Bring none. Take £40 out of a machine in your first day or two, in £10 and £20 notes, and that will cover a week for most visitors. A family, or anyone staying longer than a week, should think in terms of £60 to £80 between them. Almost nobody in London needs more than that, and carrying more creates a problem rather than solving one.
The reason the number is so small is that the list of things you cannot pay for by card here has shrunk to a handful of items, and most of them cost a pound or two. The reason it is not zero is that the same handful turns up more often than visitors expect, usually at the least convenient moment.
Our guide to changing money in London covers where to exchange notes and how to read a bureau's window; this page is the arithmetic that comes before it. What is cash actually for in this city, how much of it, in what denominations, and where to get it once you are here. For the notes, the coins and how contactless works on transport, start with our overview of money in London.
The short version
- Bring from home
- Nothing, unless your bank charges more for a withdrawal than for a purchase
- Solo traveller, three to five days
- £30
- Couple, one week
- £50 between you
- Family of four, one week
- £60 to £80 between you
- Notes to ask for
- £10s and £20s. Avoid £50 notes
- Coins to keep aside
- Two or three £1 coins, for lockers
- Never needed
- Cash for buses. They do not take it at all
- Border rule
- Declare anything from £10,000 upwards, and the figure is a total for the whole family or group
What cash is actually for in London
Work through the real list and the total stays small. These are the situations where a visitor genuinely reaches for notes or coins.
- A tip left on the table. You can almost always add one to the card machine, but leaving it in cash is the one way to be certain who gets it. Our guide to tipping in London explains when a tip is expected at all, which is less often than in North America.
- Street performers. Buskers work on coins and small notes, whether they are the licensed performers on the Underground, the street acts outside the market in Covent Garden or the musicians along the river. A few carry card readers; most do not.
- Lockers. Leisure centres, swimming pools and some cloakrooms still use a £1 coin as a deposit, which comes back when you open the door again. Our page on London's lidos and swimming ponds flags which ones want a coin and which sell a token instead.
- Launderettes. Many are still coin-operated, and the machines want the right coins rather than any coins. See doing laundry in London.
- Small cafés with a card minimum. A shop is free to refuse a card payment below a stated amount. It is most common in independent cafés and takeaways, the kind our guide to cheap eats is full of, and the usual floor is £5 or £10. A minimum is not the same thing as a surcharge, and our guide to card payments in Britain explains the difference and which extra charges are unlawful.
- A market stall whose reader has lost signal. Card terminals on stalls run on mobile data, and mobile data in a crowded covered market is unreliable. Our guide to London's food markets covers the big ones; take a note in with you.
- Donation boxes. Free churches, small museums and city gardens increasingly have contactless plates, but the wooden box by the door is still the default.
- The emergency. A blocked card, a stolen phone, a dead battery. This is the reason the figure is not zero.
Notice what is missing. Taxis, museums, pubs, theatres, supermarkets, ticket machines and almost every restaurant take cards without comment. So does a pharmacy, which matters if you have to buy a prescription item; our page on pharmacies and minor illness has the current charge.
What will not take your cash at all
The list running the other way is shorter but more absolute. London buses take no money whatsoever: there is no fare box, no driver's till, and no way to board without a contactless card, a phone or an Oyster card. That catches out visitors who arrive with a wallet of notes and no card, and there is no workaround at the bus stop. Our comparison of Oyster and contactless explains the alternatives.
Beyond the buses, an increasing number of bars, cafés, pools and river-boat kiosks have gone card-only by choice. That is lawful. The Bank of England is explicit that the decision belongs to the trader, and no British law obliges a business to take notes and coins at all. The same principle explains why a £50 note is sometimes waved away.
A card-only venue cannot make an exception for you. Card-only usually means the till has no cash drawer and the staff have no float, so there is nothing to take your note into and no change to give you. Asking politely will not help. If you are heading somewhere you have not been before, assume a card is required rather than accepted.
Four trips, four numbers
These are working figures rather than budgets. Everything else goes on a card, and our breakdown of what a London trip costs covers the parts that do.
| Who you are | Cash to carry | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Two nights, hotel, central London, sightseeing | £20 | A tip or two, a busker, one donation box, a coffee below a card minimum |
| Solo, three to five days, eating out | £30 | The same, plus a locker coin and the emergency margin |
| Couple, one week | £50 between you | Tips across several meals, markets, a laundry load |
| Family of four, one week, self-catering | £60 to £80 | Children giving to performers, launderette, playground kiosks, two adults each carrying some |
Add to the family figure if your children will be handling their own spending money, because that comes out of the same pot. Our family guide to London covers what children pay elsewhere.
Subtract from all of these if you are on a package where meals are included, or if you already know you will tip on the card machine.
Which notes to ask for
Four denominations are in circulation, all of them printed on polymer rather than paper: £5, £10, £20 and £50. Ask a cash machine or a counter for £10s and £20s and you will never have a problem.
The £50 is a different matter. It is legal tender, it is perfectly genuine, and a significant number of small businesses will still decline it, because legal tender in Britain has a narrow technical meaning that has nothing to do with whether a café must accept a particular note. If a machine hands you one, break it early in a supermarket rather than trying to spend it in a market.
Notes carrying King Charles III and notes carrying Queen Elizabeth II both circulate, and both are valid. Neither needs exchanging. Paper £20 and £50 notes, however, stopped being legal tender in September 2022; the Bank will still swap them, but no shop has to.
