In this guide
The London Pass can save you money. Every other guide stops there, which is useless, because the question is when.
So here is the arithmetic. A 2-day adult pass is £149. The five attractions a first-time visitor actually names — Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s, the London Eye, Tower Bridge — come to £139.70 booked direct at the prices those attractions charge on their own websites.
The pass loses by £9.30. You need a sixth paid attraction in those two days before it starts to pay.
That is the shape of this whole question, and it does not appear on any page selling you the thing.
💡 The Short Version: London’s greatest museums are free, so a large share of visitors should not buy any pass at all. The 1-day pass at £99 is the worst value on the board. The child pass is poor value — attractions charge children half, the pass charges them two-thirds. Historic Royal Palaces membership at £65 beats the pass outright for anyone whose trip is about the palaces. And Go City’s own “price without pass” figures quote walk-up rates, which nobody sensible pays.
📘 How we worked this out (editorial note). Pass prices are taken from Go City’s own product data on londonpass.com. Attraction prices are taken from each attraction’s own website, never from the pass seller — the party quoting them has an interest in them looking expensive. Where an attraction sells at one price in advance and a higher price at the door, we use the advance price, because that is what a planning visitor pays. Prices checked 1 September 2026.
This site carries affiliate links to activity sellers, including sightseeing passes; nothing in the recommendation below is changed by that, and this article concludes against buying the pass for most readers.
Start here: the best museums are free
Before any arithmetic, the fact that decides it for a lot of people.
Every national museum and gallery in London is free to enter. Not discounted. Free.
- British Museum
- National Gallery
- National Portrait Gallery
- Natural History Museum
- Science Museum
- V&A
- Tate Modern and Tate Britain
- Imperial War Museum
- National Maritime Museum
A sightseeing pass has value only to someone doing paid attractions. If your London is the British Museum, a Tate, a walk along the river and a park, your correct spend on any pass is £0, and no amount of clever itinerary-building changes that.
Special exhibitions inside those museums are ticketed, usually £18–£25. The permanent collections never are.
The two products, and the mistake people make
Go City sells two different things under the London Pass name. They work nothing alike, and buying the wrong one is the commonest error.
The London Pass (All-Inclusive) buys consecutive days of unlimited visits. Activate it on Tuesday with a 3-day pass and it dies at midnight on Thursday, whatever you did in between.
The London Pass Explorer buys a fixed number of attractions — you pick 2 to 7 — used over 30 days from first use. Days do not matter. Only the count does.
⚠️ If your sightseeing is spread across a week, the Explorer is the one that fits. The All-Inclusive rewards cramming; the Explorer rewards spacing out. People routinely buy the All-Inclusive for a seven-day holiday on which they will visit four things, and lose money on every day the pass is running while they are in a pub.
There is one more wrinkle. Go City’s FAQ says it is “currently offering a limited flexible (non-consecutive) option to some customers”, usable within two weeks of first use. You cannot rely on being offered it.
What the passes cost
Adult and child prices, straight from Go City’s product data. A child pass covers ages 5 to 15; adult means 16 and over.
The London Pass (All-Inclusive) — consecutive days
| Days | Adult | Per day | Child (5–15) | Per day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £99 | £99.00 | £79 | £79.00 |
| 2 | £149 | £74.50 | £99 | £49.50 |
| 3 | £179 | £59.67 | £119 | £39.67 |
| 4 | £199 | £49.75 | £139 | £34.75 |
| 5 | £219 | £43.80 | £159 | £31.80 |
| 6 | £239 | £39.83 | £179 | £29.83 |
| 7 | £259 | £37.00 | £189 | £27.00 |
| 10 | £279 | £27.90 | £199 | £19.90 |
The 1-day pass is the worst purchase on this page. £99 to be recouped between opening and closing. The Tower of London alone reasonably eats three hours; add Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s and you are at £95 of gate price and out of daylight.
The London Pass Explorer — pick your attractions
| Choices | Adult | Per attraction | Child (5–15) | Per attraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | £64 | £32.00 | £49 | £24.50 |
| 3 | £89 | £29.67 | £64 | £21.33 |
| 4 | £109 | £27.25 | £79 | £19.75 |
| 5 | £129 | £25.80 | £89 | £17.80 |
| 6 | £149 | £24.83 | £99 | £16.50 |
| 7 | £159 | £22.71 | £109 | £15.57 |
That right-hand column is the only number that matters. Every attraction you pick must cost more than it, or you are losing money on that pick.
