Car rental at London City Airport

If you need car rental at London City Airport, we have 147 cars on this page, from £22 a day, and we deliver the car to that airport (LCY) and to any address in the city. The delivery address, date and time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed.

Car rental at London City Airport and how delivery works

Rent-Trip runs car rental at London City Airport as a delivery service, not a desk inside the terminal. The car comes to the terminal or to any address in the city, and the delivery address, date and time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed. For LCY that means 14.5 km by road from the centre, roughly 33 minutes without traffic — a short hop for a car brought to the terminal door rather than collected from an off-site lot.

Where we deliver a rental car around the airport

We deliver to the airport (LCY) and to any address in the city, and also to Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and Southend. Delivery outside these places is arranged case by case and is not promised on the site.

What is agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed

The delivery address, the date and the time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed; deposit, insurance excess and delivery fees are set out in the rental agreement. Name your flight and arrival time when you first write to us, so the manager can agree the hand-over time around your flight.

• Delivery address and time: the terminal, postcode and hour of hand-over are confirmed with a manager before anything is locked in.
• Fuel rule: a petrol, diesel or hybrid car is supplied clean with a full tank and must come back full — otherwise the missing fuel and a refuelling service fee are charged as set out in the agreement; for an electric car the return terms are set out in the rental agreement.
• Rental agreement: deposit, insurance excess and delivery fees sit in the contract, not in a quote over the phone.
• Minimum age, young-driver surcharge and payment cards: agreed when booking, since these vary by driver and by car.

Conditions that never made it into the agreement are not promised on the site, so raise anything that matters — an extra driver, a late flight, a different address — at the agreeing stage rather than at the kerb. In our practice the bookings that go smoothly are the ones where the customer wrote the flight number and terminal in the first message.

Choosing a car for your London City Airport rental

For car rental at London City Airport our fleet on this page runs to 147 cars across 14 classes, with bodies from a small hatchback to a 17-seat passenger van. The right pick starts with two numbers: how many people travel and how much luggage goes in the boot.

Classes in the fleet and what each one suits

Models you can book for a London City Airport rental

• Hyundai Kona and Kia Rio: from £36 and £31 per day, five seats, petrol and manual — a way into a car for a couple with two cabin bags.
• Volkswagen Golf Estate: from £31 per day, an estate body with a 1.5 L engine, useful when the boot matters more than the badge.
• Toyota Yaris: from £25 per day, a hybrid automatic with 116 hp, the pick for stop-start traffic in the centre.
• Volkswagen ID.4: from £171 per day, an electric SUV with 204 hp and an automatic box, rear-wheel drive.
• Volkswagen Sharan and Ford Transit 17 Seater: from £44 and £138 a day, seven and 17 seats for a group arriving on one flight.

Seats across the page run from 2 to 17, so a family of five and a sports team fit into the same booking flow.

Automatic or manual for driving in the city

101 of the 147 cars are automatic and 46 are manual, and every car is right-hand drive because traffic here keeps to the left (Highway Code, rule 160). Automatic suits the driver who has never handled a left-hand-drive-to-right-hand-drive switch: the gear lever falls under the left hand, and the box does the rest. Manual cars in Economy and Comfort include the Kia Rio at £31 and the Volkswagen Golf Estate at £31. On roundabouts traffic from the right has priority (Highway Code, rule 185), so the first hour is about reading signs rather than changing gear — in our experience the automatic pays for itself on the North Circular. Speed limits are 30 mph in built-up areas unless signs say otherwise, and many zones post 20 mph, so watch the plates, not the habit.

Fuel type choices for car rental at London City Airport

On a car rental in London the choice matters more than usual, because the city charges for emissions, and who pays those charges on a rental car is agreed when booking. The 147 cars on this page split four ways by fuel: 100 petrol, 24 diesel, 13 hybrid and 10 electric. Petrol models carry the widest spread of bodies, from the Citroen C3 Aircross crossover and Fiat 500 hatchback at the bottom of the range through estates such as the Volkswagen Passat Variant up to the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at £3,300 a day; diesel sits mostly under the larger SUVs, vans and seven-seat minivans such as the Volkswagen Sharan and Ford Galaxy, where the extra torque on a loaded motorway run pays for itself. The 13 hybrids include six Toyotas — the Yaris, Corolla, Corolla Touring Sports, C-HR, RAV4 and Prius — plus the Kia Sorento and Volvo XC90, and they suit stop-start city work best.

