Every pay as you go journey on the Tube, DLR, London Overground, Elizabeth line and National Rail in London has to be finished within a set time, counted from the moment you touch in to the moment you touch out. The limit runs from 1 hour 10 minutes for a weekday journey inside one zone to 3 hours 25 minutes for a Sunday journey across all eleven zones, and if you go over it you are charged two maximum fares instead of one ordinary fare.
Pay as you go works out your fare from where you touched in and where you touched out, so in theory you could touch in, spend an afternoon riding around, and touch out one stop away. The time limit stops that. Transport for London says the limits are set generously and are only exceeded in exceptional circumstances, and for an ordinary trip from A to B that is true.
This page is about the clock itself: the published limits, how to tell which one applies to you, and the few situations in which a visitor really does go over. What a maximum fare is, and how to get one refunded, is explained on our page about forgetting to touch out, and the fares themselves are on our guide to Oyster, contactless and the daily caps.
Maximum journey times at a glance
- Applies to
- Pay as you go on Tube, DLR, London Overground, Elizabeth line and National Rail
- Clock starts
- When you touch in, not when the train leaves
- Clock stops
- When you touch out at the end of the whole journey
- Depends on
- Number of zones, day of the week and time of day
- Shortest limit
- 1 hour 10 minutes (one zone, Monday to Friday 04:30 to 19:00)
- Longest limit
- 3 hours 25 minutes (across 11 zones, Sundays and public holidays)
- If you go over
- Two maximum pay as you go fares
- Delay not your fault
- Often refunded automatically, normally up to three times a month
The three time bands
The limit is longer when services are less frequent. TfL divides the week into three bands, and the band is set by the time you touch in.
- Monday to Friday, 04:30 to 19:00. The tightest limits, because trains run most often.
- Monday to Friday after 19:00, and all day Saturday. Ten to twenty minutes more.
- Sundays and public holidays. The most generous band, usually another ten to fifteen minutes on top.
A public holiday in Britain is a bank holiday such as Easter Monday or the late May holiday, and Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Our page on bank holidays and opening hours lists them.
Journeys inside Zones 1 to 4
Most visitor journeys stay inside Zones 1 to 4, and TfL publishes a separate short table for them. It is grouped by which zones the journey stays within, not simply by how many zones it crosses.
| Journey stays within | Mon–Fri 04:30–19:00 | Mon–Fri after 19:00, and Saturday | Sunday and public holidays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zone 1 only, Zone 2 only, or Zones 2–3 | 1 hour 30 minutes | 1 hour 40 minutes | 1 hour 50 minutes |
| Zones 1–2 | 1 hour 40 minutes | 1 hour 50 minutes | 2 hours |
| Zones 1–3 | 1 hour 50 minutes | 2 hours 5 minutes | 2 hours 15 minutes |
| Zones 1–4 | 1 hour 50 minutes | 2 hours 5 minutes | 2 hours 15 minutes |
So a weekday trip from Oxford Circus to Kew Gardens or Richmond, both in Zone 4, has 1 hour 50 minutes before 19:00. A Saturday trip from the South Kensington museums to Camden Town has 1 hour 50 minutes. Neither needs anything like that long.
Journeys counted by zones crossed
For everything else, including anything that goes beyond Zone 4, TfL uses a second table based on the number of zones the journey crosses. Count every zone you pass through, including the ones you start and finish in: a journey from Zone 1 to Zone 6 crosses six zones.
