London Pass Review 2026: Is It Worth It? Our 3 Day Test

Our verdict on the London Pass after using it for three days, with 2026 prices for every duration, how it compares with the Explorer Pass, and the sum to consider before you buy.

Planning a few days in London and wondering whether the London Pass is worth buying?

With the cost of attractions in London rising, for example, the Tower of London is £37, Westminster Abbey £31, and St Paul’s £27. Three of those on your first morning and you are at £95 before you have stopped for lunch, and that is before you add the London Eye at £39.

Go City set us a three-day London Pass challenge to see how much we could fit into our itinerary. And how much the London Pass would save compared to individual tickets.

This covers what the pass includes in 2026, what all eight durations cost, how it compares with the Go City Explorer Pass, and the four step sum we would run before buying. For the full price breakdown of every duration, our sister site has the complete London Pass guide.

Who the London Pass works best for

The pass works well for visitors seeing three or more paid attractions a day across consecutive days. That is really the only test that matters, because the daily cost drops the longer you buy the pass, which rewards a busy itinerary.

It is less of a fit for a slower trip, one built around London’s many free museums, or one where London is a two-day stop between York and Bath and the Tower is the only thing on your list. Separate tickets usually work out cheaper on those trips.

There is also a middle option. If you have two or three specific places in mind over a longer stay, the Go City Explorer Pass is often the better buy, and we compare the two further down.

What changed in 2026: the London Pass Plus has gone

If you looked at the pass a year or two ago, you may remember a separate London Pass Plus tier, which was the only way to get the London Eye, Madame Tussauds, the View from The Shard and the Big Bus tour.

That tier has gone. Go City folded it into the main range, and those four attractions are now included across the passes, so any guide still suggesting you need Plus for the London Eye is out of date.

There are two passes in the range today. The London Pass is priced by days, and the Explorer Pass by the number of attractions you choose.

London Pass prices in 2026

Adult prices direct from Go City, checked on 30 September 2026. Promotions run regularly, so the live price is often lower.

Pass length	Adult price	Cost per day
1 day	£105	£105.00
3 days	£199	£66.33
5 days	£245	£49.00
7 days	£285	£40.71
10 days	£305	£30.50

Children aged 5 to 15 pay less throughout. A 3-day child pass is £115 against £199 for an adult, and children of 4 and under go free.

One option worth knowing about if your London days are not back to back: Go City sells a flexible 3 day pass that lets you spread the three days across a fortnight, for £15 more than the standard version.

What we found using the pass for three days

Daryl Bennett at Go City handed us a packed three day itinerary and a pass, and we worked through it. Day one was St Paul’s and a walk over the Millennium Bridge to Shakespeare’s Globe, then the London Eye. Day two took in Westminster Abbey and Apsley House at Wellington Arch. Day three was the Tower of London with a Yeoman Warder tour, then a river boat down to Greenwich for the Cutty Sark and the Royal Observatory.

Five things stood out from using it ourselves.

• ✅ An early start on day one made more difference to the value we got than anything else we did.
• ✅ Scanning the QR code in the app at each entrance took seconds, with no paper tickets to keep track of.
• ✅ The Uber Boat down to Greenwich is covered, which turned a travel cost into part of the day out.
• ✅ The busier attractions, the London Eye especially, are still worth booking ahead even with the pass.
• ✅ A spare battery pack is worth having, because your phone is your pass and you will be scanning it all day.

St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey were the two we would happily go back to. We talked through the whole challenge in Episode 126, and Daryl joined us earlier in Episode 106 to explain how the pass works. The prices we mentioned in those episodes have changed since then, so the figures above are current.

London Pass or Explorer Pass

Both passes come from Go City, so the attraction lists overlap a great deal. They differ in price and how long you have to use them.

Type of Pass	The London Pass	Explorer Pass
Priced by	Days: 1 to 10	Attractions: 2 to 7
Attractions included	112	76
From	£105	£65
Time to use it	The days you bought, consecutively from activation	30 days from your first visit
Windsor Castle and the Royal Mews	Included	Not included
Suits	Packing a lot into consecutive days	A few must-sees over a longer stay

Comparing them at a similar spend makes the choice easier. A 5 choice Explorer at £135 sits £20 below a 2 day London Pass at £155, so it comes down to whether you would rather have five attractions spread across a month or as many as you can fit into two days.

Windsor Castle and the Royal Mews are the clearest difference between the two. Both are on the London Pass, and neither is on the Explorer, so if Windsor is on your list, the day-based pass is the one that covers it.

Our sister site compares these two alongside the Merlin five attraction ticket in its London tourist passes comparison.

Working out whether the pass pays for your trip

The advertised savings are based on somebody else’s itinerary, so the quickest way to know is to run the numbers on yours. It takes about five minutes, and you only need to add up four things.

1. The paid attractions you actually want to see. Anything you’d visit only because it’s on the pass isn’t really a saving.
2. The gate price for each one. Many of London’s best museums are free, so those belong on a separate list.
3. Which ones sit near each other. Windsor Castle and Hampton Court each take most of a day, so they rarely share one with anything else.
4. How many days that realistically takes, at around three attractions a day, and how your total compares with a pass of that length.

Here is how that looks for a two day stop in London, which is a common shape for a UK trip.

Attraction	Gate price	Running total
Tower of London	£37	£37
Westminster Abbey	£31	£68
St Paul’s Cathedral	£27	£95
The London Eye	£39	£134
Tower Bridge	£18	£152
City Cruises 24-hour Thames pass	£25	£177

Six paid attractions across two days puts you £22 ahead. At five you are £3 behind. On a two day stop the pass only pays if you are seeing three paid attractions a day, and there is very little room for a slow morning or a change of plan.

Over three days, with Windsor, the Royal Mews and the Big Bus tour added, those nine attractions come to £287 against a £199 pass. The saving rises to £88, because the extra day costs £44 and the attractions you fit into it cost a good deal more.

What the pass does not cover

The pass covers entry to attractions and nothing more. Travel around London is not included beyond the river cruise and the hop-on hop-off bus, so you still need an Oyster card or a contactless card for the Tube and buses.

A few well-known places sit outside the pass altogether, including the SEA LIFE London Aquarium, the London Dungeon and the London Wetland Centre.

It is also worth remembering that a pass covers entry, not access arrangements. Step-free routes, lifts and queuing vary from one attraction to the next, so if mobility is a consideration for anyone in the group, check the individual attraction pages before deciding how many places to fit into a day. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich, for example, sits at the top of a steep hill in the park.

Buying, activating and cancelling

The pass is digital and arrives on your phone in the Go City app as soon as you buy it, so buying on the morning you start sightseeing is perfectly possible.

It stays valid for a year from the date of purchase and only starts counting down once you scan in at your first attraction. An early start on day one gets the most from it, since the pass runs by calendar day rather than by the hour.

Non-activated passes can be refunded within 90 days of purchase, so there is little risk in buying ahead if plans change.

Some of the busiest attractions require you to reserve a time slot through the app rather than simply turning up. Go City keeps the current list in its help centre, and reserving is sensible anyway at weekends, in summer and over Christmas.

Fitting London into a wider UK trip

Most of the travellers we help are giving London three or four days at one end of a longer trip. If that sounds like yours, it is worth counting only the days you will actually be in the city and leaving out any spent on a day trip outside London, since those are days on the pass you cannot use.

For the rest of the London planning, our London bucket list and our guide for first time visitors to London are good places to start, and the Tower of London guide covers the attraction almost everyone puts on their list.