At two choices you need each one to beat £32. Among the landmark sights on the Explorer list, essentially only the Tower of London (£37) clears that. The 2-choice Explorer is close to unwinnable.
What the attractions actually charge
Verified on each attraction’s own website. Where a site sells cheaper in advance than at the door, both are shown.
| Attraction | Adult | Child | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tower of London | £37.00 | £18.50 | £40.70 / £20.40 with the optional 10% donation |
| Westminster Abbey | £31.00 | £14.00 | Child 6–17; under 5 free |
| St Paul’s Cathedral | £27.00 | £10.50 | £29.70 / £11.55 with donation |
| Windsor Castle | £32.00 | £16.00 | £36.00 / £18.00 on the day |
| Buckingham Palace State Rooms | £33.00 | £16.50 | £37.00 / £18.50 on the day; open 9 Jul–27 Sep only |
| Hampton Court Palace | £29.00 | £14.50 | £32.00 / £16.00 with donation |
| Kensington Palace | £24.70 | £12.40 | £27.20 / £13.70 with donation |
| The Royal Mews | £18.00 | £9.00 | Advance price |
| London Eye | from £29.00 | from £26.00 | £39 / £35 walk-up; dynamic pricing |
| Madame Tussauds | from £23.63 | from £21.00 | £39 / £35 walk-up; dynamic pricing |
| Tower Bridge | £15.70 | £9.00 | Child 5–15; under 5 free but needs a ticket |
| Cutty Sark | £22.00 | £11.00 | £10 entry on Tuesdays |
| Royal Observatory Greenwich | £18.00 | £9.00 | |
| Kew Gardens | £21.85–£24.50 | £8.75–£9.50 | Varies by day; higher with donation |
| London Transport Museum | £27.00 | Free | Under-18s free |
| The Monument | £7.00 | £3.50 | The cheapest ticketed viewpoint in London |
| Churchill War Rooms | from £29.75 | — | Not on the pass |
⚠️ The View from The Shard is not in this table because it has no published gate price. It is sold on date-and-time dynamic pricing with no headline figure on the operator’s site. Go City values it at £32. Our views guide records it starting around £25.95 online. We are not going to invent a number.
Where the pass seller’s figures are inflated
Go City prints a “price without pass” against each attraction. On several of the biggest, that figure is the walk-up rate at the door, not the advance price a planning visitor pays.
| Attraction | Go City’s figure | Own site, in advance | Overstated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Madame Tussauds | £34.13 | from £23.63 | £10.50 |
| London Eye | £34.13 | from £29.00 | £5.13 |
| Windsor Castle | £36.00 | £32.00 | £4.00 |
| Buckingham Palace State Rooms | £37.00 | £33.00 | £4.00 |
| Hampton Court Palace | £32.00 | £29.00 | £3.00 |
Two mechanisms are at work. At the Merlin attractions and the Royal Collection sites, Go City quotes the on-the-day box office price. At Hampton Court it quotes the donation-inclusive price — Historic Royal Palaces asks for an optional 10% on top, and Go City has counted it as compulsory.
On a five-attraction itinerary that is about £26.63 of saving that was never available to you in the first place.
Four worked examples
1. First-timer, the big five, two days
The classic list, booked direct in advance.
| Adult | |
|---|---|
| Tower of London | £37.00 |
| Westminster Abbey | £31.00 |
| St Paul’s Cathedral | £27.00 |
| London Eye | £29.00 |
| Tower Bridge | £15.70 |
| Gate total | £139.70 |
| 2-day London Pass | £149.00 |
| Result | Pass loses by £9.30 |
Add a sixth — Madame Tussauds at £23.63 — and the gate total becomes £163.33. Now the pass wins, by £14.33.
So the honest rule for two days: six paid attractions to make £14. That is one every three hours of an eight-hour sightseeing day, with no long lunch and no getting lost. Five is a good, full, realistic two days, and at five the pass loses.
