A cap is the most you will pay in one day or one fixed week, however many journeys you make. In Zones 1 and 2 it is £8.90 a day and £44.70 for a Monday-to-Sunday week (September 2026). The caps are what make tapping a bank card the cheapest way for a visitor to travel in London, and there are exactly five things that break them: using two different cards, forgetting to touch out, arriving mid-week, riding one of five services that sit outside the system, and mixing buses with the Tube in a way you have misunderstood.
The basics of tapping in and out, and the choice between Oyster and a bank card, are in our guide to Oyster or contactless, and the zone map behind the prices is in London travel zones explained. This page is about the caps themselves: what counts towards them, what does not, and the arithmetic for a real trip.
The caps, September 2026
- Zone 1 only, or Zones 1-2
- £8.90 a day, £44.70 Monday to Sunday
- Zones 1-3
- £10.50 a day, £52.50 a week
- Zones 1-4
- £12.80 a day, £64.20 a week
- Zones 1-5
- £15.30 a day, £76.40 a week
- Zones 1-6
- £16.30 a day, £81.60 a week
- Zones 1-9
- £23.30 a day at peak, £16.30 off peak, £116.40 a week
- Bus and tram only
- £5.25 a day, £24.70 a week (both rise on 1 November 2026)
- The travel day
- 04:30 to 04:29 the next morning
- The travel week
- A fixed Monday to Sunday, not seven days from your first journey
- Frozen until
- Tube and rail caps do not change before March 2027
One cap, all modes: the point most visitors get wrong
The single most useful sentence on TfL's own capping page is that the adult caps are "the most you'll pay when using contactless or Oyster to pay as you go across all modes". That means a day of buses, trams, Tube, DLR, Overground, Elizabeth line and London National Rail journeys all counts towards the one cap for the zones you used.
The bus-and-tram cap of £5.25 is not an extra allowance on top. It applies only if you use nothing but buses and trams all day. Take one Tube journey and your whole day, buses included, is measured against the Zones 1-2 cap of £8.90 instead.
Read that the other way round and it becomes a money-saving rule. If you have already reached the £8.90 cap on the Tube, every bus you take for the rest of the day is free. And if you are having a bus-only day, £5.25 buys unlimited travel across the whole of Greater London, including the trams in Croydon, for less than two Zone 1 Tube journeys.
Three bus journeys in a day and you have paid for the whole day. Three singles at £1.75 come to £5.25, which is exactly the bus and tram cap. Everything after that costs nothing, anywhere in London, until 04:30 the next morning. The single rises to £1.85 and the cap to £5.55 on 1 November 2026.
How the day cap builds, and what happens when you leave your zones
Nothing is bought in advance. You tap, you are charged the fare for each journey, and when the total reaches the cap for the zones you have used, further journeys within those zones are free. You still touch in and out; the gates will open.
If you then travel outside those zones, TfL charges you the difference and moves you up to the higher cap. Reach the Zones 1-2 cap of £8.90, then make a journey out to Zone 3, and you pay £1.60 more to reach the Zones 1-3 cap of £10.50, after which Zones 1 to 3 are free for the rest of the day. It works upwards only, and there is no refund for a cap you overshot.
Caps are worked out at the end of the travel day, and weekly caps on Sunday night, and TfL asks for 48 hours before contactless charges settle. So a fare that looks wrong on your banking app on Tuesday morning may be right by Thursday. Check before you complain.
The Monday-to-Sunday week, and the trip shape that never reaches it
The weekly cap runs over a fixed Monday to Sunday period, and it works on Oyster as well as on a bank card; older guides that say weekly capping is contactless-only are out of date. For Zones 1-2 it is £44.70, which is 20p more than five daily caps. Travel hard from Monday and by Saturday you are travelling free.
Arrive on a Thursday and leave the following Wednesday, though, and you spend four days in one week and three in the next, and never reach the cap in either. TfL says so itself and suggests a 7 Day Travelcard for a week shaped like that; it loads on to an Oyster card but not on to a bank card, as our guide to Travelcards and railcard discounts explains.
For anything shorter than a week the daily cap is the only one that matters, and it beats a Day Travelcard outright: £16.30 for Zones 1-6 against £23.60 for an Anytime Day Travelcard covering the same ground.
The five services that do not count
These accept a contactless card or Oyster but sit outside the capping system entirely. You pay the full fare for them even after you have reached your cap, and what you pay does not move you towards it.
- Heathrow Express from Paddington, £26.00, which is £9.70 more than a whole Zones 1-6 day would cost you. The alternative is compared in Heathrow Express or the Elizabeth line?
- Gatwick Express from Victoria, £24.00 at any hour, against £10.70 off peak on Southern or Thameslink, which does count; see Gatwick Express, Thameslink or Southern?
- Southeastern high-speed trains to Kent from St Pancras.
- Uber Boat by Thames Clippers, the river bus, where fares are zonal and separate: our guide to the river bus has them.
- The London Cable Car at Greenwich Peninsula, £7.00 one way, covered in the cable car guide.
Stansted Airport is a special case rather than an exclusion. Contactless has been valid there since March 2026 and the airport has its own caps: £47.20 peak and £35.20 off peak to Zones 1-9, and £179.40 for a Monday-to-Sunday week. Oyster is still not accepted to or from Stansted at all.
