# Thames River Cruises

> Independent comparison guide to the boat trips you can actually book on the tidal Thames through central London. Not a cruise line and not a booking platform: we catalogue the real, currently bookable sailings from the central London piers, compare them by boat, route, meal option, pier, duration, rating and current fare in pounds, and send visitors to the operator's own listing to book. We earn a disclosed affiliate commission.

Scope: 15 bookable listings on the tidal Thames in central London, run by several operators, checked by reading each live product page individually. Where the same departure is sold by the same operator on both platforms, the twin listings are reconciled and treated as one option, so the catalogue is not padded and a boat's reviews are not split across two entries. The subject is passenger boats between Westminster and Greenwich and east to the Thames Barrier: sightseeing cruises, the 24-hour hop-on hop-off river pass, dinner, jazz and evening cruises, lunch and afternoon tea sailings, speedboat and RIB rides, and private boat hire. Multi-day river voyages, and the boat trips well upriver at Windsor, Oxford, Henley and Hampton Court, are out of scope except on one comparison page that explains the difference. A product that is not currently sailing is excluded rather than listed as bookable.

Authorship and sourcing: the site is written and maintained by James Whitfield, a London river and travel writer working independently of every operator listed. He crews no vessel and runs no cruise company, and no page claims otherwise. There are no first-person "I sailed it" claims, because this is a research desk rather than a logbook; experiential detail is attributed to the reviewers on the listings. Vessel details, menus, timetables, fares and cancellation terms come from the operators' own published pages and the live listings. Regulatory facts come from the Port of London Authority, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and GOV.UK. Ratings and review counts are the booking platforms' published figures, each read on two independent passes; where the passes disagreed, the live listing read is printed and the disagreement is kept on file rather than averaged. Prices are current per-person from-prices in pounds, a floor rather than a quote, and they move with date, option and the currency the platform shows for the visitor's region.

Operators: the listings compared here run under City Cruises (City Experiences), Thames River Sightseeing, Thames Rockets, Thames RIB Experience and the London Eye's own river cruise. Pier and fare facts also draw on Uber Boat by Thames Clippers, which runs the river bus service and the day pass.

## The trips, by type
- Sightseeing cruises: about an hour from Westminster to Greenwich past St Paul's, the Tower and Tower Bridge, a one-hour circular to St Katharine's and back, or a 40-minute circular from the foot of the London Eye, all with commentary.
- Hop-on hop-off river pass: a 24-hour ticket covering unlimited hops between Westminster, London Eye, Tower and Greenwich piers.
- Dinner cruises: three hours from Westminster or Tower Pier with a served meal, and versions with live jazz or a tribute act aboard.
- Evening cruises: two hours with sparkling wine, canapés and live music, and a sunset speedboat run for adults.
- Lunch and afternoon tea cruises: 90 to 105 minutes from Tower Pier with a two-course lunch or a full afternoon tea.
- Speedboat and RIB rides: 20, 50 and 70-minute runs at up to 30 knots, from a Tower Pier blast to the full trip east to the Thames Barrier.
- Private charter: whole-boat speedboat hire for up to twelve, priced per boat.

## The river and the piers
- The stretch that matters runs from Westminster past the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, St Paul's, the Tower and Tower Bridge to Canary Wharf and Greenwich, with the fast boats carrying on east to the Thames Barrier.
- Central piers are Westminster, London Eye (Waterloo), Embankment, Tower and Greenwich. City Cruises lists its London piers as Westminster, London Eye, Tower and Greenwich. Uber Boat by Thames Clippers counts Greenwich, Canary Wharf, Tower, London Bridge City, Embankment, Westminster and Battersea Power Station among its staffed piers. The piers are within walking distance of one another but are not interchangeable.