2. Family of four, three days
Two adults and two children aged 5–15.
3-day pass: 2 × £179 + 2 × £119 = £596.
A busy but plausible three days:
| Adult each | Child each | |
|---|---|---|
| Tower of London | £37.00 | £18.50 |
| London Eye | £29.00 | £26.00 |
| Madame Tussauds | £23.63 | £21.00 |
| Hampton Court Palace | £29.00 | £14.50 |
| Tower Bridge | £15.70 | £9.00 |
| Per person | £134.33 | £89.00 |
Family total at the gate: £446.66. Against £596.
The pass loses by £149.34.
To get in front you must add Windsor Castle and Kensington Palace, taking it to seven paid attractions in three days with two children — £616.86 at the gate, a £20.86 win. That is not a holiday, it is a forced march, and it buys twenty pounds.
⚠️ The child pass is the weak point. Most London attractions charge children about half the adult price — the Tower, Hampton Court, Kensington and Windsor are all bang on 50%. The 3-day pass charges children two-thirds of the adult price. The pass is worst value for children at exactly the attractions where children are cheapest. The exception is Merlin: the London Eye charges a child £26 against £29, so the pass’s child rate holds up there.
3. Returning visitor, the second tier
You have done the Tower. Now you want Greenwich and Kew. A 3-choice Explorer is £89.
| Adult | |
|---|---|
| Royal Observatory Greenwich | £18.00 |
| Cutty Sark | £22.00 |
| Kew Gardens | £21.85 |
| Gate total | £61.85 |
| 3-choice Explorer | £89.00 |
| Result | Pass loses by £27.15 |
This is the standard trap for a second-visit itinerary. The interesting attractions are the cheap ones. The Monument is £7. The Royal Observatory is £18. Under-18s get into the London Transport Museum free. None of them can carry a £29.67 break-even.
The Explorer only pays if you deliberately pick the priciest items on it — and those skew towards tours, stadium tours and mystery games rather than the places you came to see.
4. Someone who mostly wants museums
| Adult | |
|---|---|
| British Museum | £0 |
| National Gallery | £0 |
| Natural History Museum | £0 |
| Science Museum | £0 |
| V&A | £0 |
| Tate Modern | £0 |
| Gate total | £0 |
| Cheapest pass | £99.00 |
What the pass adds at London’s free museums is a British Museum audio tour (£9.50), souvenir guidebooks at the Natural History Museum (£6), Imperial War Museum (£6), Royal Museums Greenwich (£6) and Guildhall Art Gallery (£9.95), and an IMAX 3D film at the Science Museum (£14).
£51.45 of guidebooks, for £99. This is the single worst purchase available on the London Pass, and a meaningful share of visitors is in exactly this bracket.
The “37 exclusive experiences”, examined
The All-Inclusive pass carries 113 attractions against the Explorer’s 76. The difference — the 37 “exclusive experiences” that justify paying £30 to £120 more — breaks down like this:
- 17 are food and drink. A breakfast at Bill’s, afternoon tea at Huffkins, a Burger & Lobster, fish and chips, a steak and ale pie, a curry on Brick Lane, a Hard Rock lunch, gin tastings, a cocktail, conveyor-belt cheese.
- 5 are guidebooks and audio tours at museums that are free to walk into.
- 8 are out of town — Stonehenge, Blenheim, Legoland, Chessington, two Brighton museums, a coach to Bicester Village outlet mall, a Windsor bus tour.
- 3 are services — 2.5GB of mobile data (£6.51), a day pass to a hotel gym (£26), and ClassPass credits (£30).
- 3 are entertainment — a Science Museum IMAX film, a Soho comedy club, and a Wicked ticket.
That leaves exactly one major London landmark: the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. And the State Rooms open 9 July to 27 September — eleven weeks a year. For nine and a half months, the thing that most distinguishes the expensive pass from the cheap one is shut.
What is missing
- Churchill War Rooms — £29.75, one of London’s most-wanted paid attractions, not on the pass.
- Warner Bros Studio Tour — The Making of Harry Potter — not on the pass. The pass includes a Harry Potter walking tour of London, which is a different thing, and people conflate them.
