What is the best boat trip in London?
Every kind of boat trip in London compared on the numbers: sightseeing cruises, speedboats, the river bus and the canal boats, with the best-rated and the most-booked separated out.
By James Whitfield, London river and travel writer
London runs four completely different things and calls them all boat trips. There is the tour fleet, which sells an hour of skyline for the price of a pizza. There are five fast boats that sell forty-five seconds of acceleration wrapped in fifty minutes. There is a river bus network that moved more than five million people last year and is not a tour at all. And there are the narrowboats on the canal at the other end of town, which are on different water entirely.
Ranking them against each other is only useful if you say what you are ranking for. So here are the two honest answers up front, and they do not agree. On rating, the best boat trip in London is the 50-minute Thames Rockets speedboat, a straight 5.0 across 4,253 reviews. On sheer weight of bookings, it is the Westminster to Greenwich sightseeing cruise, which carries 25,220 reviews on its own, more than every other listed sailing added together.
What is the best boat trip in London?
The best-rated is the 50-minute Thames Rockets speedboat from London Eye Pier, 5.0 across 4,253 reviews, from £69.95. The most-booked is the Westminster to Greenwich sightseeing cruise, 4.5 across 25,220 reviews, from £17.20. The cheapest way onto the water is a river bus single at £11.70, which is transport rather than a tour.
Those three answers cover most of what people mean by the question. The speedboat is the highest-scoring experience of any category on this river, and the review base is big enough that the score is not a fluke. The sightseeing run is the default: an hour downstream past the whole central landmark set, ending somewhere worth being. The river bus is the value play for anyone who wants the view and does not need a guide.
Below is every kind of boat trip the city offers, on one table, with the honest note about which ones this site tracks by the numbers and which it does not.
| Type of boat trip | Example | Typical length | From | What it is really for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sightseeing cruise | Westminster to Greenwich | 1 hour one-way | £17.20 | The landmark run, with commentary |
| Short circular cruise | London Eye river cruise | 40 minutes | £15.50 | A quick central loop, back where you started |
| Day pass on the tour fleet | 24-hour hop-on hop-off | All day | £24.95 | Using the river to move between sights |
| Speedboat or RIB | Thames Rockets 50-minute | 20 to 70 minutes | £37.74 | The ride itself, not the view |
| Dining cruise | Dinner cruise from Westminster | 3 hours | £87 | An occasion with a table and a window |
| Evening cruise | Bubbly and canapés from Tower Pier | 2 hours | £35 | The lit river without a dinner bill |
| River bus | Central-zone single | 20 to 40 minutes | £11.70 | Actually getting somewhere |
| Private charter | Whole-boat speedboat hire | 70 minutes | Priced per boat | A group with its own departure |
| Canal narrowboat | Little Venice to Camden trips | Varies | Not tracked here | A slow, different waterway altogether |
Only the Thames products in that table are ones this site follows listing by listing, which is why the canal row carries no price and no rating. More on that below, because pretending otherwise would be the easy thing to do and the wrong one.
Which boat trip in London is the best rated?
The 50-minute Thames Rockets speedboat, with a straight 5.0 across 4,253 reviews. Two other boats also score 5.0, the sunset speedboat and the private charter, but on 249 and 119 reviews respectively. Among the sightseeing fleet the highest score is the London Eye river cruise at 4.8 on 1,912 reviews.
Rating on its own is a weak signal and review volume is what turns it into evidence. A 5.0 built on 119 opinions and a 5.0 built on 4,253 are not the same claim, and the gap between them is the most useful thing in this whole dataset. Sorted by how much evidence sits behind each number, the picture changes quite a bit from a straight star ranking.