Fuel types in the fleet and the full-to-full rule

Rent-Trip supplies a petrol, diesel or hybrid car clean with a full tank and it must come back full; otherwise the missing fuel and a refuelling service fee are charged as set out in the rental agreement. No other fuel option — a pre-paid tank or full-to-empty — is offered on the site. Plan your last fill-up before hand-back rather than after it: the nearest forecourt to the airport is not on the terminal loop, so build ten minutes into the return leg.

Electric cars and the emission charges

ULEZ is £12.50 a day for non-compliant cars, 24 hours a day except 25 December, and the Congestion Charge is £18 a day, £21 if paid by midnight of the third day after the trip, running 07:00–18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00–18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays. The 10 electric cars here — the Volkswagen ID.4 and ID.3, Mercedes-Benz EQA and EQE, BMW i4, Tesla Model 3, Model Y and Model S, Nissan Leaf and Porsche Taycan Turbo S — pay no ULEZ charge, and on the Congestion Charge they pay £13.50 instead of £18 with Auto Pay and the full sum without it; who pays each charge is agreed when booking. ULEZ is not a small zone: since 29 August 2023 it covers all 32 boroughs, more than 1,500 km², with the M25 outside it, so a compliant car saves the daily fee on every trip, not only the ones into the centre. Petrol cars registered from 2006 and diesels from September 2016 meet the Euro 4 and Euro 6 thresholds; anything older pays. Check the plate on the TfL vehicle checker before you commit to a model — a five-minute lookup is cheaper than a penalty charge notice.

What each fuel means for a London car rental

• Petrol: 100 cars, the broadest choice of body styles and the easiest refuelling on any route out of the city.
• Diesel: 24 cars, concentrated in SUVs, commercial vans and seven-seat minivans for long loaded runs.
• Hybrid: 13 cars, among them six Toyotas, the Kia Sorento and the Volvo XC90, recovering charge in slow traffic.
• Electric: 10 cars, zero ULEZ exposure, but plan charging around the return leg.

Two local charges sit outside the emission schemes and catch drivers who never enter the centre. The Dartford Crossing on the M25 costs £3.50 for a car per crossing, or £2.80 prepaid, payable by midnight the following day, with a penalty charge notice for late payment. The Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels charge £4.20 at peak — northbound 06:00–10:00 and southbound 16:00–19:00 on weekdays — and £1.55 off-peak with Auto Pay. The tunnels run close to the airport, so a car on an east London route can pick up a toll. In our experience the cleanest split is this: electric for airport-to-hotel runs and the centre, hybrid for mixed days, diesel only when the boot is full and the motorway is the plan.

Longer bookings and the London City Airport rental rate

A London City Airport rental rate is quoted per day, and longer bookings follow two fixed multipliers: a week costs the daily rate times six, a month costs the daily rate times twenty-one. Nothing else changes — the class, the model and the delivery arrangement stay the same whether you take the car for two days or four weeks.

How the weekly and monthly rates work

• Weekly rate: the daily rate multiplied by six, so a car at £22 per day comes to £132 for the week and a £71 electric at £426.
• Monthly rate: the daily rate multiplied by twenty-one, which puts the same £22 car at £462 for the month and the £171 Volkswagen ID.4 at £3,591.
• Daily rate: the figure shown against each of the 147 cars on this page, from £22 at the bottom of the range to £3,300 for the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ.
• Class floors: Economy and Crossover start at £22 a day, Comfort at £23, SUV at £34, Premium at £55, Luxury at £294, and those floors carry into the multipliers unchanged.
• What the multiplier does not cover: deposit, insurance excess, delivery fees and any discount are set out in the rental agreement, not calculated from the daily rate.

