Take the river. If you are choosing between a hop-on hop-off bus tour and a boat, the boat wins for almost everyone: it is cheaper for a family, it shows you the better half of London, and you are not stuck in traffic on Piccadilly. Two adults on the cheapest online bus tour pay between about £50 and £64 for one day before any children's tickets; a family of four can cross the city by boat and come back for roughly £45 to £55.
That is the short answer, and the rest of this page is about the cases where it is wrong. There are several, and they are mostly about mobility, language and the month of the year.
One thing this page does not decide: which boat. The choice between a scheduled river bus and a sightseeing cruise with commentary is a separate question with a different answer, and it is worked through on our page comparing the river bus and the sightseeing cruise. Read that after this one.
| Hop-on hop-off bus | The river | |
|---|---|---|
| Adult, cheapest | Big Bus from £32 online; Tootbus from £44, on sale from £24.99 | £9.90 to £11.40 for a single in the central and eastern zones, off-peak |
| Family of four, one day | About £50-£64 for two adults, plus two child tickets | About £45-£55 for four singles each way, before discounts |
| Ticket length | 24 or 48 hours from activation | Per journey; no day ticket, and it is not in the daily cap |
| Hours | Roughly 08:30 to 18:00 | Early morning to late evening on the main route |
| Commentary | Yes, recorded in several languages or a live guide | None on the river bus; yes on a sightseeing boat |
| Weather | Covered lower deck | Indoor saloon, but the deck is cold and windy outside summer |
| Booking | Needed, and the ticket is locked to one phone once activated | None on the river bus: tap a contactless card |
Prices checked in September 2026. Both change constantly: the bus operators run sales, and the river fares in this table are valid only to 31 October 2026, after which revised fares will be published.
What a family of four actually pays
Take two adults and two children who want one day of sightseeing without walking.
By bus tour. Two adult tickets at the lowest advertised online rates come to between about £50 and £64. Child tickets are extra: Big Bus sells them for ages 4 to 15 with under-4s free, and Tootbus for ages 5 to 15. A family of four is therefore comfortably over £100 for a single day, and a 48-hour ticket or a bundled cruise pushes it higher. Our guide to hop-on hop-off bus tours compares the two operators' routes, hours and packages.
By boat. Four separate singles each way on the river bus, at central and eastern zone prices, come to roughly £45 to £55 for the family before any discount. And there is a trap in that sentence which costs families real money.
There is no child discount on a contactless card on the river. Children aged 5 to 15 pay half fare on the river bus, but only if their card carries a Zip Oyster or the Young Visitor discount, which staff add at a Tube station while the child is present. Tap a bank card and your twelve-year-old is charged the adult fare, twice. Our page on children's fares on London transport explains how to get the discount loaded before you reach the pier.
Photo: DiscoA340 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
What each one actually shows you
This is the part price comparisons miss. The two tours do not cover the same city.
A bus tour is a loop of the West End, Westminster and the City: Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, Parliament, St Paul's, the Tower. You see a lot of famous buildings from street level, at whatever speed the traffic allows, with the top of a bus between you and the upper floors.
The river gives you the south side, the bridges and the working city: the London Eye and the South Bank on one side, St Paul's and the Tower on the other, then Tower Bridge from underneath, Canary Wharf, and Greenwich at the end. It is the only way to see the shape of London rather than a sequence of facades, and it takes about 40 minutes from Westminster to Greenwich on a fast boat.
If you want one visual idea to hold onto: the bus shows you buildings, the river shows you the city they stand in.
When the bus tour is the right answer
Five cases, and they are not marginal.
- You want commentary in your own language. The bus operators provide recorded commentary in several languages through the app or headphones. The river bus provides none at all, and sightseeing boats commentate in English.
- Limited mobility, or very small children. A bus tour takes you to the door of each sight and back. The river leaves you at a pier, which may be a walk from where you want to be. Buses all take wheelchairs.
- It is November and it is raining. The bus has a covered lower deck. The river's appeal is the open deck, and that is genuinely cold from October to April.
- Day one of a first visit. A loop that names everything is a reasonable way to work out the geography before you decide what to go into. Our one-day itinerary assumes you have done that thinking already.
