“How much does a taxi cost?” is the first question almost everybody asks, and it is the one that most rarely gets a straight answer. The honest reply is that the price depends on a short, predictable list of things — and once you know what is on that list you can tell in advance whether a journey is going to be a small fare or a substantial one, and you can see immediately when a price you have been quoted looks wrong.
This guide sets out every factor that moves the price of a licensed taxi or private hire car in Surrey and south-west London, explains why a flat “cost per mile” figure misleads more often than it helps, gives you the real road distances behind the journeys people ask about most, and shows you how to get a firm price for your own trip in well under a minute.
The Short Answer
A taxi fare is built from the work the car has to do. Everything that adds work adds cost, and nothing else does. In practice that means seven variables, in rough order of how much they move the number:
- How far the journey is, and the route the driver is forced to take to get there
- What time of day and which day of the week you travel
- How many seats you need — a saloon, an estate, a six or an eight-seater
- How much luggage is coming with you
- Whether the driver has to wait, and whether a flight has to be watched
- Whether you need step-free, wheelchair or assisted access
- Charges that belong to somebody else — airport drop-off fees, tolls, London road charges
What a fare is not built from is a single rate per mile. Two journeys of identical length through different parts of Surrey at different hours can sit a long way apart, for reasons the rest of this page explains.
Metered Taxis and Private Hire Cars Are Priced Two Completely Different Ways
Before you can judge any taxi price in England you need to know which of two legal categories the car falls into, because they are priced by entirely different mechanisms.
Hackney carriages run on a meter
A hackney carriage is the kind of taxi you can hail in the street or pick up from a rank. Its fares are capped by a tariff that the licensing council sets, and the meter starts at a flag-fall charge then climbs with distance and with waiting time. Most councils run several tariffs, with higher ones for evenings, nights, weekends and public holidays. The crucial point for your wallet is that you do not know the final figure until the meter stops — if you sit in traffic on the way, the meter keeps earning.
Private hire cars are quoted before you travel
Private hire vehicles — minicabs, executive cars, airport transfers, eight-seaters — cannot legally be flagged down. Every journey must be booked in advance through a licensed operator. Because the operator takes the booking it can see the whole journey before the car moves, and can therefore price it up front. That is the model Clocktower Cars works to: you are given the figure for your journey before you commit to it, and that figure is what you pay.
Clocktower Cars holds a private hire operator licence as Epsom & Ewell Cars T/A Clocktower Cars, and our drivers and vehicles are licensed across seven authorities — Epsom and Ewell, Reigate and Banstead, Mole Valley, Elmbridge, Guildford, Waverley and Transport for London.
Why the difference matters to what you pay
On a metered journey the risk of delay sits with you: an accident on the A3 or a closure on the M25 is added to your bill minute by minute. On a quoted private hire journey that risk sits with the operator. The price you were given before you travelled is still the price when you arrive, however the traffic behaved. For an airport run with a check-in time attached, that difference is usually worth more than any headline rate.
The Seven Things That Decide Your Price
1. Distance and the route the driver is forced to take
Mileage is the single biggest component of any fare, but it is road mileage, not the straight line on a map. Surrey is full of journeys where the two diverge badly. Godalming to Gatwick looks like a short hop east, yet the quick version of it runs north up the A3 and round the M25 — forty miles of road for about twenty-five miles of map. The cross-country route through Cranleigh and Horsham is five miles shorter and ten minutes slower. The driver takes the sensible route, and the price reflects the road, not the crow.
2. Time of day and day of the week
Night work, very early mornings, Sunday work and public holidays cost more to staff, and every operator in the country prices accordingly. A 4am departure for a Heathrow check-in is a more expensive hour of a driver’s life than a 10am one, and school-holiday weekends are busier than term-time Tuesdays. If your travel time is flexible by an hour or two, that flexibility is worth money.
3. How many seats you need
A saloon carries four passengers. An estate carries four with considerably more boot space. A six-seater and an eight-seater carry more people again, cost more to buy, insure and run, and are in shorter supply — so they sit higher on the price list. Two couples travelling to Gatwick with four large suitcases are an eight-seater booking rather than two saloons, and are usually cheaper that way.
4. How much luggage is coming with you
Luggage is the most common cause of a booking going wrong, and sometimes of a price changing on the doorstep. Four adults with four hold bags and four cabin bags will not fit in a saloon, however the maths looks on paper. Golf clubs, ski bags, musical instruments, pushchairs, a bicycle in a box and a dog crate all need declaring when you book, because each one changes which vehicle has to turn up.
