An annual Santander Cycles pass costs £120. A monthly one costs £20, which is £240 over a year. The annual pass is exactly half the price of paying monthly, and nothing on Transport for London’s pages sets the two figures against each other.
That is the largest saving in London bike hire and it takes one division to find. Here is the rest of the pricing, the two places TfL contradicts itself, and the staffed hubs almost nobody knows exist.
What it costs
There are four ways to pay and they are not close in value.
Single ride, from £1.65 for up to 30 minutes. Every further 30 minutes is another £1.65. An e-bike single is £3 for 30 minutes and £3 for each further 30.
Day Pass, from £3.50. Unlimited rides of up to 60 minutes each, for 24 hours. Each further 60 minutes is £1.65. E-bikes add £1 per journey.
Monthly Pass, £20 a month. Unlimited 60 minute rides, and push bikes then cost nothing at all per ride. E-bikes cost £1 a journey.
Annual Pass, £120 a year. The same terms as monthly.
The arithmetic nobody does for you
The Day Pass beats single rides on the third journey. Three singles cost £4.95 against £3.50 for the pass, and the pass gives you 60 minutes a ride rather than 30. One ninety minute ride on singles also costs £4.95. So if you are making more than two trips, or one long one, the Day Pass is already cheaper.
The Annual Pass is thirty four Day Passes. £120 divided by £3.50. Use the bikes more than about three days a month and the year costs less than the days.
The Annual Pass is half the Monthly. £120 against £240. If you are going to pay monthly for more than six months, pay for the year instead.
An e-bike costs a third as much to a member. £3 on a single ride against £1 on any pass, and the pass version runs 60 minutes where the single runs 30. On e-bikes a membership pays for itself in sixty journeys, which is five a month.
Two places the pricing contradicts itself
The Santander Cycles front page carries two different starting prices in one panel. The headline offers 24 hours “from £3.50” and four lines below it the page says “Hire a cycle from just £1.65”. Both are true of different products and neither says which.
The e-bike pricing table leaves out the Day Pass altogether. It lists single ride, monthly and annual, and prices e-bikes against each. The Day Pass, which is the product the front page leads with and the one most visitors want, is simply not in the table. Its e-bike rate appears on a different page, as an extra £1 per journey.
The staffed hubs, and the days they do not work
The old problem with this scheme is arriving at a full docking station with nowhere to put the bike. TfL has an answer to that and publishes it quietly.
Six docking stations have staff who physically move and stack bikes to free up docks. They are at Waterloo Station, Queen Street at Bank, Moorfields at Moorgate, Holborn Circus, Newgate Street by St Paul’s and St James’s Square.
Five of the six run Monday to Thursday only. Waterloo is the exception at Monday to Friday, and even there only 07:30 to 09:30 and 16:30 to 19:00. Moorfields runs just two hours a day, 08:00 to 10:00, Tuesday to Thursday. The other four run 08:00 to 19:00, or 07:30 at Newgate Street.
Not one of them is staffed at the weekend. So the help exists on exactly the days when commuters need it and none of the days when visitors do.
Twenty docking stations are not there
TfL publishes a list of suspended and removed docking stations, last updated 8 September 2026, and it is longer than people expect.
Four are suspended, at Ladbroke Grove for vandalism, Guildhouse Street in Victoria for Thames Water works, Camley Street in Camden Town for major works until October 2026, and Marylebone Lane for footway works, expected back on 9 November 2026.
Sixteen more have been removed, several for years rather than months. Bouverie Street at Temple is expected back in August 2027. Chancery Lane, Great Marlborough Street in Soho and Walworth Road are all listed for 2027, and the two Southwark Station docks have gone ahead of development with no return date given. Hampstead Road at Euston has gone for HS2 works.
The practical point is to check the app rather than a map or a memory, particularly around Soho, Southwark and Euston, where the removals cluster.
The rules that cost money
You may keep a bike for up to 24 hours, paying the additional ride charges as you go.
Fail to return it within 24 hours, or return it damaged, and you can be charged up to £300. That is TfL’s published ceiling and it is the only large number in the scheme.
E-bikes cannot be hired from a street terminal. Only from the app or with a membership key. If you walk up to a docking station without the app you are limited to the push bikes, whatever the dock is holding.
Look for the lightning symbol in the app to find the e-bikes. They are about one in six of the 12,000 or so bikes across roughly 800 docking stations.
The bike is faster than the scooter
This surprises people, and both operators publish the numbers.
The Santander e-bike gives pedal assistance up to 25kph, which is about 15.5mph.
