughly £48 to a return trip for two legs of a 30-minute journey when Southern and Thameslink do the same run for a fraction of that. The practical rule: book the advance rail ticket at the same time as the flight, because airport rail in London is one of the few travel costs that genuinely rewards committing early.

What a £15 Headline Fare from London Actually Includes

Almost nothing. Every ultra-low-cost fare from London includes one small under-seat personal item and a seat the algorithm chooses for you. Ryanair and Wizz Air both allow 40 x 30 x 20 cm free; easyJet is the outlier with a 45 x 36 x 20 cm bag up to 15 kg, which is genuinely enough for a long weekend.

Here is what the three London price setters charge once you need more than that.

The numbers that hurt are the ones at the gate. Ryanair charges around €45–70 for a non-compliant cabin bag at the boarding gate, commonly cited at €60–70, card only and non-negotiable. Wizz Air charges roughly €40–65 in the same situation, and easyJet around £48–55 before your bag goes in the hold anyway. Buying the same allowance online is the single biggest saving available to you: easyJet large cabin bags start from £5.99, Ryanair’s Priority and 2 Cabin Bags runs around €6–36 when added at booking versus around €20–60 later, and Wizz Priority is around €10–59 online against €55–65 at the airport.

One change worth knowing: the European Parliament voted on 7 July 2026 to guarantee a free personal item of at least 40 x 30 x 15 cm and to force airlines and booking sites to show the fare inclusive of it from the start of booking. Larger wheeled bags stay chargeable, and the rules take effect in 2027, not now. Our full breakdown of airline baggage fees in Europe has the carrier-by-carrier detail.

Sample Summer 2026 Fares from London by Destination

Fares move constantly, so treat these as realistic bands rather than quotes. All are one-way, before bags and seats.

• London to Barcelona: around £20–70 on easyJet, Ryanair or Wizz Air in shoulder periods, rising sharply for peak July and August dates.
• London to Rome: around £30–120, with Wizz Air and Ryanair often cheapest at £30–70 while easyJet can run £100 or more on popular dates. Our cheap flights from London to Rome guide covers the timing in detail.
• London to Amsterdam: from around £20–45 off-peak, with easyJet sale fares from Southend seen at £22.99, higher in peak summer.
• Mediterranean beach routes: once your dates are fixed rather than flexible, London one-ways commonly land in the £60–150 band. Ryanair’s 2026 season lead-in fares from £29.99 apply to some UK regional routes, not typically to peak London departures.

The pattern is consistent. Flexibility is worth more than loyalty to any single airline, and the £30 gap between two carriers on a Tuesday can be a £90 gap on the Friday of a school holiday.

Beach and Package Alternative: Jet2 and TUI from Gatwick and Stansted

If you are flying to a resort with a suitcase and a family, the scheduled ultra-low-cost fare is often not the cheapest route to the same beach. Jet2 and TUI Airways run package-holiday programmes into the same airports as Ryanair and easyJet, using larger aircraft on less-frequent rotations timed for one and two-week stays, and their package fares include a generous checked allowance (usually around 22 kg) rather than selling it back to you at €20–60 a bag.

Jet2’s March 2026 Gatwick base is the clearest example, with 29 routes across Spain, Greece, Portugal, Turkey, Malta, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria and Cyprus. On the Canaries, Jet2 is the volume leader with around 255 UK flights a week for the 2026 season versus around 165 for Ryanair and around 158 for easyJet, which matters when you want a specific Saturday. On Turkey, Jet2 leads Antalya (around 88 flights a week) and Dalaman (around 68), with easyJet entering from March 2026.

The catch is seasonality. Many Greek-island and Croatian package routes run twice weekly from around Easter to October and then stop entirely for winter, so a package that looks brilliant in July may not exist in November. Our guide to the best airlines for beach holidays in Europe compares them properly, and if the Canaries are the plan, start with cheap flights from London to Tenerife .