5. Waiting time and flight monitoring
If a driver has to wait, that is working time. On a booked airport collection we track the flight and set the pickup against the actual landing time rather than the scheduled one, which is why a delayed flight does not strand you and does not generate a wasted journey. Most operators, including us, allow a free grace period after landing for immigration and baggage reclaim, after which waiting is chargeable. Ask what the grace period is when you book — it is a fair question and it should get a plain answer.
6. Access requirements
Wheelchair accessible vehicles are a smaller part of any fleet and cost more to operate. A ramped vehicle, a passenger who needs help to the door, or a journey where a carer travels as well all affect which car is sent. None of it is a reason to pay over the odds, and it should never be a surprise at the roadside — tell us at the booking stage and it is priced into the figure you are given. Our wheelchair accessible taxi page sets out what we run and how to book it.
7. Charges that belong to somebody else
Some costs on a journey are not the taxi firm’s at all. Airport drop-off charges, the Dartford Crossing, the Congestion Charge zone and ULEZ-related costs are levied by airports, highway operators and Transport for London. A reputable operator will tell you which of them applies to your route and will not quietly bury them. The section below gives the current published figures for the two airports our passengers use most.
Why “Cost Per Mile” Is a Poor Way to Estimate a Taxi Fare
Per-mile figures are the most quoted and least useful numbers in the taxi trade. They break down for three reasons.
- The first mile is never the cheapest. Every journey carries fixed work — dispatching the car, getting it to your door, loading, and in most cases getting it back to where it can earn again. Spread over two miles that overhead is large; spread over forty it almost disappears. A long run is always cheaper per mile than a short one, so a single rate cannot describe both.
- Return mileage is invisible but real. A Godalming to Heathrow run is thirty miles on your meter and sixty miles of the driver’s day. On a town-centre hop the driver is likely to pick up again within minutes. The dead-mileage share differs enormously between the two, and no per-mile rate carries that information.
- Time and distance are not the same cost. Twelve miles across Kingston at 5pm and twelve miles down the A24 at 10pm occupy the driver for very different lengths of time. Any model built on distance alone gets one of them badly wrong.
The useful question is not “what is your rate per mile?” but “what is the price for this journey, at this time, in this vehicle?” That is a question with one correct answer, and you can have it before you book. If you want to see how badly the per-mile approach performs on a short trip, our guide to what a five-mile taxi journey costs in the UK works through the arithmetic.
What You Are Actually Paying to Cover: Real Distances from Epsom
Below are the measured road distances and free-flowing drive times from the Clock Tower in Epsom — the junction our head office sits beside — to the five London airports. These are the figures behind any airport price, and unlike a fare they do not go out of date.
| Airport | Road distance from Epsom | Free-flowing drive time | Usual route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gatwick (LGW) | 19.4 miles | about 32 minutes | A217 / M23 |
| Heathrow (LHR) | 24.3 miles | about 32 minutes | A3 / M25 west |
| London City (LCY) | 48.9 miles | about 1 hr 11 min | A3 / Blackwall or Woolwich |
| Luton (LTN) | 57.8 miles | about 1 hr 17 min | M25 anticlockwise / M1 |
| Stansted (STN) | 72.7 miles | about 1 hr 41 min | M25 anticlockwise / M11 |
Two things in that table are worth sitting with. Heathrow is five miles further from Epsom than Gatwick but takes the same time, because the M25 west does the work. And Stansted is nearly four times the distance of Gatwick, which is why “an airport transfer” is not a single product with a single price. Each of those runs has its own page: Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted, with the full picture on our airport transfers page.
Distances from our other offices differ, sometimes sharply. From Godalming, for instance, Heathrow is 30.2 miles and about 47 minutes while Gatwick is 40.1 miles and about 49 minutes — so the airport that looks nearer on a map is the further one by road. The Godalming airport taxi guide covers that in detail.
Third-Party Charges You May See on an Airport Run
These are the airports’ own charges, not ours. They are published by the airport operators and are correct as at October 2026 — always worth a glance at the airport’s own page before you travel, because they change without much warning.
Heathrow drop-off charge
Heathrow charges £7 for each entry into a terminal drop-off zone, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, at Terminals 2, 3, 4 and 5. Leaving and re-entering triggers the charge again. Source: Heathrow Airport — drop-off charge.