| Boat trip | Rating | Reviews | From | How much the rating is worth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Westminster to Greenwich sightseeing | 4.5 | 25,220 | £17.20 | The most evidenced number on the river |
| Thames Rockets 50-minute speedboat | 5.0 | 4,253 | £69.95 | A perfect score on a very large base |
| Afternoon tea cruise | 4.4 | 3,823 | £40 | Solid, thousands of opinions |
| 24-hour hop-on hop-off pass | 4.4 | 3,283 | £24.95 | Consistent across a full day product |
| Evening bubbly and canapés | 4.4 | 2,787 | £35 | The best-reviewed non-dinner evening |
| Dinner cruise | 4.3 | 2,447 | £87 | Good, not great, at the highest price band |
| Lunch cruise | 4.5 | 2,208 | £36 | The strongest score of any meal afloat |
| London Eye river cruise | 4.8 | 1,912 | £15.50 | Best rated of the sightseeing boats |
| RIB to the Thames Barrier | 4.9 | 803 | £75.48 | Excellent, on a moderate base |
| Tower Bridge circular | 4.2 | 523 | £14 | The weakest sightseeing score |
| Tower RIB Blast | 4.8 | 268 | £37.74 | Strong, thin base |
| Sunset speedboat | 5.0 | 249 | £64.95 | Perfect, but on a quarter of a thousand |
| Jazz dinner cruise | 4.0 | 241 | £109 | Lowest rated and highest priced |
| Private speedboat hire | 5.0 | 119 | Per boat | Perfect, on the smallest base listed |
| Elvis tribute dinner cruise | 4.7 | 48 | £91 | Too few reviews to treat as settled |
Read down that column and the pattern is unmistakable: the fast boats hold the top of the rating table, the dining boats sit at the bottom despite costing the most, and price predicts satisfaction in exactly the wrong direction. The full run of that comparison, boat by boat, is set out in the ranked cruise guide. If a 5.0 on thousands of reviews is the deciding factor for you, check availability on the 50-minute run before building an afternoon around it, because twelve seats a sailing go early in summer.
Which boat trip do most people actually book?
The Westminster to Greenwich sightseeing cruise, by a distance that is hard to overstate. Its 25,220 reviews are more than every other listed sailing on the river combined. At £17.20 for an hour one-way it is also the cheapest hour of continuous landmarks in the city, and it ends at Greenwich rather than back where it started.
Volume like that is not an accident of marketing. The route does something no other trip manages: it never repeats itself. You leave Westminster with Parliament behind you, pass the South Bank and Somerset House, take St Paul's off the port side, then the Tower and Tower Bridge, and after the bridge the river opens into the docklands stretch that most visitors never reach on foot. Canary Wharf appears across the water at a scale it never has from a Tube platform.
The finish matters as much as the route. Greenwich is awkward to get to and awkward to leave, so doing the journey by boat converts the annoying part of the day into the sightseeing part. Reviewers on this run make the same point over and over: they booked a boat trip and came away with a half day. That is why the numbers are so lopsided.
The trade is that an hour on the water is not an hour of your day. Add the walk to the pier, the operator's arrive-early margin, a summer queue at Westminster and the return journey, and a one-hour cruise is a two-hour block at minimum. The door-to-door timing breakdown goes route by route on that. For most first-time visitors it is still the right first boat, and it is worth a look at what the Greenwich sailing costs on your date before you plan the rest of the day around it.
Is the river bus a better boat trip than a tour boat?
For getting somewhere, yes, and it is cheaper. A central-zone single is £11.70 bought online, against £14 for the cheapest tour boat. What you lose is commentary, an open top deck and a route chosen for the view. What you gain is speed, frequency and a fleet that carried more than five million passengers last year.
The river bus is the option most "best boat trip" lists ignore entirely, on the grounds that it is public transport. That is exactly why it belongs here. The window view is the same water, the boats are fast and modern, and if your plan is to cross London rather than to be shown it, no tour boat competes on either price or time. The direction of travel backs it up: London river services carried a record of roughly 10.5 million journey stages in 2024/25, up about 9 per cent in a year, according to Transport for London's Travel in London analysis, while the tour and charter share of that fell around 8 per cent. Growth on this river is in people going somewhere, not sightseeing.
Where it falls down is as an experience. There is no guide, the seating faces forward rather than out, the boats run to a commuter timetable rather than a scenic one, and nobody tells you what you are passing. Children who would be thrilled by a speedboat are not thrilled by a ferry. If the point of the day is the boat, buy the boat. If the point is the destination, buy the fare. The head-to-head is worked through properly in the river bus versus cruise comparison.