Lime caps its e-scooters at 12mph across London, enforced by GPS, with lower limits geofenced around pedestrian areas, schools and hospitals.
So the hire bike assists you past the speed the hire scooter is allowed to reach.
Lime publishes everything except the price
Lime’s own London page sets out the braking system, the nine reflectors and lights, the visibility range of 300 metres, the 12 inch front wheel, the three second geofence response and the double kickstand. It does not publish a fare anywhere on the page.
Two rules on its scooters matter more than the hardware. They are only available in participating boroughs rather than across London, and you need a driving licence, verified through the app, plus training in the app the first time you hire one.
Forest has run dockless e-bikes in London too, but its website would not load when this was rechecked on 28 September 2026, so nothing is claimed about it here.
What to know
£120 a year, not £20 a month. The same product at half the price.
Two journeys, buy singles. Three, buy the Day Pass. The crossover is £3.50 against £4.95.
No app, no e-bike. Street terminals sell push bike hire only.
The staffed hubs close on Fridays. Five of the six are Monday to Thursday, and none works at a weekend.
Twenty docks are missing, several until 2027. Check the app before you plan a route around one.
£300 is the ceiling for a bike returned late or damaged. Twenty four hours is the limit.
Everything here was taken from Transport for London’s and Lime’s own published pages and rechecked in full on 28 September 2026. The comparisons between passes are arithmetic on TfL’s published prices rather than claims TfL makes. Prices and docking station closures change, so check the app on the day.
Where to go next
Airport drop-off charges covers the other motoring cost of a London trip, which starts before you reach the city at all.
The Congestion Charge is the reason a bike makes sense across the middle of London at all, at £18 a day to bring a car into the same streets.
The London Travelcard is the other thing people buy instead, and it loses the same way: £16.60 for a day where tapping caps at £8.90.
What the tube costs is the comparison that matters, because the daily cap changes whether a bike pass saves you anything at all.
The Night Tube covers getting home when the trains have stopped, and the travel tips cover the rest of moving around the city.
The best parks in London and Hyde Park are where most of these bikes actually get ridden, and Hyde Park allows cycling only on named routes, which is worth reading before you set off.
If you are arriving rather than already here, the six airports covers which one you actually want, and Heathrow Express, Gatwick to London and Stansted to London work out the journey in from each of the three big ones. None of them is a bike ride.
Free things to do in London covers the rest of a cheap day, and things to do in central London covers how little of the centre needs any transport at all.
Questions we get asked
How much are Santander Cycles?
From £1.65 for a single ride of up to 30 minutes, or from £3.50 for a Day Pass giving unlimited 60 minute rides across 24 hours. Membership is £20 a month or £120 a year, and members pay nothing per push bike ride. E-bikes cost £3 on a single ride and £1 a journey on any pass. Rides over the included time cost £1.65 for each further period, or £3 on an e-bike.
Is a Santander Cycles annual pass worth it?
It is worth it against the monthly pass immediately, because £120 a year is half the £240 that twelve monthly passes cost. Against Day Passes it is worth it above about 34 days of use a year, which is roughly three days a month. If you ride e-bikes it pays for itself faster, because members pay £1 a journey where a single ride costs £3.
What happens if the Santander Cycles docking station is full?
Six high demand stations have staff who move and stack bikes to free up docks: Waterloo, Queen Street at Bank, Moorfields at Moorgate, Holborn Circus, Newgate Street at St Paul’s and St James’s Square. Note that five of them operate Monday to Thursday only, Waterloo runs Monday to Friday in two short windows, and none is staffed at the weekend.
Can you hire an e-bike from a Santander Cycles docking station?
Not from the street terminal. E-bikes can only be hired using the Santander Cycles app or a membership key, so walking up to a docking station without the app limits you to the standard push bikes. Look for the lightning symbol in the app to find them. About one in six of the 12,000 bikes across roughly 800 docking stations is an e-bike.
How long can you keep a Santander Cycle?
Up to 24 hours, paying the additional ride charges for the time beyond what your pass or single ride covers. Beyond 24 hours, or if the bike comes back damaged, TfL states you could be charged up to £300. That is the only large penalty in the scheme and it is the reason to dock the bike and take a new one rather than keep hold of one all day.
Are Lime bikes or Santander Cycles cheaper in London?
Lime does not publish a price for London on its own location page, which sets out braking distances, reflector counts, wheel size and speed limits but no fare. Santander Cycles publishes a full table. On speed the Santander e-bike assists to 25kph, about 15.5mph, while Lime caps its e-scooters at 12mph. Lime e-scooters also require a driving licence and are only available in participating boroughs.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 141 in the guide.
Last checked 28 September 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
