Public Toilets in London: The Free Ones, the Paid Ones, and Where Else to Go

In this guide

Find toilets near you

📍 Use my location

Shows the closest Zone 1 facilities from the dataset below, with a link to open directions.

Map: Zone 1 public toilets

Show on a map400 Zone 1 facilities · free, paid and unclear

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Data: Great British Public Toilet Map, Zone 1 only. A crowdsourced database — a pin's status can lag reality, so treat this as a starting point.

Nobody plans a London trip around this until the moment they need one. What follows comes from the Great British Public Toilet Map’s own database — the crowdsourced, council-fed dataset that most toilet-finder apps run on — plus the official pages for the parks, boroughs and venues that operate them.

💡 The Short Version: About 85% of London’s logged public toilets are free. The main things that charge are the Royal Parks (a flat 20p, card only), Trafalgar Square (20p) and the Camden markets (up to £1). Mainline station toilets and TfL’s own Tube station toilets are free. Community Toilet Scheme pubs, cafes and libraries let anyone in without buying anything, and every major free museum has toilets open to all visitors.

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Where you’ll actually pay, and how much

Station toilets are free. Network Rail no longer charges at the 20 stations it runs, which include King’s Cross, Euston, Paddington, Victoria, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, London Bridge and Charing Cross, and St Pancras International’s toilets are free as well. TfL says its own Tube station toilets are free too. Some are inside the ticket gates, so you tap in and out, and ones TfL doesn’t run, such as Piccadilly Circus, can charge.

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Free, by area

Pulled from the same database, filtered to active listings only.

Trafalgar Square & the West End

• National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery — free with general admission, no ticket needed for the toilets themselves
• Jubilee Hall, Covent Garden — daily 8am–7.30pm. Westminster’s Covent Garden and Leicester Square toilets are closed, and this and Piccadilly Circus are its nearest alternatives
• Charing Cross Library — ground floor only

South Bank & Waterloo

• Waterloo Station, Main Concourse — opposite platform 18
• Royal Festival Hall — on all four floors
• Imperial War Museum — free entry, free toilets, closed only 24–26 December
• Borough Market — in Three Crown Square, Borough Market Kitchen and the Market Hall, open during trading hours; the accessible toilets need no RADAR key

Camden

• Camden Town Hall (Judd Street entrance) — includes a Changing Places toilet
• Camden Town public toilets — the men’s under the traffic island where Camden High Street meets Parkway, the women’s on Parkway; 9am–7.45pm June to October, 9am–5.45pm November to May

King’s Cross

• King’s Cross Station — Upper Mezzanine, and a second one between Platform 9 and the Harry Potter Shop
• St Pancras International — ground floor by Boots, 24 hours (expect a queue for the Ladies)
• British Library
• Coal Drops Yard, lower level — fully accessible
• Granary Square — a standalone block, relocated from the square itself in 2018

Greenwich

• National Maritime Museum

Shoreditch, Hackney & Tower Hamlets

• Old Spitalfields Market — opposite the Flying Tiger shop
• Broadgate Shopping Centre — includes a Changing Places toilet
• Barbican Centre — on most levels, including accessible and gender-neutral toilets

Notting Hill, Kensington & Bayswater

• Holland Park — baby change both sides
• Paddington Station, Platform 12 — free (the showers next door are £5)
• Kensington Town Hall — via the Hornton Street car-park exit

Canary Wharf

• Cabot Square — street level, open 10am–6pm
• Market Halls Cargo food court
• Canary Wharf Jubilee line station — accessible-only, RADAR key required

Richmond & Kew

• Marble Hill Park
• Kew Gardens — two of the three toilets nearest the gardens are free-standing and free; the third is inside the gate, so you’d pay Kew’s entrance fee to reach it

Islington & Angel

• Chapel Market — 8am–6pm daily

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The Community Toilet Scheme: free at pubs, cafes and libraries

This is a real, named UK council scheme, not an informal courtesy. Camden’s own wording: they pay participating businesses up to £750 a year to let the public use their toilet “without the need to buy goods or services.” The City of London runs an identically-named scheme with its own interactive map. Southwark runs the same idea under a different name — asking businesses “to make their toilets available to all, without the need to be paying customers.” Westminster points people to the Great British Public Toilet Map instead, and Islington to the same map and the Toilets4London app.

There is no sticker or window decal marking a participating premises, so if you are not sure, just ask.

Some of the more surprising participants:

• The Shakespeare and The Old Red Cow, two pubs on the City of London’s scheme
• JD Wetherspoon, Ledger Building and The Alchemist, both in Canary Wharf — proof this isn’t only independent cafes
• The Angel and Crown, a pub on Richmond’s scheme
• Whitechapel Gallery and the Vagina Museum, both on Tower Hamlets’ scheme
• Mudchute Park & Farm and The Rotunda, also Tower Hamlets
• Belsize Community Library and Pedro’s Café, on Camden’s scheme

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Museums, department stores and shopping centres

Every major free-entry museum in London has toilets open to any visitor — you don’t need a ticket for a paid exhibition to use them, only to be inside the building:

British Museum, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, National Gallery, V&A, Natural History Museum and Science Museum are all free to enter, and all publish accessible-toilet and baby-change locations on their own sites. Tate Modern and Tate Britain both have a Changing Places toilet; the V&A’s nearest one is next door at the Science Museum, which has its own.

