Heathrow Terminal 3 parking by product, with prices and postcodes

The first thing to know about parking for Terminal 3 is that most of it is not Terminal 3's. T3 sits in the central terminal area alongside Terminal 2, and the two share every off-terminal product between them: the same Park & Ride lot, the same Priority Park & Ride site, the same approach road. What belongs to T3 alone is the multi-storey attached to the building, Terminal Parking, at postcode TW6 1QG, and the forecourt outside it. Four products are running (Park & Ride, Terminal Parking, Meet & Greet, Valet) and one, Priority Park & Ride, is closed. The renames Heathrow made in September 2024 and 2025 are live on its booking site but not yet on all the signage, so expect to see Long Stay and Short Stay on the road.

Pre-booked rates on Park & Ride and Meet & Greet are typically much lower than the drive-up gate rate; pre-book on Heathrow's own site for the best price. Heathrow is inside the expanded ULEZ; a non-compliant vehicle pays £12.50 a day to drive to the airport regardless of where it parks. See ULEZ and Congestion Charge for the rules. Forecourt drop-off costs £7 per visit since 1 January 2026; see Heathrow drop-off charges.

There is no separate Terminal 3 Park & Ride. Booking "T3 Park & Ride" books you a space in one car park on the Eastern Perimeter Road, TW6 2SB, that serves T2 and T3 together, and the shuttle calls at both terminals on the way in and the way out. The terminal you pick at booking records which one you are flying from; it does not change where you park. That matters in two practical ways. If you are meeting someone off a T2 flight and flying yourself from T3, one booking covers both. And if a search result offers you a cheaper "Terminal 2" rate for the same dates, it is the same tarmac, so take it.

Drive-up prices start at £46.80 for the first 24 hours and £37.40 for each additional 24 hours. Pre-booked online the daily rate drops to £11 to £15 a day depending on lead time. The free courtesy bus runs every 15 minutes between 04:00 and 23:30, with the door-to-door T3 transfer taking around 15 minutes. Outside the operating window, transfers run on request via 020 8745 6261. On return from your flight, leave the T3 arrivals hall and walk to the Park & Ride bus stop on the T3 forecourt, signed for the return shuttle.

The 29-minute free window is the most useful T3-specific point on this page for anyone collecting a passenger. Drive into the Park & Ride, take a ticket, drive out within 29 minutes and you pay nothing. This is the answer to "where can I pick someone up at Terminal 3 for free", because forecourt pick-up is not permitted and the £7 charge applies to any forecourt entry. Beyond 29 minutes the charge is £9.40 for stays up to 1 hour 59 minutes. Detail and current prices on the Park & Ride page.

This is the part of T3 parking that is genuinely T3's own. Terminal Parking, called Short Stay until 29 September 2025, is the multi-storey bolted to the Terminal 3 building: TW6 1QG on a sat nav, 2 to 5 minutes on foot to check-in or out through arrivals, covered and step-free the whole way. The same approach road feeds both this car park and the drop-off forecourt, so if you overshoot the forecourt you can pull into the car park and walk. Tariffs match the equivalent car park at the other terminals.

Stays of 9 hours or more can be pre-booked online up to 2 hours before arrival; pre-booked rates vary by lead time and dates but are typically lower than the gate equivalent. Stays under 9 hours pay the gate rate on exit at one of the ticket machines or the exit barrier.

Where Terminal Parking earns its price is the short stop. Two hours at the gate rate costs £20, which undercuts the £46.80 you would pay for the first 24 hours at Park & Ride, and you are 2 to 5 minutes from the desk rather than a bus ride away. Cross into a full day and the maths flips hard the other way, which is the point at which most T3 drivers should be looking at Park & Ride instead.

The most common mistake at T3 is driving to the forecourt for Meet & Greet. The reception is not there: it is inside the car park, on Level 1 of Terminal Parking, signed as Official Heathrow Meet & Greet from the entry barrier. Pull into the marked bay, hand over the keys, and a valet photographs the car from every angle before taking it to a secure on-airport compound. Coming home, the car returns to that same Level 1 reception at the time you booked, so you walk from arrivals into the car park rather than out to the kerb.

Turning up without booking costs from £138.60 a day. Booking ahead on Heathrow's own site opens at £143.40 for the shortest advance band, so the headline drive-up figure looks cheaper than it is: the advance price covers a longer minimum stay. Price both against your actual dates before assuming either is the better deal.

Meet & Greet and Valet are easy to mix up because both end with someone else parking your car. The difference is purely where you stop: Meet & Greet on Level 1 inside the car park, Valet on the forecourt outside. Both run at T3. Pick Valet if the shorter walk matters and the £7 forecourt saving appeals; pick Meet & Greet if you would rather be under cover and away from the kerbside traffic.

Valet is the version that does use the forecourt, and at T3 that puts you closest of all: the Valet lane sits on the T3 forecourt, so you hand the keys over and walk straight into the check-in hall, Zone A for Virgin Atlantic, Zone J for American Airlines, and the rest spread between. The car goes to the airport's own secure facilities. The £7 forecourt drop-off charge every other driver pays is waived in full on a Valet booking, which is the one hard financial reason to choose it over Meet & Greet when the two are priced close.