The arithmetic matters most when you are choosing between classes rather than between lengths of booking. In our experience, a traveller who lands on a Friday and flies out ten days later often compares a Comfort estate at £31 a day against a Crossover at £22 without doing the multiplication — over a month that gap is £189, which is roughly the difference between one class and the next on a shorter trip.

Booking length, delivery and the rate you are quoted

The delivery address, the date and the time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed, and the same conversation is where the length of the booking is settled, because the rate depends on it. A booking that starts at the airport and ends at a different point is agreed with the manager, so say at the outset where the car should be collected. Rent-Trip keeps the multiplier simple on purpose: no seasonal tier, no weekend surcharge and no separate long-stay tariff appears in our figures, so the number you work out from the daily rate is the number the agreement is built on. What the agreement does add — the deposit, the excess, the delivery fee and any discount — is written into it rather than implied by the daily figure.

• Electric cars: the 10 electric models run from £71 a day, so a month in the Volkswagen ID.4 works out at £3,591 against £462 for the cheapest petrol Crossover — worth checking the charging arrangements before you commit to four weeks.
• Seven seats and above: the Volkswagen Sharan at £44 a day and the Ford Transit 17 Seater at £138 a day scale the same way, and a family booking a month in the Sharan is comparing £924 with £462 for a five-seat Crossover.
• The top of the range: the Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII at £2,000 a day and the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at £3,300 a day are quoted on the same six-and-twenty-one basis, which is why those bookings are usually measured in days.

One practical point from our own bookings: the longer the rental, the earlier the delivery slot should be agreed, because the car has to be free on the day you land rather than the day you first enquire. Fix the terminal, the arrival time and the return date in the same message, and the rate follows from them without a second round of questions.

Driving rules that affect your London City Airport car hire

Driving here is left-hand traffic in a right-hand drive car, with a 30 mph default in built-up areas and 20 mph signs across many zones. The rules below are the ones that most often catch out a visitor collecting a car at LCY — read them before you leave the terminal.

Speed limits and where the signs overrule the default

Drive on the left unless signs or markings say otherwise (Highway Code, rule 160), and keep close to the left edge when turning (rule 183). In our experience the first mile after collection is where drivers drift to the wrong lane, so pull out slowly and follow the car in front until the left-hand habit settles. Built-up areas run at 30 mph (48 km/h) in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland; single carriageways at 60 mph (96 km/h), dual carriageways at 70 mph (112 km/h) and motorways at 70 mph (112 km/h). Lit roads default to 30 mph unless a sign says otherwise, and many zones post 20 mph — so the sign always beats the default. On roundabouts you give way to traffic approaching from the right (rule 185) and travel clockwise.

Phones, seat belts and child seats

• Mobile phones: holding and using a phone, satnav or tablet is banned even while stopped at lights; the penalty is a fine and 6 points, and a driver who passed their test less than 2 years ago loses the licence.
• Hands-free: permitted only when the device does not block your view of the road.
• Seat belts: compulsory wherever a belt is fitted, for every occupant.
• Child seats: children must use one until they reach 135 cm or turn 12, whichever comes first; the fine is set by law.
• Alcohol: in England, Wales and Northern Ireland the limit is 80 mg per 100 ml of blood, 35 µg per 100 ml of breath and 107 mg per 100 ml of urine; Scotland applies 50 / 22 / 67.

A full, valid foreign licence lets you drive for 12 months from your last entry into Great Britain. Beyond that, and for anything the Highway Code does not cover, the rental agreement and the booking conversation are the reference.

The Congestion Charge is £18 a day, or £21 if paid by midnight of the third day after the trip, and runs 07:00–18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00–18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays; ULEZ is £12.50 a day for non-compliant cars, 24 hours a day except 25 December. Who pays road charges, tolls and penalty notices on a hired car is not fixed by the rules above — agree it with a manager when you book, before the car is delivered to you.

Day trips from London City Airport by rental car

The airport sits 14.5 km by road from the centre, about 33 minutes without traffic, and puts the M25, the M11 and the A13 within easy reach. That makes a delivered car a practical way to reach places a train or coach would take a full day to cover.

Rent-Trip brings the vehicle to the terminal or to any address in the city, and the delivery address, date and time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed. The trips below are the ones our customers ask for most.

