Reckon on £6.60 for an ordinary pint of lager in London and £7.20 for a stronger one. Those are the middle figures from 178 individual prices the Office for National Statistics collected in London pubs in August 2026, and the same collection recorded pints at £1.99 and at £8.55 in that one month in that one city.
That spread of six pounds is the real answer to the question, and no single number replaces it. What you pay depends on the strength of the beer, the kind of pub and the postcode, roughly in that order. This page gives the published figures, then the bands we would use for planning, then the arithmetic of why a pint costs what it does.
To put drinking in proportion against the rest of a day, see our daily budget page; the cost of a whole trip covers the larger items.
Pint prices in London, as published
- Ordinary lager (3.4 to 4.2% ABV)
- Median £6.60. Lowest £2.49, highest £7.75, from 45 prices
- Premium lager (4.3 to 7.5% ABV)
- Median £7.20. Lowest £3.49, highest £8.55, from 48 prices
- Draught bitter
- Median £6.18. Lowest £1.99, highest £8.10, from 40 prices
- Pint of cider
- Median £6.35. Lowest £1.99, highest £7.55, from 45 prices
- Source
- Office for National Statistics consumer price quotes, collection month August 2026
Where these numbers come from, and why nobody quotes them
Until early 2025 the ONS published a single headline figure for the average price of a pint of draught lager. That series stopped: its last value was £4.83 for the United Kingdom in January 2025, and it has not been updated since, which is why every article you read quotes a figure that is now well over a year and a half old.
What did not stop is the underlying collection. Price collectors still visit pubs every month and the individual prices are published as a spreadsheet, region by region, a few weeks later. Nobody reads it, because it is a 94,000-row file of code numbers. We read the August 2026 file.
One point of honesty about it: the file numbers its regions instead of naming them. One of the twelve is dearer than the other eleven on every drink and every pub meal in the list, by a wide margin, and on British prices that can only be London. That is the region whose figures we have used throughout this page.
| Pub item | London median | UK median |
|---|---|---|
| Lager, pint, 3.4 to 4.2% ABV | £6.60 | £4.80 |
| Premium lager, pint, 4.3 to 7.5% ABV | £7.20 | £5.95 |
| Draught bitter, pint | £6.18 | £4.37 |
| Cider, pint | £6.35 | £5.10 |
| Wine, a 175 to 250 ml glass | £7.35 | £5.95 |
| Soft drink from the pump | £3.08 | £3.00 |
| Bottled water | £3.00 | £2.50 |
| Hot meal in a pub | £14.50 | £13.47 |
Two things jump out of that table. The London premium runs from about 20 per cent on premium lager to about 40 per cent on ordinary lager and bitter, far larger than the premium on a pub meal, a coffee or a soft drink. And a glass of wine in a London pub now costs more than a pint of premium lager does, which was not true a few years ago.
What we would budget, by kind of pub
Medians are for statisticians. These are the bands we would plan with, and they are our estimates for September 2026 rather than published prices. They are anchored to the ONS spread above: the lower quartile of the London collection was £5.00 for ordinary lager, the upper quartile £6.93.
| Where you are drinking | Our estimate, a pint of ordinary lager or bitter |
|---|---|
| A national discount chain pub, anywhere in London | £2.50 to £4.50 |
| An ordinary local pub outside Zone 1 | £5.00 to £6.50 |
| An ordinary pub in the centre | £6.00 to £7.50 |
| Premium lager or keg craft beer in the centre | £7.00 to £8.50 |
| Hotel bar, rooftop bar, stadium or theatre | Above all of the above, and not in any published collection |
The bands overlap on purpose. A pub two streets off a main road in Zone 1 can be cheaper than a pub beside a station in Zone 3, and the biggest single jump in the whole list has nothing to do with geography: it is the switch from a 4 per cent lager to a 5 per cent one on the same bar.
The postcode effect is smaller than people think
Where London does divide is not so much by postcode as by what the street is for. Anywhere that sells to people who are passing through charges more: the immediate surroundings of a main-line station, the streets around a theatre, a riverside terrace, a market at the weekend. Walk five minutes inland from any of those and the price drops by something like a pound.
The cheap pints are in four places, and none of them is a secret. The national discount chains price at roughly half the London median and have branches in the centre as well as the suburbs. Ordinary residential high streets in outer London, east and south-east in particular, sit near the bottom of the ordinary-pub band. Social clubs and sports clubs are cheaper still, if you can get in as a guest. And taprooms sell in thirds and two-thirds, which is not a cheaper pint but is a cheaper way to taste several beers; our guide to brewery taprooms and the walk along the Bermondsey Beer Mile both explain how those measures work.
If postcodes are new to you, our explainer on how London postcodes work tells you which letters mean central and which mean a long journey home.
Half a pint costs half the price, and asking for one is completely normal. The law allows a third, a half and two-thirds as well as the pint, so in an expensive pub you can try the good beer for £3.50 instead of £7.