- The Underground and buses. Go City’s FAQ: its passes “don’t include public transport”. You still need contactless or Oyster.
- Westminster Abbey’s Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries. The Abbey’s own site states these are not included with a Go City pass and must be bought on arrival. A partial admission billed as a full one.
And the free viewpoints — Sky Garden, Horizon 22, The Garden at 120, Tate Modern’s Level 10 — are not on the pass because they cost nothing. Do not let a pass talk you out of them.
The practical traps
A “day” is a calendar day, not 24 hours. Go City’s own wording: “if you visit your first attraction in the afternoon and activate your pass, you’ll miss out on a morning of sightseeing.” Scan in at 5pm and you have burned a full day. Activate first thing in the morning or not at all.
The days are consecutive. A 3-day pass activated on Tuesday expires at midnight on Thursday. A rainy Wednesday spent indoors is a third of your pass gone.
Pre-booking is still required at several attractions, pass or no pass. Go City’s own listings mark reservations as required at the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge, The View from The Shard, Madame Tussauds, Legoland and Chessington, plus most tours. The London Eye warning is the sharpest: book “at least one day in advance”, up to 15 days ahead, and “same-day and next-day bookings are often unavailable.” Making a reservation does not activate the pass.
Refunds: 90 days from purchase, non-activated passes only. Passes bought before 1 May 2026 keep the older 30-day policy. Unactivated passes are valid a year from purchase.
The list price is rarely the price. At the time of writing Go City was running a bank holiday sale — £15 off 3+ day passes with a code, ending at 05:00 today. Promotional codes on this product are close to permanent. Never buy at list price without checking for a live code, and treat the arithmetic above as the pessimistic case for the pass.
The alternatives, honestly compared
Historic Royal Palaces membership — the one that beats it
If your trip is about the palaces, stop reading about passes.
The Tower of London, Hampton Court and Kensington Palace cost £90.70 for one adult at the gate. HRP membership is £65 by annual Direct Debit (£75 by card) and covers all three, plus Hillsborough Castle, unlimited for a year.
Membership is cheaper than visiting all three once.
For a family of four it is starker still:
| Cost | |
|---|---|
| Tower + Hampton Court + Kensington, 2 adults + 2 children, at the gate | £272.20 |
| HRP Family membership (2 adults, up to 6 children) | £125.00 |
| 3-day London Pass, same family | £596.00 |
The family membership is £471 cheaper than the pass and lasts a year. HRP also lets you put the price of an adult ticket towards membership on the day of your visit or within two weeks — so you can decide at the Tower’s ticket office rather than in advance.
Individual £65, Joint £105, Family (one adult) £80, Family (two adults) £125, all by Direct Debit; add £10 for card payment. Prices held until 28 February 2027.
National Art Pass
£65.25 for a first year by Direct Debit, or £87 by card; £39.75 for under-30s; £97.50 double. It gives free entry at 250-plus places and half price at many more — including 50% off St Paul’s and Kensington Palace, and half price on major exhibitions at Tate Britain and the Young V&A.
On a single short trip, half price at St Paul’s and Kensington saves £25.85 against a £65.25 pass. It does not pay on one visit. It pays for people who go to exhibitions through the year.
English Heritage
£84 individual, £149 joint, annually. English Heritage’s London portfolio is three small sites — Wellington Arch, Apsley House and Ranger’s House — and does not come close to £84. Its value is Stonehenge and the country properties. Not a London answer.
National Trust
£109.20 individual, £176.40 family, annually; £75.60 for a senior individual. The Trust has very little inside central London and much of its member value is free parking, which is irrelevant here. Not a London sightseeing solution.
Merlin Annual Pass
From £139 per person. Covers the London Eye, Madame Tussauds, SEA LIFE London and Shrek’s Adventure, plus 20-plus UK attractions. Pre-booking required at all of them.
The London Eye and Madame Tussauds booked direct come to £52.63. £139 only works if you do all four London sites and expect to return during the year.
Merlin’s Magical London — the one that does pay, from three attractions
Not to be confused with the annual pass above. This is a single ticket to five Merlin attractions — Madame Tussauds, SEA LIFE London, the London Dungeon, Shrek’s Adventure and the London Eye — in any order, valid 90 days from first activation, with free cancellation up to 24 hours before.