Gatwick drop-off charge
Gatwick charges a minimum of £10 for a stay of up to ten minutes in its drop-off zones, then £1 for every further minute up to twenty minutes. The maximum stay is thirty minutes and the daily cap is £30. The same terms apply at both the North and South terminals. Source: Gatwick Airport — dropping off.
If you hold a Blue Badge
Both airports operate exemptions for Blue Badge holders, and both are claimed against a vehicle registration rather than a person. At Heathrow a Blue Badge holder can claim a full discount even when they are not the driver, which means a taxi passenger registers the registration number of the car that brings them. Gatwick works the same way. If you hold a badge, have the number plate of your booked car to hand — we will give it to you — and register before or shortly after the journey. There is more on this, and on booking a ramped vehicle, on our wheelchair accessible taxi page.
Tolls and London road charges
A run east towards London City Airport or Essex may involve the Dartford Crossing. Journeys into central London may touch the Congestion Charge zone, and the ULEZ now covers all London boroughs. Where any of those apply to your route we will say so when we quote, so the figure you are given is the figure you pay.
Looking for a Clocktower Cars Price List?
A fair number of people arrive on this page having searched for exactly that, so here is the straight answer: we do not publish a fixed price list, and we would rather explain why than put up a table that misleads you.
Why we quote instead of publishing a list
A published list has to pick one version of every journey — one vehicle, one time of day, one amount of luggage, one set of airport charges — and then it quietly goes out of date. We have seen what that does: figures that no longer match what the office would charge, contradicting each other from page to page, and passengers arriving at a booking with the wrong number in their head. A price list that is wrong is worse than no price list at all. So we quote every journey instead, and the quote holds.
What we ask you, and why
A quote takes a few seconds because there are only five things we need:
- Where you are being collected from, and where you are going — a postcode at each end is ideal
- The date and time of the pickup
- How many passengers are travelling
- How much luggage is coming, including anything awkward
- Whether you need anything particular: a child seat, step-free access, a pet travelling, a meet and greet inside the terminal
From those five answers you get one figure, for your journey, in the vehicle that actually fits you. Nothing is added later for the things you have already told us about.
How to get your price in under a minute
Call the office on 01372 747 747 and a person will answer and give you the figure on the call. Or send the same five details through the online booking form and we will come back to you with the price. If Godalming is your nearest office, the direct line is 01483 422 222.
How You Can Pay
There are three routes, and which one you use makes no difference to the price.
Card at the time of booking
Pay by card when you book, on the phone or online. The journey is then settled before the car arrives and there is nothing to deal with at the end of it — useful if someone else is travelling, or if you are booking a car to collect a relative.
Cash to the driver
Cash is still welcome, handed to the driver at the end of the journey. One thing worth knowing: our cars do not carry card terminals, so if you have not paid by card at the booking stage, please have cash with you. This is the single most common misunderstanding we deal with at the roadside.
Business account, invoiced monthly
Companies, schools, care providers and regular corporate travellers can run an account with us and receive one invoice a month covering every journey, with cost centres or reference codes on each line. Nobody has to find a card at the kerb and nobody has to collect receipts. Our page on airport transfer pricing and payment methods goes into the mechanics.
Ten Ways to Bring the Cost of a Taxi Down
None of these involve haggling, which does not work and wastes everyone’s time. They involve giving the operator less work to do.
- Book in advance rather than on the day. A journey planned ahead can be slotted into a driver’s day efficiently. A car needed in fifteen minutes cannot.
- Travel one vehicle, not two. Four people in an eight-seater beats two saloons on almost every route.
- Shift the time if you can. An hour either side of a peak can change which tariff band your journey falls into.
- Give an accurate luggage count. The wrong vehicle arriving means a second car, a delay, and a price nobody wanted.
- Use a postcode at both ends. Vague pickup points cost drivers time, and time is the thing you are buying.
- Book the return at the same time. A known return is easier to plan around than an unknown one.
- Take the nearer airport when the choice is yours. On the figures above, the difference between Gatwick and Stansted from Epsom is over fifty miles each way.
- Watch the drop-off charges. A single clean drop at the terminal costs one entry fee; circling back for a forgotten bag costs another.
- Set up an account if you travel often. Account rates and monthly invoicing remove per-trip admin entirely.