• Oxford: about 90 km west along the M40, best started before 08:00 to clear the Hanger Lane and M40 junctions before the school run.
• Cambridge: roughly 80 km north on the M11, which begins close to the airport — the shortest motorway run of the set.
• Stonehenge: around 140 km west via the M3 and A303, a full day once you allow two hours each way.
• Bath: about 180 km on the M4, comfortable as a day trip if you leave by 07:30 and return after 19:00.
• Brighton: roughly 90 km south on the A23, the easiest coastal run from the airport.

Congestion Charge, ULEZ and the Dartford Crossing

Three charges matter on a day out. The Congestion Charge runs 07:00–18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00–18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays, at £18 a day, or £21 if paid by midnight of the third day after the trip; it is not charged from 25 December to the New Year bank holiday inclusive. ULEZ applies 24 hours a day across all 32 boroughs except 25 December, at £12.50 a day for cars that do not meet the emission standard — petrol Euro 4, diesel Euro 6. The Dartford Crossing on the M25 costs £3.50 per crossing for cars, or £2.80 on pre-pay, and must be paid by midnight of the following day; a penalty charge notice applies for late payment. Who covers these charges is agreed when booking, so raise the route with the manager before the car is delivered.

What to check before you set off

• Fuel: the car comes with a full tank and must go back full; the missing fuel and a refuelling fee are set out in the rental agreement.
• Gearbox: 101 of the 147 cars are automatic — worth taking on the M25, where stop-start traffic is the norm.
• Seats: a group of seven needs a seven-seater such as the Volkswagen Sharan or the Kia Sorento; five is covered by almost any Comfort or Crossover model.

In our experience the Oxford and Cambridge runs fill fastest on a Friday, so book the class you want rather than the cheapest one left.

What the rental agreement covers on a London City Airport car rental

Car rental at London City Airport is fixed by a rental agreement, and four things in it decide what the booking actually costs: the deposit, the insurance excess, the delivery fee and any discount.

The four money items that sit outside the daily rate

• Deposit: held against the car for the length of the rental; the amount is set out in the rental agreement, not quoted here.
• Insurance excess: the sum you remain liable for in a claim; the figure is written into the agreement and varies with the class you book.
• Delivery fee: charged for bringing the car to the airport or to an address in the city, and stated in the agreement rather than in the daily price.
• Discount: if one applies to your booking, it appears in the agreement; we publish no seasonal tier or weekend surcharge anywhere in our figures.

None of them is a figure on this page — all four are set out in the rental agreement, so read that document before you commit rather than after the car arrives. The daily rate is the only number you can work out on your own, and it is the one printed against each of the 147 cars. Everything else is contractual, which is why we ask you to read the agreement before the delivery slot is confirmed — a deposit you did not expect is a worse surprise at the kerb than a class you did not expect.

The minimum rental age, the young-driver surcharge and the cards accepted are agreed when booking, because they depend on the driver and on the car rather than on the page. We do not publish a fixed age, a fixed surcharge or a list of accepted cards, and no figure for any of them appears on the site. Raise your date of birth, your licence and how you intend to pay in the first message, and the manager will tell you what applies to your case before anything is locked in. An extra driver is handled the same way — agreed when booking, with the conditions written into the agreement.

What to check in the document itself

• The delivery address and time: both are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed, so check that the terminal, postcode and hour on the paper match your flight.
• The named driver: confirm that everyone who will be behind the wheel is on the agreement, since who may drive is set out in the rental agreement.
• The return terms: the fuel rule is full-to-full — a petrol, diesel or hybrid car comes clean with a full tank and must go back full, otherwise the missing fuel and a refuelling service fee are charged as set out in the rental agreement; for an electric car the return terms are in the rental agreement.

In our practice the disagreements that do happen are almost never about the daily rate; they are about a charge the customer assumed was included. Ask about each of the four money items in one message and you will get one clear answer.

Short trips and long stays on a London City Airport car hire

A London City Airport car hire covers two very different kinds of booking, and the fleet of 147 cars is wide enough that both are served from the same page. The short booking is a weekend or a few days around a flight; the long stay is a fortnight or a month with the car parked at an address in the city between trips.