What about the canal boats at Little Venice and Camden?
They are a real London boat trip and a genuinely different one: narrowboats on the Regent's Canal between Little Venice and Camden Lock, slow, sheltered and nothing like the tidal river. This site tracks Thames listings rather than canal ones, so no rating or price is quoted for them here, because quoting numbers nobody has checked would be worse than leaving the row blank.
The canal deserves the mention because the two waterways get lumped together in search results and they could hardly be less alike. The Thames through London is tidal, wide, busy with commercial traffic and overseen by the Port of London Authority, whose remit runs 95 miles from Teddington to the North Sea. The Regent's Canal is narrow, still, walled and quiet, and a boat on it moves at walking pace through cuttings and under bridges.
Which one is better depends entirely on the mood you are buying. The river is the postcard: Parliament, the Tower, Tower Bridge, the whole skyline in one line. The canal is the opposite of a postcard, a back-garden route through a bit of London that most visitors never see. Neither substitutes for the other, and doing both in a week is not a repeat. If the canal wins your spare afternoon and you want your own hands on the tiller, the self-drive option is GoBoat at Paddington; check hire slots here, an entirely separate booking from anything on the tidal river.
What can be said with confidence is that the canal trips are not what people mean when they ask about a Thames cruise, which is nearly always the question underneath the search. If you have a spare afternoon and want a slow one, take the canal. If you have one boat trip in you and want the city, take the river.
Which boat trip is best on a budget?
A river bus single at £11.70 is the cheapest way onto London water. Among the tour boats, the £14 Tower Bridge circular from Westminster is the floor, and the £17.20 Greenwich run is much better value per minute. The £24.95 day pass beats two single sightseeing tickets outright.
Cheap on this river is a narrow band, roughly £11 to £25, and inside it you are choosing between length, commentary and flexibility rather than between good and bad boats. The £14 circular gives the most minutes per pound of any tour ticket but scores the lowest of the sightseeing fleet at 4.2. The Greenwich run costs three pounds more, rates 4.5, and ends somewhere useful.
| Budget | What it buys | The pick | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under £15 | A single river crossing or one hour afloat | River bus single, or the £14 circular | No commentary on one, lowest rating on the other |
| £15 to £20 | An hour of landmarks with a guide | Westminster to Greenwich, £17.20 | One-way, so plan the journey back |
| £20 to £30 | A full day of hopping between piers | 24-hour pass, £24.95 | Sails 10:00 to 18:00, so no lit-river evening |
| £30 to £45 | A meal or an evening, or the cheapest fast boat | Lunch cruise £36, evening bubbly £35, Tower blast £37.74 | Either food or speed, never both |
| £45 to £80 | The fast boats and the sunset run | Thames Rockets 50-minute, £69.95 | No indoors, expect to get wet |
| £80 and up | A three-hour evening with a table | Dinner cruise, £87 | Restaurant prices, and the ratings drop as the price climbs |
There is a free option that belongs in any honest budget answer. The Thames Path runs both banks through central London and the South Bank stretch between Westminster and Tower Bridge delivers most of the famous views at ground level for nothing. What a boat buys that a walk cannot is the angles: the underside of Tower Bridge, the river face of the Tower, and the Greenwich approach. Whether that is worth £17 is the question worked through in is a cruise worth it.
Which boat trip is best for a first visit to London?
The Westminster to Greenwich sightseeing run, and it is not close. An hour, £17.20, every central landmark in order, and a finish at Greenwich with the Cutty Sark and the Old Royal Naval College. If you would rather stay central, the £24.95 day pass covers four piers and turns the river into your transport for the day.
First visits have a specific problem: too much city, not enough time, and every sight in a different direction. The river solves it geographically, because London's best buildings were built facing the water and the boat passes them in a sensible order rather than making you zigzag. One hour on a boat covers ground that would take most of a day on foot.
The day pass is the underrated version of the same idea. At £24.95 it beats two single sightseeing tickets, and it lets you get off at Tower Pier for the Tower, back on for Greenwich, and home again on the last afternoon sailing. The one group it fails is evening arrivals, because it sails between 10:00 and 18:00 and stops well before the lit-river hours. The day pass breakdown covers where it pays off and where it does not.