- Your hotel is nowhere near a pier. The river only works if you can reach it easily at both ends.
The much cheaper version of the bus tour
Ordinary red London buses cover most of the same streets for £1.75 a ride, capped at £5.25 a day until 1 November 2026, when the fare rises to £1.85 and the cap to £5.55. Children aged 5 to 10 ride free on buses with no card at all. The front seats on the top deck give you nearly the same view, behind glass, and no commentary.
Routes 9, 11, 15, 24, 139 and 453 between them pass Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's, the Tower, Harrods, the Royal Albert Hall and Kensington Palace. Two adults and two young children doing a whole day this way pay £10.50. Our guide to bus routes worth riding for the view sets out what each one passes.
The honest arithmetic: £10.50 against £100. A day of public buses for a family of two adults and two children under eleven costs about a tenth of a day of tour buses. What you give up is the commentary and a guaranteed open-top seat. What you gain pays for a paid attraction and lunch.
Buying both in one ticket: read the small print
Both bus operators sell packages that bundle a river cruise with the bus. Big Bus sells 24 hours plus a one-way Thames cruise from £36.99, against £43.99 at full price; Tootbus sells a bus-and-cruise combination from £49.00, on sale from £33.99 when we checked. Bigger packages add walking tours and evening tours.
These can be sensible if you were going to do both anyway. Two warnings. First, compare the package against the two cheapest separate prices, not against the operators' full prices, which is what their "save up to" figures use. Second, the bus ticket's 24 or 48 hours starts when you activate it in the app on the date you chose, it cannot be paused, and it is locked to that phone. Activating a ticket at 09:00 on a day that turns out to be wet wastes it.
If you can only do one thing on the water
Do a single one-way river trip rather than a day pass, and treat it as transport with a view: Westminster or the London Eye pier to Greenwich, roughly 40 minutes, then come back by the Docklands Light Railway or the Tube so you are not paying twice. That is the cheapest way to get the river's payoff.
If commentary matters, buy a sightseeing boat ticket instead and accept a slower crossing; our overview of Thames river cruises lists the operators and piers, and the fuller comparison of the two kinds of boat is on our Uber Boat by Thames Clippers page.
And if what you actually want is a view rather than a tour, remember that the best time of day to ride the London Eye costs one ticket and half an hour, and the London Cable Car crosses the Thames 90 metres up for £7.00 one way.
Frequently asked questions
Is a bus tour or a river cruise better in London?
The river, for most visitors. It is cheaper for a family, it shows you the bridges, the South Bank and the eastern river that no bus route covers, and it avoids traffic. Choose the bus if you need commentary in a language other than English, if mobility is a problem, or if it is cold and wet.
How much is a hop-on hop-off bus tour in London?
Big Bus Tours starts from £32 online for an adult, with a full price from £39, and Tootbus lists from £44, discounted to £24.99 when we checked. Tickets run for 24 or 48 hours from the moment you activate them. Child tickets are extra: ages 4 to 15 on Big Bus, 5 to 15 on Tootbus.
Can you use an Oyster card on a Thames river cruise?
On the scheduled river bus, yes: contactless and Oyster both work, and you touch in and out. On a sightseeing cruise you buy an operator's ticket instead. Note that river fares do not count towards the daily transport cap, whichever card you use.
Is a sightseeing bus worth it for one day in London?
Rarely. For the same money a family can buy a day of ordinary bus travel for £10.50, a river trip and an entrance ticket. The tour earns its price if you value commentary, if walking is difficult, or if you genuinely want to get on and off at eight different stops in a day.
Which is better with young children, the bus or the boat?
The boat, if the weather is reasonable: children like the open deck and the crossing is short. The bus, if it is cold or wet, or if the children are very small, because the lower deck is covered and you are set down close to each sight. Under-4s are free on one bus operator and under-5s on the river bus.
Sources
- Big Bus Tours - London bus tours and prices (checked September 2026)
- Tootbus London - tickets and routes (checked September 2026)
- Uber Boat by Thames Clippers - ticket information and fares (valid to 31 October 2026) (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - bus and tram fares (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - river fares (checked September 2026)