Battersea Power Station gives the clearest answer anywhere — its own FAQ asks outright: “Are there public toilets?” and answers “Yes, throughout The Power Station we have accessible toilets and family friendly toilets.”

Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City both list accessible toilets (RADAR key, available from Guest Services) and a baby-change lounge as standard centre services.

Department stores are vague about who may use them. Selfridges and John Lewis Oxford Street both publish exactly where their toilets are, floor by floor — but neither states a “non-customers welcome” policy in writing, so it’s a judgement call in practice, not a published rule.

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The RADAR key, and where it gets you in free

Locked accessible toilets across the UK often use the same lock — the National Key Scheme, opened with what’s universally called a RADAR key. It costs £5, or £6 if you pay VAT, plus £1.75 postage from Disability Rights UK, and once you have one it works nationwide, not just in London.

In this guide specifically, a RADAR key gets you into the accessible-only toilet at Canary Wharf’s Jubilee line station, and waives the usual 50p charge at Cutty Sark Gardens in Greenwich.

Changing Places toilets — the larger rooms with an adult changing bench and a hoist — are a separate provision again, and several of the central ones are behind a RADAR key you ask staff for, not one you carry. Our step-free London guide lists where they are, from Tate Modern and the National Gallery to five main-line stations.

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Old toilets that became something else

Fitzrovia’s Attendant coffee shop trades from a genuine Victorian gentleman’s convenience — Time Out describes it as “London’s most original location for a coffee bar: a late-nineteenth-century gents’ toilet,” where the original urinals now provide seating with small tables. The ornate cast-iron railings over the stairwell down from street level are the same ones that would have marked the toilet’s entrance when it opened.

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Apps and tools for finding one anywhere

• The Great British Public Toilet Map (toiletmap.org.uk) — the database this entire article is built from. Crowdsourced and fed by council open data, covering over 14,000 UK facilities, with London as its default view.
• Flush — a toilet-finder app that stores its database on your phone for offline use, so it works even without signal.
• Toilets4London — named specifically by Islington and the City of London councils as their pointer app for finding both council-run and Community Toilet Scheme facilities.

A fingerpost in Kensington giving the distance to the nearest public toilets.

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What to know before you go

• Royal Parks toilets are card and contactless only. Cash is no longer accepted, so carry a card or phone wallet.
• Some toilets are seasonal. Camden’s High Street blocks and Greenwich Park’s Lower Avenue toilet both run shorter hours in winter.
• “Free” and “no purchase necessary” aren’t the same claim. A Community Toilet Scheme venue explicitly welcomes non-customers; a department store or independent café simply hasn’t published a policy either way, so use your judgement.
• Accessible toilets often need a RADAR key, not just a different door — worth carrying one if you’ll need it more than once.

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Continue planning your London trip

• 💷 London on a Budget
• 💰 Money in London — cash, cards and cash machines across the city
• 🕵️ Hidden London
• 🌳 Best Parks and Gardens in London
• 🛶 Best Canal Walks in London
• 🚇 Getting Around London: Transport Guide
• ♿ Step-Free London — accessible stations, Changing Places toilets and attraction access
• 🎪 Free Things to Do in London
• 🏥 Healthcare in London for Visitors — NHS, A&E and pharmacies, for visitors

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Charges and opening hours checked in September 2026. The Great British Public Toilet Map shows the current status of any single toilet you’re planning around.

Common questions

Are public toilets free in London?

Most are. Of the London facilities logged on the Great British Public Toilet Map, roughly 85% carry no charge. The exceptions are consistent: all eight Royal Parks charge a flat 20p, Trafalgar Square charges 20p, the Camden markets charge up to £1, and a handful of standalone blocks charge 20p to £1.

Do you have to pay to use the toilet at a London train station?

No. Network Rail scrapped toilet charges at the 20 stations it runs itself, which include King's Cross, Euston, Paddington, Victoria, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, London Bridge and Charing Cross. St Pancras International's toilets are free too, and so are TfL's own Tube station toilets, though some of those are inside the ticket gates.

Can I use a shop's toilet in London without buying anything?

At a Community Toilet Scheme venue, yes by design — councils including Camden and the City of London pay local pubs, cafes and libraries to let anyone in without a purchase. Elsewhere it's down to the venue: big free museums have toilets open to all visitors, and department stores generally don't publish a stated policy either way.

What is the RADAR key and do I need one?

It unlocks accessible toilets fitted with a National Key Scheme lock, found in shopping centres, stations and pubs across the country. It costs around £5-£6 plus postage from Disability Rights UK, and a handful of London facilities — including one at Cutty Sark Gardens — waive their usual charge for key holders.

Is there an app for finding a public toilet in London?

The Great British Public Toilet Map (toiletmap.org.uk) is the one this guide is built from — a crowdsourced, council-fed database of over 14,000 UK facilities. The Flush app does the same job with an offline-first design.