Families should know the fare structure before booking, because it differs by product rather than by operator. On the tour fleet's sightseeing sailings, infants aged 0 to 4 travel free and the child band runs 5 to 15. On the river bus, under-4s go free with a maximum of two per ticketholder, and children aged 5 to 15 pay half the adult fare. Dining sailings are the ones that restrict or exclude children entirely.
Which boat trip is best for an evening out?
The two-hour evening cruise with bubbly and canapés at £35 is the best value after dark: the lit river, a glass of sparkling and live music, without a three-course commitment. For golden hour specifically, the adults-only sunset speedboat at £64.95 is the pick. The £87 dinner cruise buys an occasion rather than a bargain.
The river changes character after sunset and it is not only the lights. Traffic thins, the water goes flat and black, and the bridges become the show: Tower Bridge floodlit from below, the Millennium Bridge a thin blue line, colour thrown onto the water from the South Bank. Almost every evening boat covers the same stretch, so the real choice is how long you want to be aboard and whether you want dinner.
| Evening option | Length | From | Rating (reviews) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evening bubbly and canapés | 2 hours | £35 | 4.4 (2,787) | The lit river on a budget |
| Sunset speedboat | 50 minutes | £64.95 | 5.0 (249) | Adults-only golden hour |
| Dinner cruise | 3 hours | £87 | 4.3 (2,447) | An anniversary or a birthday |
| Elvis tribute dinner cruise | 3 hours | £91 | 4.7 (48) | A novelty night, on a thin review base |
| Jazz dinner cruise | 3 hours | £109 | 4.0 (241) | Live music, at the highest price on the river |
| Private speedboat charter | 70 minutes | Per boat | 5.0 (119) | A group with its own departure |
The bubbly sailing leaves from Tower Millennium Pier, which puts Tower Bridge in front of you before the engines have turned over, and at 4.4 across 2,787 reviews it is the most-reviewed evening product that is not a full dinner. Two hours is also the right length for a night that starts somewhere else and ends somewhere else. The longer sittings and the menus are compared in the after-dark cruise guide, and groups who want the boat to themselves should look at the private hire options first.
Common questions
What is the most popular boat trip in London?
The Westminster to Greenwich sightseeing cruise, with 25,220 reviews at 4.5 stars. That is more than every other listed Thames sailing put together, which makes it both the most-booked trip and the one whose rating carries the most evidence. It runs one hour one-way from £17.20 and finishes beside the Cutty Sark.Is the London Eye river cruise better than a longer Thames cruise?
It is shorter, cheaper and better rated, at 40 minutes, £15.50 and 4.8 stars, but it covers the central stretch only and returns you to where you started. The Greenwich run costs £17.20, takes an hour, and adds everything downstream of Tower Bridge. If you have already been on the wheel itself, the longer route is the one that shows you new ground.Are the speedboats worth the extra money?
For the ride, yes, and the ratings back it up: the fast boats hold the top of the rating table on this river. For sightseeing, no. You pay £64 to £113 an hour on a speedboat against £14 to £23 on a sightseeing cruise, and roughly half the fast run is spent at ordinary pace through the central bridge zone before the throttle opens east of Tower Bridge.Can you do a boat trip in London for under £15?
Yes. A central-zone river bus single is £11.70 bought online or in the app, and the cheapest tour boat is the £14 hour-long circular from Westminster. Neither includes food and the river bus has no commentary, but both put you on the water for less than the price of two pints in a South Bank pub.Which London boat trip is best with children?
Either a speedboat or a sightseeing sailing, depending on the child. The short 20-minute fast blast at £37.74 suits a short attention span, though the RIB fleet publishes a minimum weight of around 15 kg. The sightseeing boats have heated indoor seating and free travel for infants, and cost far less per head for a family of four.There is no single best boat trip in London, only a best one for the reason you are getting on the water. Best rated is the speedboat. Most booked is the Greenwich run. Best value is the river bus. Best evening is the two-hour sailing with a glass in your hand. Every one of them is compared side by side on Thames River Cruises, with the live figures attached.