| Zones crossed | Mon–Fri 04:30–19:00 | Mon–Fri after 19:00, and Saturday | Sunday and public holidays |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 zone | 1 hour 10 minutes | 1 hour 20 minutes | 1 hour 25 minutes |
| 2 zones | 1 hour 20 minutes | 1 hour 30 minutes | 1 hour 40 minutes |
| 3 zones | 1 hour 30 minutes | 1 hour 40 minutes | 1 hour 50 minutes |
| 4 zones | 1 hour 40 minutes | 1 hour 50 minutes | 2 hours |
| 5 zones | 1 hour 50 minutes | 2 hours 5 minutes | 2 hours 15 minutes |
| 6 zones | 2 hours | 2 hours 15 minutes | 2 hours 25 minutes |
| 7 zones | 2 hours 10 minutes | 2 hours 25 minutes | 2 hours 40 minutes |
| 8 zones | 2 hours 20 minutes | 2 hours 35 minutes | 2 hours 50 minutes |
| 9 zones | 2 hours 30 minutes | 2 hours 45 minutes | 3 hours |
| 10 zones | 2 hours 40 minutes | 3 hours | 3 hours 15 minutes |
| 11 zones | 2 hours 50 minutes | 3 hours 10 minutes | 3 hours 25 minutes |
Two examples. Heathrow is in Zone 6, so the Piccadilly line or the Elizabeth line from the airport to a hotel in Zone 1 crosses six zones and has two hours on a weekday. An outer-London journey that avoids the centre, such as Walthamstow in Zone 3 to Richmond in Zone 4 via the Overground, touches Zones 2, 3 and 4, so it falls in the three-zone row: 1 hour 30 minutes on a weekday. Our explainer on how the zones work shows where the boundaries fall.
The zone count is about the stations, not the line you rode. The system sees only where you touched in and out, and it gives you the limit for that pair of stations. Taking a long way round between two close stations does not earn you more time.
What going over actually costs
The rule in TfL's Conditions of Carriage is that if the time between touching in and touching out is longer than the limit, you are charged two maximum pay as you go fares. In practice the system treats your entry and your exit as two separate journeys that each lack an end, and charges each one the most it could have cost.
That is far more than the fare you should have paid, and maximum fares do not count towards the daily cap, so the cap will not rescue you. TfL does not print the adult maximum fare on its public fares pages. On National Rail the maximum fare for an incomplete contactless journey is £30.40, which shows how expensive a charge can get at a railway station rather than a Tube station. Our guide to the fare caps explains why charges outside the cap hurt more than they look.
The situations where visitors really go over
On a normal journey you will not come close. The trouble comes when you treat the paid area of the station, the part beyond the ticket gates, as a place to spend time.
- Waiting for someone on the platform. Meeting a friend "on the platform at Bank" after a long day, with one person an hour late, uses up most of a 1 hour 30 minute Zone 1 limit before anyone has boarded a train.
- Riding for the view. Sitting at the front of a DLR train out to the end of the line and back without leaving the station is a lovely way to spend an hour, and on pay as you go it is a single journey that starts and finishes at the same station. Our page on riding the DLR in the front seat explains how to do it properly: touch out at the far end, then touch in again for the return.
- Lunch on the platform. Sitting on a bench with a sandwich between two trains, rather than going out to a café, keeps the first journey's clock running the whole time.
- A long, unplanned change. On a Sunday with engineering work, a missed connection and a slow replacement route can add up. How to see that coming is on our page about planned weekend closures.
- Severe delay. A train held in a tunnel for an hour is the "exceptional circumstance" TfL has in mind, and it is the case it most often fixes for you.
The more common lunch problem is the opposite one. If you touch out, eat, and touch back in, the clock is not the issue: you have simply started a new journey, and you pay a second ordinary fare. That is usually cheap, and on a busy day the daily cap may absorb it. Leaving the station and going back in is the one thing that ends a journey cleanly.
Walking between stations: the clock keeps running
At some stations TfL lets you touch out, walk along the street to a nearby station and touch in again without starting a new fare. This is called an out-of-station interchange, and each one has its own short time limit for the walk, typically 10 to 40 minutes. But that walk is part of the same journey, so the main maximum journey time is still counting the whole while.