Valet runs at three of the four terminals, T2, T3 and T5, but not at Terminal 4. On short stays it and Meet & Greet often land within a few pounds of each other, so the £7 waived forecourt charge is frequently the whole difference. On longer stays compare both against Park & Ride, because the gap widens quickly.

Priority Park & Ride at Terminal 3 is currently closed for operational reasons. The site that served Terminals 2 and 3 (formerly Business Parking, renamed Priority Park & Ride on 29 September 2025) is one shared facility, and the closure affects both terminals equally. The car park is not accepting new bookings, drive-up stays, or pre-booked stays. Passengers with affected existing bookings have been contacted by Heathrow about alternative arrangements. Heathrow has not published a reopening date for the T2/T3 site.

Terminal 5 now has the only Priority Park & Ride still running. If that specific product is what you want from a T3 trip, the 5 to 7-minute covered walk it offers exists only at T5, so you would be parking at the wrong end of the airport and travelling back. For almost every T3 journey the answer is Park & Ride or Terminal Parking instead.

Because T2 and T3 share the central terminal area, they also share the drive in: M4 Junction 4, the spur road, then the Heathrow Boundary Tunnel, or from the M25 at Junction 14 onto the M4 eastbound at 4b. Signage inside the tunnel splits the two terminals late, so stay in the lane for T3 rather than following the first central-terminals sign you see. The A4 Bath Road is the fallback when the M4 is blocked between Junctions 3 and 4. Nothing on any Heathrow approach is tolled.

The two sat nav postcodes you need at T3:

• TW6 1QG for the Terminal Parking car park, the kerbside drop-off forecourt, the Meet & Greet reception on Level 1, and the Valet lane. The same approach road serves all four. Follow signs for Terminal 3 Departures from the tunnel exit.
• TW6 2SB for the shared T2/T3 Park & Ride on the Eastern Perimeter Road. The car park sits two miles north of the airport. Take the courtesy bus to T3 from there.

The route to Terminal Parking from M4 Junction 4 in practical terms: exit at Junction 4, take the M4 spur road for around 1.5 miles, keep right in Lane 3, follow signs for the Heathrow Boundary Tunnel and Short Stay car parks. Through the tunnel keep right, past the Central Bus Station, and follow signs for Terminal 3 (the road forks for T2 and T3 after the tunnel exit). The Terminal 3 Departures level and the Terminal Parking entry are both signed clearly. The route to the Park & Ride is the same M4 J4 approach, but follow Park & Ride signs and stay on the Eastern Perimeter Road rather than entering the tunnel. The Heathrow postcode page covers every car park postcode at the airport.

The decision rule for picking the right T3 parking product, expressed as a sequence of questions. Each cuts the options down further.

Collecting, or leaving the car? For a collection, the Park & Ride 29-minute free window is the cheapest legitimate option at T3: drive in, take a ticket, let your passenger ride the free shuttle out to you, and leave inside 29 minutes at no charge. It is slower than the forecourt and it costs nothing, where the forecourt costs £7 every time.

How long is the car staying? Under two hours, Terminal Parking at the gate rate wins, from £8 for 29 minutes and £20 for two hours. Two hours up to a day, it still wins on the walk alone. Past a day, Park & Ride takes over and the gap only grows, which is why almost every holiday booking from T3 should end up there.

How much is not walking worth? If handing the keys over beats catching a bus, Meet & Greet sits on Level 1 of Terminal Parking with damage cameras, and Valet takes the car on the T3 forecourt with the £7 charge waived. Both cost a clear premium over Park & Ride, and on a long stay that premium is the largest single number on this page.

The T3-specific facts that change the answer for some readers:

• The Park & Ride is shared with T2; a T3 booking and a T2 booking sit in the same car park with the same shuttle. The choice of terminal at booking only sets which arrivals stop the bus drops you back at, not which lot you park in.
• Priority Park & Ride is currently closed at T3 (the T2/T3 site is one facility); if you are used to booking the Business product for 1 to 5-night trips at a closer walk than Park & Ride, the equivalent is not currently available and Terminal Parking is the closest replacement.
• Meet & Greet at T3 has damage cameras; T4 does not. If you have any past dispute with an airport valet, T3 is the safer of the four.
• Valet is available at T3; T4 does not have it. The £7 drop-off waiver makes Valet the only product where you can pull onto the forecourt for free.
• T2 and T3 share a covered footbridge on the arrivals side; if you somehow end up at the wrong central terminal on a return trip with a Terminal Parking booking, a walk of about 10 minutes between the two terminals fixes it.

Are you driving a non-compliant car? Heathrow sits inside the expanded ULEZ zone. A non-compliant vehicle pays £12.50 a day to drive to the airport regardless of which T3 car park it ends up in. Check your plate on the TfL site before booking. For the by-type products and the cross-terminal comparison, see the Heathrow parking overview; for the matching terminal information, see Terminal 3. For the comparison with the other terminal parking pages, see Terminal 2 parking (the shared P&R sibling), Terminal 4 parking, and Terminal 5 parking; the hotel and parking packages page and the parking FAQs cover adjacent questions.