- Say what you need at the booking stage. Child seats, assistance, a pet, a meet and greet — all of it is cheaper designed in than improvised.
Tipping Is Not Part of the Fare
In the UK a tip is discretionary and nothing in a quoted private hire price assumes one. Plenty of passengers round up, particularly after an early start or a hand with heavy cases, and plenty do not. If you would like to know what is customary and what drivers actually see, we have written about whether you tip taxi drivers in the UK and how much.
What Changes Between Towns
We operate from offices across Surrey and south-west London, and the local picture is genuinely different in each. From Reigate and Redhill the M23 makes Gatwick a short run. From Kingston and Weybridge, Heathrow is the natural airport. From Guildford and Godalming the A3 dominates every journey north. Station work behaves differently again: an early train connection to Epsom, Ewell West, Kingston or Godalming station is a short, time-critical job rather than a long one, and is priced as such.
If you are comparing two airports or two routes before you book, our guide to what a Heathrow to Gatwick transfer involves and our general notes on how taxi fares work in the UK are the two most useful things to read next. If the journey you are pricing is Epsom to Heathrow specifically, we have written that one up on its own page: how much a taxi from Epsom to Heathrow costs.
Frequently Asked Questions About Taxi Costs
How much does a taxi cost per mile in the UK?
There is no single figure, and any site that gives you one is guessing. Short journeys cost more per mile than long ones because the fixed work of dispatching and positioning a car is spread over fewer miles, and time in traffic costs as much as distance covered. The only reliable number is a quote for your actual journey, at your actual time, in the vehicle that fits you.
Is a taxi cheaper than a minicab?
They are different things rather than cheaper and dearer versions of the same thing. A hackney carriage taxi runs on a council-set meter and you learn the total at the end. A private hire minicab must be pre-booked and is quoted before you travel, so the price is fixed whatever the traffic does. On longer and airport journeys the pre-booked price usually wins, because delay is not added to your bill.
Does Clocktower Cars publish a price list?
No. A fixed list has to assume one vehicle, one time of day and one luggage load, and it goes out of date quietly. We quote each journey instead, from five details, and the quote we give you is what you pay. Call 01372 747 747 or use the online booking form.
Will the price change after I have booked?
Not for anything you told us at the booking stage. The figure you are given covers the journey as described. It can change only if the journey itself changes — a different pickup point, extra passengers, luggage that needs a larger vehicle, or waiting time beyond the agreed grace period.
Do you charge more at night or on a bank holiday?
Yes. Nights, very early mornings, Sundays and public holidays cost more to staff and are priced higher, as they are across the trade. If your departure time is flexible, moving it by an hour or two can put the journey in a cheaper band.
How much is the Heathrow drop-off charge?
Heathrow charges £7 for each entry into a terminal drop-off zone, at any hour, every day of the year, and re-entering charges again. That is the airport’s charge rather than ours. Blue Badge holders can claim a full discount, registered against the vehicle registration, even when they are not driving.
How much is the Gatwick drop-off charge?
Gatwick charges a minimum of £10 for up to ten minutes in a drop-off zone, then £1 a minute up to twenty minutes, with a thirty-minute maximum stay and a £30 daily cap, at both terminals. Again, this is the airport’s charge, and Blue Badge holders are exempt once the registration is registered.
Can I pay the driver by card?
Our cars do not carry card terminals. You can pay by card when you book, by phone or online, or in cash to the driver at the end of the journey. Business accounts are invoiced monthly. If you have not paid by card in advance, please bring cash.
Is it cheaper to book one eight-seater or two cars?
For a group of five to eight people travelling together, one larger vehicle is almost always cheaper than two saloons, and simpler on an airport run because everyone arrives at once. Tell us the passenger and luggage count and we will tell you which works out better for your journey.
Do I have to tip the driver?
No. A tip is entirely discretionary in the UK and nothing in our quoted price assumes one. Many passengers round up after an early start or help with heavy bags, and nobody minds either way.
Get a Price for Your Journey
Whatever the journey is — a two-mile run to Epsom station, a 4am airport transfer, a wedding, a school contract or a monthly corporate account — the price comes the same way: five details, one figure, held for the journey as described.
Call the office on 01372 747 747, or 01483 422 222 for Godalming, and you will speak to a person. Or use the online booking form and we will come straight back with the price. If you still have questions about how any of it works, our frequently asked questions cover the rest.