The Cheapest Way to Park at a UK Airport

The cheapest way to park at a UK airport is to pre-book an off-site park and ride space two to six weeks ahead and apply a public discount code. That combination typically costs half the drive-up price. East Midlands is the cheapest airport in the country at about £30 for eight days.

The three savings, in order of size

Almost every article about cheap airport parking leads with discount codes, and that is the smallest of the three savings available. Ranked by how much money they actually move, the order is: book ahead rather than drive up, choose an off-site operator over an on-airport one, then apply a code.

Booking ahead is worth £25 to £40 on a typical eight-day stay because airport car parks run two prices for the same space — a drive-up rate designed to be punitive and a pre-booked rate designed to fill the car park. Choosing off-site over on-airport is worth £15 to £36 depending on the airport, and it is worth most at Heathrow. The code is worth £7 to £18.

Do all three and you halve the cost. Do only the code and you save about a tenth.

Which UK airport is cheapest to park at

East Midlands, at around £30 for eight days with a code applied, is the cheapest airport in this set, followed by Southend at £26 — though Southend is a special case because its railway station is closer to check-in than its car park. Among the major airports, Stansted at £33 is the cheapest in London and Liverpool at £32 the cheapest in the north.

Heathrow is the most expensive at £47 on the cheapest available product, and London City is in a category of its own with no long-stay parking at all. The spread between the cheapest and most expensive mainstream airport is therefore about £17 on eight days, which is real but smaller than most people expect.

When to book

Two to six weeks ahead is the sweet spot at every airport we track. Earlier than that and you are not yet in the pricing window where operators discount to fill; later and you are competing with everyone else who left it late. Prices climb noticeably in the final fortnight and sharply in the final week.

Gatwick is the airport where booking early matters most, because it runs a single runway at very high utilisation and its car parks fill earlier than comparable airports. East Midlands is where it matters least — it has abundant land and rarely sells out.

What not to bother with

Loyalty schemes at airport car parks rarely pay back for anyone flying less than four times a year. Cancellation cover sold as an add-on is usually worse value than simply booking the flexible rate. And eligibility discounts — NHS, Blue Light, student — are almost always beaten by the public code, which is the point our eligibility pages make in more detail.

Related pages

all UK airport parking codes · East Midlands parking discount code · Heathrow parking deals · how far in advance to book airport parking