Maximum fares: the commonest way a cap fails
If you do not touch out, you are charged a maximum fare, and maximum fares do not count towards any cap. That is the sting in the tail: one missed reader can cost you several pounds that then buys you nothing towards the day's ceiling. The refund process and the amounts involved are in what happens if you forget to touch out.
Two other failures are self-inflicted and easy to avoid. Using your phone in the morning and the plastic card it is linked to in the evening creates two separate customers with two separate running totals, and TfL spells this out: those fares will not count towards the same cap. And two people cannot share one card, so a couple needs two cards or two devices, which also means two caps.
An Apple Watch and the iPhone it is paired to are two different cards as far as the gate is concerned. So are a phone wallet and the plastic card behind it. Pick one and use it for every tap, every day of the trip, or the caps quietly stop working and nobody tells you.
Peak, off peak, and the stations where a peak fare buys an off-peak cap
Peak fares apply Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays, from 06:30 to 09:30 and from 16:00 to 19:00. In Zones 1 to 6 the daily cap is the same whenever you travel, so peak fares only make you reach the cap faster. From Zone 7 outwards there are separate peak and off-peak caps, and that is where timing matters: Zones 1-9 is £23.30 at peak and £16.30 off peak, a £7.00 difference for the same day.
There is a genuinely obscure concession buried in TfL's capping page. At a list of outer stations, a weekday journey touching in after a stated time is charged a peak fare but counts towards the cheaper off-peak cap. The times are station-specific: 09:10 at Amersham and Chesham, 09:20 at Chalfont & Latimer, Bushey, Epsom and Enfield Chase, 09:00 at Ware and Hertford East. If you are heading out to the end of the Metropolitan line on a weekday morning, those twenty minutes are worth waiting for, and so is the rest of the advice in avoiding the London rush hour.
Children, railcards and the caps that only exist on Oyster
There is no discount of any kind on a contactless bank card. Every reduced cap in London needs an Oyster card, and that is the one situation where a visitor should still buy one.
- Children under 11 travel free on buses and trams with no card, and free on the Tube, DLR, Overground and Elizabeth line with a fare-paying adult, up to four children per adult. They do not need a cap because they do not pay.
- Children aged 11 to 15 can have the Young Visitor discount added to an Oyster or Visitor Oyster card by staff at any Tube station, with the child present. It gives 50% off adult pay-as-you-go fares and caps for up to 14 days, so the Zones 1-2 daily cap becomes £4.45.
- Adults with a railcard can have it loaded on to an Oyster card, which gives a third off off-peak fares and a much lower off-peak cap: £5.90 for Zones 1-2 and £10.85 for Zones 1-6. Peak caps are unchanged. Which railcards are worth buying as a visitor is covered in railcards worth buying, and the children's rules in full are in children's fares on London transport.
What it comes to: two worked examples
Our arithmetic, from the fares above, for two common trip shapes in Zones 1-2.
| Travellers | Cheapest way to pay | Most you pay per day | Four days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two adults, contactless | One card or device each, used for everything | £8.90 each, £17.80 together | £71.20 |
| Two adults, two children aged 8 and 12 | Contactless for the adults; Oyster with the Young Visitor discount for the 12-year-old; the 8-year-old travels free | £8.90 + £8.90 + £4.45 = £22.25 | £89.00 |
| Two adults using only buses | One card each | £5.25 each, £10.50 together | £42.00 |
Frequently asked questions
Do bus journeys count towards the Tube daily cap?
Yes. TfL's caps are the most you pay across all modes, so in a day that mixes buses with the Tube everything counts towards the cap for the zones you used. The separate bus-and-tram cap of £5.25 applies only if you use nothing but buses and trams that day.
When does the daily cap start and end?
At 04:30 and 04:29 the next morning. A journey begun at 01:00 belongs to the previous day's cap, which is why a late night out rarely costs anything extra if you have already capped. The weekly cap runs over a fixed Monday to Sunday period instead.
Which journeys do not count towards the London caps?
Heathrow Express, Gatwick Express, Southeastern high-speed trains, the Uber Boat river bus and the London Cable Car. You can pay for all of them with a contactless card, but the fare neither counts towards a cap nor is covered by one. Maximum fares charged for not touching out do not count either.
Is the weekly cap seven days from when I arrive?
No, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in the system. It is a fixed Monday to Sunday week. A stay running Thursday to Wednesday straddles two of them and may never reach the cap in either, in which case a 7 Day Travelcard on an Oyster card can work out cheaper.
Can I get a child or railcard discount on a contactless card?
No. There are no discounts of any kind on a contactless bank card or phone. Child rates, the Young Visitor discount for 11 to 15-year-olds and railcard discounts all require an Oyster card, and they reduce the caps as well as the individual fares.
Sources
- Transport for London - Fare capping, including the all-modes rule and off-peak cap stations (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Bus and tram fares and caps (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Tube and rail fares, peak times and excluded services (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Adult rate prices 2026 (PDF) (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Railcard discounted fares and caps (PDF) (checked September 2026)
- Mayor of London - MD3517, July 2026 fare changes and the November 2026 bus and tram rise (checked September 2026)
- National Rail - contactless pay as you go coverage and Stansted caps (checked September 2026)