Heathrow drop-off charge: £7 per visit and how to avoid it

The forecourt drop-off charge at Heathrow is £7 per visit, flat, at every terminal. The fee triggers the moment your number plate is read by the cameras at the entry to the drop-off zone, regardless of how long you stay or whether anyone actually gets out of the car. There is no longer a free period.

The charge was introduced on 1 November 2021 at £5, rose to £6 during 2025, and stepped up to £7 on 1 January 2026. The same increase brought a new rule with it: a strict 10-minute maximum stay, covered in its own section below. The official source for the current figure is the Heathrow terminal drop-off charge page, which the airport updates each time the price changes.

Heathrow has framed the charge as a way to reduce kerbside congestion and to fund cleaner-air investment at the airport. Whether that argument lands is up to the reader. The point of this page is the practical one: the fee is real, the rules are enforced, and there is a free alternative most travellers never see.

The charge applies in the designated drop-off forecourt outside each of the four terminals. That is the kerbside zone where you would normally pull up to let someone out, immediately in front of the departures level entrance. All four terminals are covered: Terminal 2, Terminal 3, Terminal 4, and Terminal 5.

What is not covered is anything else. The Northern and Southern Perimeter Roads, the spurs that lead into the short-stay and Park & Ride car parks, the bus lanes, and the access road to the petrol station all sit outside the charged zone. So does the public road network around the airport. The ANPR cameras are mounted at the entry to the forecourt itself, and the moment your plate is photographed crossing that line, the £7 is logged against the vehicle.

The charge has nothing to do with the short-stay car park attached to each terminal, which sits one level up or alongside the forecourt and has its own time-based tariff. If you park in the short stay rather than pull up at the kerb, you pay the short-stay rate and not the forecourt fee. The forecourt rules apply in much the same way to collecting someone, covered on the Heathrow pick-up zone page, though the practicalities of arrival timing are different. For driving directions and the right Heathrow postcode for sat nav by terminal, the postcode page covers each entry point.

Since 1 January 2026, the forecourt has a hard 10-minute cap. You must leave within 10 minutes of entering the zone, and paying the £7 does not buy more time. Overstaying triggers a separate Parking Charge Notice on top of the entry fee.

In practice, 10 minutes is enough for a normal drop-off. Pulling up, opening the boot, unloading two cases, and saying goodbye takes under five for most travellers. Where the limit bites is the edge cases: a passenger checking they have their passport, a stop to help a less mobile family member, or an unexpected wait for someone who has not yet come down to the kerb. If any of that is likely, the safer call is to use the Park & Ride, where the first 29 minutes are free and there is no time-pressure.

The clock starts on entry, not on stopping, and it does not pause if traffic is heavy inside the forecourt loop. On busy mornings the kerbside crawl can eat several of those 10 minutes before you reach the right bay. Build that into your timing if you are dropping at peak hours, typically 06:00 to 08:00 and 17:00 to 19:00.

Payment is online or by phone, never on site. There are no payment kiosks at the forecourts and no barriers on entry or exit; the ANPR cameras handle the whole transaction in the background. You can pay before your visit, on the day, or by 23:59 the day after the visit. After that the charge escalates to a Parking Charge Notice, covered in the next section.

The official payment portal is at heathrow.com/transport-and-directions/terminal-drop-off-charge. You enter the vehicle registration and the date of the visit, and the system pulls up the £7 for that vehicle. Payment is by card and you do not need an account, though setting one up makes repeat visits faster. The portal handles UK and overseas plates equally, so a hire car or a foreign-registered vehicle works the same way.

Each visit is billed separately. If you made two trips in one day, for example dropping off in the morning and collecting in the evening, the system does not bundle them and you need to pay each entry on its own line. Pay on the day rather than the day after, and a missed reminder cannot turn a £7 visit into an £80 notice. The portal accepts payment from the moment the camera reads your plate, so you can settle in the car park before you leave the airport or on the drive home if someone else is driving.

If 23:59 the day after the visit has passed without payment, the registered keeper of the vehicle is sent a Parking Charge Notice for £80. Pay within 14 days of the notice being issued and the figure halves to £40. After that window it stays at £80, and ignoring the notice further leads to the usual debt-recovery sequence used by any UK car park operator.

Appeals are heard but rarely succeed. The defences that work are evidence-based: a Blue Badge that was on file at the time of the visit, an emergency vehicle in service, a documented exemption that was missed. "I did not know about the charge" is not a defence, nor is "I did not actually stop". Drivers from outside the UK are treated the same as UK keepers; the operator pursues the registered keeper of the plate regardless of where it was issued.

A few categories of vehicle do not pay the £7. Blue Badge holders are the most common exemption a private driver might use, and the rest are operational.

Blue Badge holders

Drivers with a valid UK Blue Badge can register for a 100% discount on the forecourt charge, and the 10-minute maximum stay is waived for them too. The exemption is not automatic from the badge itself; you have to register the badge and the vehicle plate in advance through the APCOA-run Blue Badge account, linked from the Heathrow drop-off page. Once on file, the system reads the plate and the charge does not apply. The registration is not retrospective, so set it up before the first visit rather than after.