From £69. Booked separately, at the cheapest price each is currently sold for, the five come to £132:
| Attraction | Cheapest advance |
|---|---|
| London Eye | £29 |
| SEA LIFE London | £28 |
| Madame Tussauds | £27 |
| London Dungeon | £27 |
| Shrek’s Adventure | £21 |
| All five separately | £132 |
| Merlin’s Magical London | £69 |
The 48% saving is not the number that matters, because hardly anyone wants all five. The break-even is three. The dearest possible pair — the Eye and SEA LIFE — is £57, still under the pass, so two attractions are always cheaper booked direct. The cheapest possible trio is £75, already over it. So it pays from the third, whichever three you pick.
The 90-day window is the other half of the case, and it is where this beats The London Pass on its own terms: no consecutive-day clock, no need to cram. Prices are dynamic, so check the date you actually want.
⚠️ These are all Merlin attractions, and four of the five are indoor. If you want the Tower, Westminster Abbey and the palaces, this is the wrong pass — that is what the London Pass comparison above is for.
Just booking two or three direct
The baseline, and for most readers the answer. Book in advance, on the attraction’s own site, and you get the advance price rather than the walk-up price — which is where the real saving in London sightseeing lives. On the London Eye that gap is £10 an adult; on Madame Tussauds it is £15.37.
So who should buy it?
Buy the All-Inclusive if you are doing five or more paid attractions a day, on consecutive days, starting each morning at opening, and you genuinely enjoy that pace. It rewards intensity and nothing else.
Buy the Explorer if you have picked out three or more expensive attractions and want them spread across a week or two. Check every pick against the per-attraction break-even in the table above first.
Do not buy either if your London is museums and galleries; if you have children and the palaces are the draw (buy HRP membership); if you are here for four days and plan two paid attractions; or if you like long lunches.
And check the maths for your own list before you buy. Write down the attractions you actually want. Look up each one on its own website, in advance, not on the pass seller’s page. Add it up. Then compare. It takes ten minutes and it is the only way to answer this question for your trip rather than for an imaginary visitor who does six things a day.
Continue planning your London trip
- 🎪 Free Things to Do in London
- 🏛️ The Best Museums in London
- 👀 The Best Views in London
- 💷 London on a Budget
- 🚌 London Tour Buses Compared
- 🏰 Historic Houses in London
- 🚇 Oyster Card Guide
- 📅 Three Days in London
Common questions
Is the London Pass worth it?
Only on dense, expensive itineraries. A 2-day adult pass is £149 and the classic big five — Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's, London Eye, Tower Bridge — total £139.70 booked direct. You need a sixth paid attraction in those two days before the pass starts winning. Most visitors do not.
Does the London Pass include the Tube?
No. Go City's own FAQ says plainly that its passes do not include public transport. You still need contactless or an Oyster card for the Underground and buses. A Big Bus hop-on hop-off ticket and a City Cruises river pass are included, but they are tours, not transport.
Can I use the London Pass for the London Eye?
Yes, on both the All-Inclusive and the Explorer pass — but you must reserve a slot in advance through the Go City app, up to 15 days ahead, and Go City warns that same-day and next-day bookings are often unavailable. Turning up without a reservation does not work.
What is the difference between the London Pass and the London Pass Explorer?
The London Pass (All-Inclusive) buys consecutive days of unlimited visits, from £99 for one day. The Explorer buys a fixed number of attractions — 2 to 7 — used over 30 days from first use, from £64. Buying the wrong one is the commonest mistake: if your sightseeing is spread across a week, the Explorer is the one that fits.
Are London's museums included in the London Pass?
The famous ones are free to everyone anyway. The British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Science Museum, V&A, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Imperial War Museum, National Maritime Museum and National Portrait Gallery all cost nothing to enter. What the pass adds at those sites is guidebooks and an audio tour — about £51 of paperwork.
Is the London Pass better than Historic Royal Palaces membership?
Not if the palaces are what you came for. The Tower of London, Hampton Court and Kensington Palace cost £90.70 at the gate for one adult. HRP membership is £65 by Direct Debit and lasts a year. For a family of four it is £125 against a £596 three-day London Pass.
