Drive yourself and pay for parking, or book a transfer — which costs less? On the figures below, driving and parking come out cheaper at all seven airports Transito serves from Leicester. At six of them, comfortably so. At the seventh, East Midlands, only just — narrowly enough that your own car’s fuel economy and which parking price you end up paying can change the result.
This is a direct cash comparison: fuel plus parking, against a transfer fare. It leaves out things like wear on your car, servicing, tyres and the value of your own time — real costs, but personal to your vehicle and circumstances in a way fuel and parking prices aren’t, so they’re left out rather than guessed at.
Table of Contents
The fuel figure
A petrol car doing around 45 miles to the gallon, against a UK average pump price of roughly £1.65–£1.70 a litre in mid-September 2026, comes out at close to 17p a mile. A bigger car, a diesel, or an EV will produce a different number. Treat 17p a mile as a starting point for your own car, not a fact about all cars.
The parking figures and how sure we are of them
For East Midlands, Birmingham, Luton, Manchester and Stansted, the parking prices below are official, pre-booked, 8-day figures from each airport’s own site or its official booking partner, checked mid-September 2026. For Heathrow and Gatwick, both airports’ own sites only publish their pay-on-the-day drive-up tariffs — Gatwick’s works out at over £250 for eight days without pre-booking. The lower, pre-booked figures used here for those two come from third-party parking platforms rather than the airport’s own headline pricing, so they carry less certainty than the other five.
The seven figures also aren’t perfectly like-for-like as products. At East Midlands and Manchester, the range covers two named shuttle-based products (Long Stay and JetParks) rather than a single one. At Stansted, the range spans both a walk-in car park close to the terminal and a separate shuttle-based long-stay one, so it’s the least uniform of the seven.
Every figure moves with your dates, how far ahead you book, and demand. Whether off-airport parking beats the airport’s own product varies: at Luton, the official on-airport option was, in several checks, as cheap as or cheaper than the off-site alternatives being compared against it. There’s no reliable rule that off-site always wins.
The seven airports
| Airport | Return mileage | Fuel (≈17p/mi) | Parking, 8 days, pre-booked | Self-drive total | 2× one-way starting fare (calculated) |
| East Midlands | 40 mi | £7 | £50–£80 | £57–£87 | £90 |
| Birmingham | 84 mi | £14 | £70–£75 | £84–£89 | £150 |
| Luton | 144 mi | £24 | £50–£52 | £74–£76 | £250 |
| Manchester | 203 mi | £35 | £55–£60 | £90–£95 | £340 |
| Stansted | 240 mi | £41 | £53–£75 | £94–£116 | £340 |
| Heathrow | 204 mi | £35 | £120–£125* | £155–£160* | £340 |
| Gatwick | 300 mi | £51 | £85–£90* | £136–£141* | £420 |
*Heathrow and Gatwick parking figures come from third-party booking platforms, not the airports’ own published pre-booked pricing — check current prices before relying on them. Return mileage uses each route page’s stated distance, or the midpoint of its range. The right-hand column is a calculated figure — one-way starting fare doubled — not a published return price. East Midlands, Luton and Heathrow state the return leg matches the outbound fare directly; Birmingham, Manchester, Stansted and Gatwick confirm the return fare is fixed once quoted, without stating outright that it equals the outbound figure.
What the numbers actually show
At six of the seven airports, self-drive is cheaper by a wide enough margin that the exact parking product or a slightly thirstier car doesn’t change the outcome. East Midlands is the one worth being precise about. If you park at the lower end of its range, self-drive stays cheaper under almost any realistic fuel economy — the fuel budget implied by the transfer figure works out at around £1 a mile, which no ordinary petrol car reaches. If you end up paying nearer the top of the range, the crossover point is a car doing roughly 30 miles to the gallon or worse — a realistic figure for a larger or older car, not an extreme one. So at East Midlands specifically, the cheaper option depends on which parking price you get and what your car actually does. On the other six routes, that level of detail doesn’t change anything.
The gap widens sharply on the longer routes. The two comparisons contain different cost components: self-drive combines your own fuel and a parking space, while the transfer figure is a single quoted journey-level fare covering the whole return trip. That difference in what’s being priced matters more the further you’re going.
Why party size changes the comparison
This is a single-car comparison. One car and one parking space cost the same whether one person is travelling or four. A transfer is priced for the journey rather than as a separate fare for each passenger. So a family of four splitting a £250 Luton transfer fare between them is doing a genuinely different sum from a solo traveller weighing the same £250 against £75 in fuel and parking. The totals above are per trip; what they’re worth per person depends on how many of you are actually going.
What the numbers don’t cover
The cash comparison doesn’t say who’s driving. With your own car, that’s you, both ways, including the drive home whenever your flight lands. With a transfer, someone else does that leg.
- The return drive. Landing at Manchester, Gatwick or Heathrow late at night and then driving home is a different proposition from being driven.
- Getting from the car to the terminal. Terminal access varies by car park. Most of the products used in this comparison run a shuttle bus; Stansted’s range includes a walk-in option as well. Check the exact parking product rather than assuming the arrangement is the same everywhere.
None of this changes which option is cheaper. It just says what the saving is buying you.
Getting the real figure for your trip
The numbers here are for comparing the shape of the decision, not for booking against — your fuel cost depends on your car, and parking prices move with your exact dates. If a transfer suits your journey once you’ve weighed it up, current fares and route details are on each airport’s page: East Midlands, Birmingham, Luton, Manchester, Stansted, Heathrow, Gatwick.