So there are two clocks on such a trip: the walking allowance between the two stations, and the overall limit from first touch in to final touch out. Break the first and you start a new fare; break the second and you are into maximum fares. The list of these walks, and how much time each allows, is on our page about changing trains without paying twice.
When a delay pushed you over
TfL says that if you went over the limit for reasons outside your control, such as a severe delay on the network, you may receive an automatic refund, and that this is normally done up to three times a month. The Conditions of Carriage add that otherwise you can sign in to your online account and request a refund of the overpayment, online up to three times in a month, or call TfL Customer Services on 0343 222 1234.
To see what happened you need the journey history, and to claim anything back on contactless you need the card added to a TfL online account; without one, a wrongly charged fare cannot be reclaimed. Our page on using a foreign bank card explains how that works for a card issued abroad.
Being charged for going over the time limit is separate from compensation for the delay itself. A long hold-up within TfL's control can also earn a service delay refund, with a threshold of 15 minutes on the Tube and DLR and 30 on the Overground and Elizabeth line. You can be owed both.
TfL can switch on extra walking interchanges during disruption. Its published list of out-of-station interchanges says it can activate new ones "on an ad hoc basis" when the network is disrupted. If staff tell you to leave and walk to another station during a closure, do it, and check your journey history afterwards rather than assuming you were charged twice.
What the rule does not cover
The time limit is written for pay as you go on the rail networks. Buses and trams work differently: you touch in only, and the Hopper fare lets you make any number of bus and tram journeys within one hour of the first touch for a single fare. Our guide to London's buses explains the Hopper.
The Uber Boat river service and the IFS Cloud Cable Car also use touch in and touch out, but TfL's maximum journey time page names only the Tube, DLR, Overground, Elizabeth line and National Rail. If you use the river bus, the habit that matters is touching out when you change boats, which the Conditions of Carriage require.
Staying inside the limit without thinking about it
- Touch out when you stop. If a plan changes at the barrier, or you are going to wait more than a few minutes for someone, go out through the gates and come back in. A second ordinary fare is far cheaper than two maximum fares.
- Meet outside the gates. Arrange to meet people in the ticket hall or at the street entrance, not on the platform.
- Use the same card all the way. Touching in with a phone and out with a watch creates two incomplete journeys, whatever the time.
- On a long Sunday trip, check before you set off. Engineering work is the main reason a long journey stretches, and TfL's Journey Planner shows the closures.
- Look at your journey history within a day or two. Problems are easier to fix while you remember what happened.
Frequently asked questions
What is the maximum journey time on the London Underground?
It depends on how many zones you cross and when you travel. Inside Zone 1 on a weekday before 19:00 it is 1 hour 30 minutes; across six zones, for example Heathrow to central London, it is 2 hours. Evenings, Saturdays and Sundays allow longer.
What happens if I go over the maximum journey time?
You are charged two maximum pay as you go fares instead of one normal fare, and maximum fares do not count towards your daily cap. If a delay outside your control caused it, TfL often refunds the difference automatically, normally up to three times a month.
Does the maximum journey time apply to buses?
No. On buses and trams you only touch in, so there is no journey to time. Instead the Hopper fare gives you unlimited bus and tram journeys within one hour of your first touch for the price of one.
Can I stop at a station for lunch and continue my journey?
Only if you stay inside the gates and finish within the limit, which is risky. If you touch out to eat, your journey ends and the next one is a new fare. That costs a second ordinary fare, which is usually small and may be covered by the daily cap.
Does walking between stations count towards the time limit?
Yes. On an out-of-station interchange you touch out, walk and touch in again as one journey, and the overall maximum journey time keeps running throughout. Each walking interchange also has its own shorter allowance, usually between 10 and 40 minutes.
Sources
- Transport for London - Keep within maximum journey times (checked November 2026)
- Transport for London - Conditions of Carriage, 24 September 2026 (checked November 2026)
- Transport for London - Touching in and out (checked November 2026)
- Transport for London - Out-of-station interchanges (checked November 2026)