The coin rule almost nobody knows
British coins have legal tender limits, and they are lower than visitors imagine. Copper 1p and 2p coins are legal tender only up to 20p at a time. Silver 5p and 10p coins are legal tender only up to £5. The £1 and £2 coins have no limit.
In practice this means a shop can lawfully refuse to take a handful of coppers off you, and some will. If you have been collecting change all week, spend it in small amounts rather than presenting a fistful at a till. The vocabulary for all of this is in our guide to British words and slang, where a pound is a quid and pence are said as "p".
Getting hold of it once you are here
One withdrawal is the whole plan. Britain's cash machines are mostly joined together in a single network, LINK, on which a withdrawal is normally free to anyone holding a British debit card. Where a fee does apply, it has to be announced twice, first on the machine itself and then on the screen, and you may cancel at that point without paying anything.
The catch for visitors is that those free withdrawals are designed for British cards. LINK publishes a warning aimed squarely at people in your position. Its free-to-use promise covers cards from its member banks, and overseas issuers are almost never members. The machine a Londoner uses for free may therefore deduct a fee from you, and that fee will not appear anywhere on the locator tool LINK provides. Your own bank may add a fee on top. Ask it before you fly.
There is a second route that is newer and less well known. Since a change in the law in 2021, British shops can hand out cash at the till without you buying anything, through a scheme run by LINK called cashback without a purchase. Participating corner shops, supermarkets, cafés and pubs will give you any amount up to £50, in whatever mixture of notes and coins you ask for, at no charge. It is aimed at people in places that have lost their bank branch, but it is open to anyone with a card, and for a visitor who wants exactly £30 in small notes it is better than a machine that only dispenses £20s.
Ask a supermarket till for cashback and you choose the denominations. A cash machine decides what notes you get. A till will give you three £10 notes, or £28 and two £1 coins, or whatever you actually want. Look for the LINK cashback sticker in the window, and note that ordinary cashback with a purchase is offered at most supermarket checkouts too.
How to carry it
Split it. Keep ten or twenty pounds where you can reach it quickly, and put the remainder in a separate bag or leave it at the hotel. The same goes for cards: two cards kept in two places is the single most useful precaution a visitor can take.
Cash is the one thing in your pocket that cannot be cancelled, frozen or replaced, which is why the total should stay low. Our guide to how pickpockets work in London covers the places and the methods, and our page on what to do if your phone or wallet is stolen covers the hour afterwards.
If you are travelling on with a large sum, declarations start at £10,000, whether in sterling or its equivalent in another currency, on any journey into or out of Great Britain from somewhere beyond the UK. A family travelling together is counted as one sum, not person by person. Our guide to what you can bring into Britain covers the form.
A few places where the old advice still holds
Two situations are worth planning for specifically.
The first is a long-distance coach. At Victoria Coach Station the ticket office deals in pounds sterling only, and the cash machines inside the building have been out of service, with travellers directed to a machine in a nearby shop. Our guide to Victoria Coach Station has the details; book online in the operator's app and the problem disappears.
The second is toilets, and here the advice has changed for the better. Toilets at TfL stations are free, and Network Rail scrapped the charges at its own big stations, including Waterloo, Victoria, King's Cross, Euston, Liverpool Street and Paddington, back in 2019. You will not need 30p at a barrier. Some toilets run by councils and private operators still charge, so our guide to finding a public toilet in London is worth a look if you are out for a long day.
Frequently asked questions
How much cash should I bring to London for a week?
About £50 between two people, or £60 to £80 for a family of four, and you do not need to bring it from home. One cash machine withdrawal after you arrive is usually cheaper than exchanging notes, and £10 and £20 notes are the most useful denominations. Everything substantial goes on a card.
Can I get by in London with no cash at all?
Many visitors do. Cards and phones work on transport, in shops, pubs, museums and taxis. The gaps are small: tips left on a table, street performers, coin lockers, launderettes, donation boxes and cafés with a card minimum. Carrying twenty or thirty pounds removes the friction and the risk of a blocked card leaving you stuck.
Do London buses take cash?
No. There is no way to pay a bus fare with notes or coins anywhere in London. You need a contactless card, a phone or watch with a payment wallet, or an Oyster card, touched on the yellow reader as you board. There is no cash alternative at the bus stop either.
Can a shop in London refuse my £50 note?
Yes. The Bank of England is clear that a shop owner chooses what to accept, and legal tender in Britain concerns the settling of debts rather than everyday shopping. Small businesses commonly decline £50 notes. Break one in a supermarket early in your trip if a machine gives you one.
Where can I get cash without using a cash machine?
At a shop till. Under the LINK cashback without a purchase scheme, participating shops, cafés and pubs across Britain will give you up to £50 in cash without you buying anything, free of charge, in whatever notes and coins you ask for. Ordinary cashback added to a purchase is also offered at most supermarket checkouts.
Sources
- Bank of England - What is legal tender? (checked September 2026)
- Bank of England - Banknotes (checked September 2026)
- LINK - Charges for cash (checked September 2026)
- HM Treasury - Cash access policy statement (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Pay as you go (checked September 2026)
- Network Rail - Toilet charges removed at managed stations (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Taking cash in and out of Great Britain (checked September 2026)