Guides
Two separate daily charges cover much of London's roads, and they interact in ways that matter for where you keep a car. Here is how each one works, how they stack, and how to plan parking around them.
London has two overlapping road charges, and drivers routinely mix them up. The congestion charge exists to thin traffic in the centre; the Ultra Low Emission Zone exists to get the dirtiest vehicles off the road everywhere. Both are run by Transport for London, both are enforced by number-plate cameras, and both are daily charges rather than tolls per trip.
The crucial difference is scope. The congestion charge covers a small central area and applies to almost every vehicle driven there during charging hours. ULEZ covers nearly all of Greater London around the clock, but only charges vehicles that fail its emissions standards.
The zone is the area inside the Inner Ring Road: roughly Euston Road to the north, Tower Bridge to the east, Elephant and Castle and Vauxhall to the south, Park Lane to the west. Driving along the ring road itself does not incur the charge; crossing into the zone does.
Charging hours are 7am to 6pm on weekdays and noon to 6pm at weekends and on bank holidays, with a break between Christmas Day and the New Year bank holiday. As of early 2026 the charge is £18 a day paid in advance or on the day, but check TfL for the current rate before relying on that. If you drive in regularly, set up TfL's Auto Pay: a forgotten payment becomes a penalty charge many times the size of the original.
Since August 2023 the ULEZ has covered almost the whole of Greater London, out to the boundary with the home counties. It runs midnight to midnight every day of the year except Christmas Day, so there are no off-peak hours to plan around.
Whether you pay depends entirely on the vehicle. Broadly, petrol cars first registered from about 2006 and diesels from about late 2015 meet the standards and pay nothing, and most cars now on London's roads comply. A non-compliant vehicle pays £12.50 for each day it is driven in the zone as of early 2026, again worth confirming with TfL.
The charges are entirely separate, and a non-compliant car driven into central London on a weekday morning owes both. There is no combined ticket and no discount for paying twice.
Both apply to driving on public roads, not to a car's existence. A car parked inside either zone that does not move all day owes nothing for that day. Timing matters too: an evening trip into the centre escapes the congestion charge entirely, while a late-night drive that crosses midnight counts as two ULEZ days.
As an illustration using the early 2026 rates and round numbers: a non-compliant diesel commuting into the central zone every weekday would face about £30 a day in charges, roughly £150 a week, before fuel or parking. The same commute in a compliant car incurs only the congestion charge, around £90 a week. Penalties for non-payment sit on top and are considerably larger.
Most reliefs require registering with TfL in advance. Residents of the congestion charge zone can register for a heavily discounted rate, and Blue Badge holders can register for exemption from the congestion charge, though a badge does not by itself exempt a vehicle from ULEZ.
Electric vehicles lost their blanket exemption from the congestion charge at the end of 2025, and a partial discount now applies to electric vehicles registered for Auto Pay. ULEZ keeps its own list, including vehicles registered in the historic tax class and grace periods for certain disabled tax classes. The details shift, so treat TfL's site as the source of record.
TfL runs a free online vehicle checker: enter a registration and it tells you what that specific car owes in each zone. Use it before buying a car, lending yours out or committing to a new commute. Compliance follows the emissions standard recorded against the individual vehicle, not the model year or a seller's assurance, and two apparently identical cars can differ.
For a compliant car, only the congestion charge matters, and it has a hard edge. A parking space just outside the zone, with the last leg by tube, bus or on foot, avoids the charge entirely, and over a month of weekday trips that is a serious sum, as the arithmetic above suggests.
For a non-compliant car the calculation is harsher, because ULEZ reaches the Greater London boundary. Parking just outside the congestion charge zone still leaves the ULEZ charge for every driving day, so the realistic choices are parking outside Greater London near a railway station, or changing the car.
A space inside the zones is not automatically a mistake either. The charges fall only on days the car moves, so a monthly space in central London suits someone who drives out at weekends, especially before noon, when the weekend congestion charge has not yet started. ParkWelly lists private monthly, daily and hourly spaces across London, including near stations just outside the congestion charge boundary, which is where this arithmetic tends to point.
Rates, boundaries and discounts change more often than people expect. Check tfl.gov.uk for the current figures before building a commute or a parking decision around them, and treat this guide as general information rather than advice on your particular circumstances.
Last reviewed 15 August 2026. Rules and rates change; check the operator for current figures.