Weekend and short-break rentals

Short bookings are where the delivery arrangement earns its keep: the car arrives at the terminal or at an address in the city, so a two-day trip does not lose an hour to a collection desk. Name the flight and the arrival time when you write, and the hand-over time is agreed around it.

• Two days, two people: a Hyundai Kona or Kia Rio at £36 or £31 a day, five seats, petrol and manual — enough for two cabin bags and a run into the centre.
• A long weekend with luggage: the Volkswagen Golf Estate at £31 a day gives an estate body and a 1.5 L engine, which matters when the boot is fuller on the way home.
• A city break with an automatic: the Toyota Yaris at £25 a day is a hybrid automatic with 116 hp, and 101 of the 147 cars on the page are automatic if the left-hand gear change is not for you.
• A short family visit: the Volkswagen Sharan at £44 a day seats seven, and the Ford Galaxy at £79 a day does the same with a diesel engine for a loaded motorway run.

A month in one car

A month costs the daily rate times twenty-one, and a week costs the daily rate times six — those are the only two multipliers we use. Applied to this page, a Crossover at £22 a day comes to £462 for a month, a Comfort estate at £31 a day to £651, and an electric Volkswagen ID.4 at £171 a day to £3,591. A long stay also changes what you should book: the deposit, the insurance excess and the delivery fee are set out in the rental agreement and matter more over four weeks than over two days, so read them before you choose the class rather than after.

What a long stay changes about the car you pick

• Fuel: over a month the 100 petrol cars are the easiest to live with, while the 10 electric models suit a fixed route between an address in the city and the airport.
• Size: a Crossover or Economy hatchback parks far more easily at a residential address than a Premium SUV, and the class floor stays at £22 either way.
• Seats: a household of five is covered by almost any Comfort model, but a seven-seat minivan is worth booking early because only 6 cars in the Minivans class are on this page.
• Return date: fix it in the same message as the delivery slot — the length of the booking is what the rate is calculated from, and a changed return date changes the figure.

In our experience the long-stay customers who are happiest are the ones who booked the class a fortnight ahead and left the delivery details to the last week, not the other way round.

Common mistakes on a London City Airport car rental

Most of the friction on a London City Airport car rental comes from four habits, and none of them is about the car itself. They are about the order in which things get agreed: the terminal, the flight time, the charges on the road and the fuel in the tank.

Booking before the flight details are settled

• The wrong terminal: London City has a single terminal, so the risk is the time rather than the place — put the flight number and the arrival time in the first message.
• A delivery slot that ignores the flight: the delivery address, the date and the time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed, and a slot set before the flight is confirmed tends to move.
• A return date left open: the rate is built from the length of the booking, so an open return date leaves the figure unsettled too.

Assuming the road charges are in the price

ULEZ is £12.50 a day for cars that do not meet the standard — petrol Euro 4, diesel Euro 6 — 24 hours a day except 25 December, across all 32 boroughs. Who pays them is agreed when booking. The Dartford Crossing at £3.50 per car, or £2.80 prepaid, and the Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels at £4.20 at peak and £1.55 off-peak with Auto Pay, sit outside the emission schemes and catch drivers who never enter the centre at all.

Treating the tank as someone else's problem

A petrol, diesel or hybrid car comes clean with a full tank and must go back full; the missing fuel and a refuelling service fee are charged as set out in the rental agreement, and no pre-paid tank option is offered on the site. For an electric car the return terms are set out in the rental agreement. The nearest forecourt to the airport is not on the terminal loop, so plan the last fill-up into the return leg rather than after it. In our experience this single habit accounts for more end-of-rental disputes than any other, and it is the easiest one to avoid.

• Deposit and excess: both are set out in the rental agreement and neither appears in the daily figure.
• Delivery fee: charged for bringing the car to you, and written into the agreement rather than the price list.
• Discounts: if one applies, it is in the agreement; we publish no seasonal tier and no weekend surcharge.
• Minimum age and young-driver surcharge: agreed when booking, since they vary by driver and by car.

Ask about all four in one message before the car is delivered, and the booking stays a transport decision rather than a paperwork one.