How much of your pint is tax
Two taxes sit inside the price, and both are published. VAT is 20 per cent, which means one sixth of whatever the pub charges. Alcohol duty is charged per litre of pure alcohol, and since 1 February 2026 beer between 3.5 and 8.4 per cent has been dutied at £22.58 per litre of pure alcohol, or £19.45 if it is served on draught from a container of at least 20 litres.
A pint is 568 millilitres. A pint of 4 per cent lager therefore contains 22.7 millilitres of pure alcohol and carries about 44p of duty on draught. A pint of 5 per cent carries about 55p. Put those together with VAT:
| A pint at | VAT | Duty (draught, 4% ABV) | Tax as a share |
|---|---|---|---|
| £4.00 | 67p | 44p | 28% |
| £5.50 | 92p | 44p | 25% |
| £6.60 | £1.10 | 44p | 23% |
| £8.00 | £1.33 | 44p | 22% |
Note what that arithmetic does not show: tax is not why London is expensive. Duty and VAT are the same in a Newcastle pub as in a Soho one, and the duty on a draught pint is lower than on the same beer in a can. The London premium is rent, wages and what the market will bear.
Drinking at home, and where you may not
The gap between a supermarket price and a pub price is wider in Britain than in most of Europe, and if you are self-catering it is the biggest single lever on a drinks budget. We are not putting a figure on it: supermarket prices no longer appear in the ONS collectors' file, so there is no published London average to quote, and the promotions move weekly.
Worth knowing either way: the lower draught duty rate applies only to containers of 20 litres or more that connect to a pump or a pressurised tap, so beer poured into a takeaway container from the same cask is dutied at the full rate.
A supermarket price does not license drinking in the street. Several London boroughs have orders that let a police officer require you to stop drinking in a public place, and the whole Transport for London network bans alcohol outright. Where those lines fall is covered in our page on the drinking laws, and beer gardens are the legal version of the same idea.
Buying a round, and what it does to the bill
Rounds are the normal way a British group drinks, and they are where visitors get caught. At the London median, a round of four ordinary pints is about £26.40, and four rounds in an evening comes to more than £100 for the group. Nobody will think less of you for ordering halves, or for a soft drink, or for stepping out of the round altogether. How to do that without awkwardness is set out in our page on pub etiquette, and drinking without alcohol covers the alternatives, which in London are now good.
You do not tip for a drink at the bar. There is no service charge on a pint, and adding one is not expected; see tipping in London for where it does apply.
What this means for a few real evenings
- Two people, two pints each, ordinary central pub. About £26 on our estimate band, £26.40 at the London median.
- Two people, two pints each, discount chain. About £14.
- Four people, three rounds, central pub, premium lager. About £86 at the London median of £7.20.
- An afternoon of thirds across four taprooms, one person. Roughly the price of three pints, with eight beers tasted.
For a whole day built around the cheap end, see how to keep costs down in London, and for the same arithmetic applied to a fixed sum, what fifty pounds buys.
The cheapest good pint in central London is usually in an old pub, not a new one. Houses that have been trading for centuries tend to sit in the middle of the price range rather than the top: Ye Olde Mitre in Ely Court is one, and our round-up of historic pubs has the others.
Frequently asked questions
How much is a pint of beer in London in 2026?
The median in the ONS price collection for August 2026 was £6.60 for a pint of ordinary lager and £7.20 for a premium one. The same collection recorded London pints as low as £1.99 and as high as £8.55, so the type of pub matters as much as the city.
Why is beer so expensive in London?
Rent, wages and demand, not tax. VAT and alcohol duty are the same everywhere in the United Kingdom, and draught beer is actually dutied at a lower rate than the same beer in a can. The London premium over the UK median runs from about 20 to about 40 per cent depending on the beer.
Where can I find a cheap pint in London?
The national discount chains price at roughly half the London median and have central branches. Ordinary residential high streets in outer London are the next cheapest. Anywhere selling to people passing through, such as the streets beside a main-line station or a theatre, is the dearest.
Can I order a half pint in a London pub?
Yes, and it is entirely normal. The legal measures for draught beer and cider are a third, a half, two-thirds and multiples of a half, so asking for a half or a two-thirds in an expensive pub is the simplest way to cut the cost of an evening without leaving early.
Do I tip when I buy a pint in London?
No. Tipping at a pub bar is not customary in Britain, and there is no service charge on drinks bought at the counter. A discretionary service charge on a food bill is a different matter: it is optional, and asking for it to come off is your right.
Sources
- Office for National Statistics - CPI and RPI item indices and price quotes, price quotes for August 2026 (checked September 2026)
- Office for National Statistics - RPI average price, draught lager per pint (series CZMS, ends January 2025) (checked September 2026)
- Office for National Statistics - Consumer Prices Indices Technical Manual, 2019 (checked September 2026)
- HM Revenue and Customs - Alcohol Duty rates, updated 1 February 2026 (checked September 2026)
- HM Revenue and Customs - Check if you can pay less Alcohol Duty on draught products (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - VAT rates on different goods and services (checked September 2026)
- The Weights and Measures (Intoxicating Liquor) Order 1988, article 2 (checked September 2026)