Delayed Leaving London? UK261 Pays £220 to £520

Flights departing the UK are covered by UK261, the post-Brexit equivalent of EU261, enforced by the Civil Aviation Authority. The compensation bands are £220 for short-haul flights under 1,500 km, £350 for medium-haul flights of 1,500 to 3,500 km and £520 for long-haul flights over 3,500 km delayed by four hours or more.

The trigger is an arrival delay of three hours or more, or a cancellation with less than 14 days’ notice, where the airline is at fault. Extraordinary circumstances such as severe weather or air traffic control strikes remove the compensation, but the airline still owes you meals, communication and rerouting. It is paid per passenger, so a delayed family of four out of Gatwick is owed £880, which dwarfs anything you saved on the fare.

Punctuality varies less than you would expect between the London low-cost carriers. AirHelp’s independent 12-month data puts Wizz Air at 77%, Ryanair at 71% and easyJet at 70%. Airline-reported figures run much higher (Ryanair’s own corporate site shows 95% for June 2026), and OAG named Wizz Air the world’s most punctual low-cost airline in May 2026 at 87.8%, so treat the independent numbers as the conservative baseline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which airline is cheapest from London?

Ryanair usually posts the lowest headline fares out of London, flying its largest UK base at Stansted, with Wizz Air matching or beating it from Luton on Central and Eastern European routes. easyJet is often a few pounds more but flies from Gatwick and Luton with a bigger free under-seat bag (45 x 36 x 20 cm) and standard allocated seating. The cheapest airline flips by route and date, so compare all three on your exact days rather than assuming.

Is Stansted or Luton cheaper to fly from?

Stansted tends to win on fare for Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece because Ryanair bases its largest UK operation there. Luton often wins for Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and the Balkans, where Wizz Air is the price setter. Luton is also the cheaper airport to reach, at around £4.90 for the DART plus roughly £15.10 off-peak on Thameslink, versus around £9.90 for an advance Stansted Express ticket and about £22 walking up on the day.

Are £9.99 Ryanair fares real?

Yes, but they are a limited promotional floor rather than a typical price, and they buy you one 40 x 30 x 20 cm under-seat bag and nothing else. Ryanair’s 2026 season lead-in fares start from around £29.99 on some UK regional routes, and London departures to Mediterranean beach destinations commonly land in the £60–150 band once your dates are fixed. Add a cabin trolley, a checked bag or a seat and the real total is usually two to four times the headline number.

Can you fly cheaply from Heathrow?

Not really. Heathrow is dominated by British Airways and its full-service alliance partners and has essentially no ultra-low-cost presence, so it is the priciest and least relevant London airport for cheap short-haul leisure fares. If you want budget fares, start at Stansted, Luton or Gatwick instead.

Which London airport is cheapest to reach from the city centre?

London City is the cheapest and quickest, at £3.30 off-peak or £3.90 peak on the DLR to Bank in about 23 to 25 minutes, but its BA Cityflyer flights are priced for business travellers rather than bargain hunters. Among the budget airports, Luton is cheapest at around £20 all-in by DART plus Thameslink, Stansted costs from around £9.90 on an advance Stansted Express ticket or £7 to £9.50 by National Express coach, and Gatwick Express is the most expensive at around £24.10 one-way.

How much compensation do you get for a delayed flight from London?

Under UK261, enforced by the Civil Aviation Authority, you are owed £220 on short-haul flights under 1,500 km, £350 on medium-haul flights of 1,500 to 3,500 km and £520 on long-haul flights over 3,500 km delayed by four hours or more. The trigger is an arrival delay of three hours or more, or a cancellation with under 14 days’ notice, where the airline is at fault. Extraordinary circumstances such as bad weather or air traffic control strikes remove the compensation, though the airline still owes you care and rerouting.

Find Your Cheapest Flight from London

The cheapest airline from London is whichever one is cheapest for your route, your dates and your luggage, and the answer moves week to week. Price the fare, the bag and the train to the airport as one number, buy the bag online rather than at the gate, and let Stansted, Luton and Gatwick compete for your booking instead of picking a favourite.