The Blue Badge exemption also covers two hours free at the Park & Ride car parks, even if the badge holder is the passenger rather than the driver. Detail and a phone helpline for setting up the account are on the APCOA help centre page.

Emergency, military, and official vehicles

Marked police, ambulance, and fire vehicles in service are exempt automatically. The same applies to military vehicles and to vehicles run by Heathrow Airport Holdings on official business. Drivers in those categories do not need to register or claim anything.

Two-wheeled motorbikes

Two-wheeled motorbikes are not subject to the forecourt charge. They use the same kerbside zones and the cameras read the plate as normal, but no fee is applied. Three-wheeled vehicles and trikes are treated as cars and pay the £7.

The proper workaround for the £7 charge is to skip the forecourt and drop your passenger at the Park & Ride car park for their terminal, where the first 29 minutes are free. The site used to be called the Long Stay; Heathrow renamed it Park & Ride a few years ago. Each terminal has one, and a free courtesy bus runs between the car park and the terminal door.

The bus runs every 15 minutes, with operating hours of 04:00 to 23:30, and reaches the terminal door in around 15 minutes from the central Park & Ride that serves Terminals 2 and 3. Terminals 4 and 5 have their own sites with their own buses, and the times are similar. Outside the operating window, between 23:30 and 04:00, transfers run on request by phoning 020 8745 6261; allow longer for the response.

Which site serves which terminal

Terminals 2 and 3 share a single Park & Ride site on the Eastern Perimeter Road, postcode TW6 2SB, with separate pick-up bus stops in each forecourt. Terminal 4 has its own site and its own bus. Terminal 5 has its own site and its own bus, on the western side of the airport.

How long it adds and when it is worth it

Plan on 25 to 30 minutes longer than a forecourt drop. The driver pulls into the Park & Ride, the passenger walks the short distance to the bus stop with their bags, waits up to 15 minutes for the next bus, and rides the bus to the terminal door. The 29-minute free window is enough for the drop and the wait, with a margin; after 29 minutes parking starts at £9.40 for the next band, so do not linger.

The Park & Ride is the right call for routine drop-offs, families with multiple bags, or anyone happy to wave off at a bus stop rather than the kerb. For an early flight with a tight check-in, the forecourt's speed is harder to beat and the £7 may still be worth paying. The same site is part of the broader Heathrow parking offer, where the same logic applies to longer stays at the long-stay car park.

If the goal is to spend nothing on the drop-off, the cleanest answer is not to drive to Heathrow at all. The three rail routes and a taxi from town all swap the £7 forecourt fee, and a portion of your time, for a different mix of cost and convenience.

Passenger fares are typical adult singles current in May 2026. Rail fares are covered in detail on each mode's own page.

The right answer depends on who is travelling and where they are coming from. For a passenger heading out alone with one bag, the train is almost always the better trade than asking a driver to take half a morning off. For a family with several cases or someone who would struggle on the Underground, a forecourt drop or a Park & Ride is more humane. There is no single right answer; the page gives you the prices to compare.

Most major London airports now charge a similar fee for forecourt drop-off. Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton all introduced charges in the same wave as Heathrow, with the same broad model of a per-visit fee paid online and ANPR enforcement. The figures differ by a pound or two and shift year to year. London City is the standout: it has no forecourt charge and free drop-off remains the rule there.

If you are choosing between airports for the same trip, the £7 should not move the needle on its own. Flight choice, terminal location, and onward transport matter more. What this page does not do is mirror the other airports' current figures in detail, because they change as often as Heathrow's and tracking them all is not the right job for a Heathrow guide. Check the airport's own page for any of the others before relying on a specific number.

A few things worth knowing if you are using the kerbside drop-off rather than the Park & Ride.

• Be ready before you enter the zone. The 10-minute clock starts at the cameras. Have the boot open in your head, know which bay you are aiming for, and ask the passenger to gather their things on the approach.
• Do not loop. Driving in, leaving, and re-entering counts as two visits, which is two £7 charges. If you have missed the bay, the cheaper move is to keep going and park briefly in the short stay.
• Pay on the day, not the day after. The 23:59 next-day deadline is a trap. Pay before you leave the airport, in the car or on a phone while the passenger checks in, and the question is closed.
• Watch perimeter traffic at peak. The approach to Terminal 4 and the loop at Terminal 5 can both crawl in the morning rush. Allow extra minutes if you are already paying for the visit, so traffic inside the loop does not eat half of it.
• Plate readability matters. A faded, dirty, or partly obscured plate has caused payment portal failures in the past; the camera reads what it reads, and if it gets your registration wrong, the charge can be hard to clear later. Make sure the plate is legible before you leave home.
• Hire cars are charged the same way. A rental booked through any provider is your responsibility for the £7. The rental company will either pass on the charge or bill you a small admin fee on top; expect the bill weeks after the trip.

For everything else about getting to and from the airport by car, including the wider transport options, the ULEZ rules if you are driving through inner London on the way, and the broader driving to Heathrow page, follow the relevant link.