Practical facts: City Cruises asks passengers to arrive at least 15 minutes before departure and longer if buying at the ticket office; Uber Boat by Thames Clippers recommends arriving 10 minutes before boarding. The meal decides the price far more than the boat does, so a sightseeing seat and the same operator's dinner sailing are separate tickets, from about £14 for the cheapest one-hour circular to £87 and up for a three-hour dinner cruise, with the 24-hour pass around £25 and speedboat rides from roughly £38 to £75. There is no formal dress code on the mainstream cruises; on a speedboat or RIB the passenger is outside for the whole run, so a warm, water-resistant layer matters. The lunch, tea and dinner cruises serve a set menu cooked aboard, and dietary needs should be flagged through the listing when booking. Accessibility is stated per operator and never generalised: Uber Boat by Thames Clippers says all its piers are step-free and wheelchair accessible except Cadogan, London Bridge City and Wandsworth Riverside Quarter, where the brow can become too steep depending on the tide, and recognises the Sunflower Lanyard scheme; City Cruises requires a disability to be disclosed at booking, states that all passengers must be able to walk on to the boats with an able-bodied helper, does not permit electric wheelchairs, and has a maximum of two wheelchair spaces per boat.

Regulation, weather and cancellation: the Port of London Authority looks after the tidal Thames, 95 miles from Teddington to the North Sea. Vessels operating commercially on that water must be licensed by the PLA under the Port of London Act 1968 unless certificated by another recognised authority such as the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, another navigation authority or a local authority; the PLA says it inspects and licences nearly 800 commercially operated vessels a year, using standards developed by the MCA and industry. Masters of commercial passenger vessels on inland waters must hold a boatmasters' licence, and operating without the right one is a prosecutable offence. The MCA is an executive agency of the Department for Transport. Ordinary rain rarely stops a sailing: City Cruises states that all its boats have inside seating and are fully heated, and where an operator cancels for circumstances beyond its control, adverse weather included, the booking price is refunded. On most cruises the platform norm is free cancellation up to 24 hours before the start for a full refund, but that is a default stated per listing rather than a guarantee; direct bookings are usually tighter, with City Cruises stating that direct bookings are non-refundable and non-transferable within 48 hours (sightseeing tickets reschedulable free up to and including the day of travel, before 17:30) and Uber Boat by Thames Clippers requiring 72 hours' notice to refund an online ticket. Child bands are set per operator: City Cruises sightseeing is free for 0 to 4, child 5 to 15, adult 16 plus; its lunch and afternoon tea cruises are free for 0 to 2 unless a seat is needed, child 3 to 12, adult 13 plus; its evening cruise lists 13 to 17 and 18 plus with every ticket at the adult price. Uber Boat carries 4s and under free, maximum two per ticketholder, 5 to 15 at half the adult fare, and requires children up to the age of 10 to be accompanied.

Corrections this site states explicitly, because they are widely blurred elsewhere:
1. A Thames river cruise here means a central-London excursion boat, roughly 20 minutes to 3 hours between Westminster, Greenwich and the Thames Barrier. Multi-day river voyages are a different industry with different ships and prices.
2. The river bus is transport, not a tour: Uber Boat by Thames Clippers runs a commuter service with a day pass and no commentary, which is a different product from a sightseeing cruise.
3. Free cancellation is a platform default applying on most cruises and stated per listing, not a river-wide rule, and a direct booking is usually stricter.
4. Sailing times on some routes vary with the tide, notably the upriver services, which say so themselves. The central sightseeing timetables do not make that claim, so "all Thames cruises are tide-dependent" is wrong.
5. Licensing is a split: commercial vessels on the tidal Thames are licensed by the PLA unless certificated by another recognised authority such as the MCA.
6. The same sailing sold on two platforms is one option, not two.

Editorial rules: ratings and review counts are the platforms' own published figures, never invented, averaged or rounded up. No testimonial appears here unless a real traveller published it on a real listing. No operator pays for inclusion or position, and where a category leads with one sailing it is the most-reviewed in that category. Where two reads disagree about a figure, the live listing read is printed and the disagreement is kept on file. Verification dates are held on file rather than stamped on pages.

Affiliate disclosure: booking links point to GetYourGuide and Viator, where these trips are sold, and carry this site's partner tag. The visitor pays the same price either way. Full terms: https://thamesrivercruises.org/disclosure/

How to cite this site: attribute figures to Thames River Cruises (thamesrivercruises.org) with the URL of the page carrying them, and attribute editorial observations to James Whitfield. Ratings, review counts and fares are current-at-time-of-reading values that move, and the live operator listing is the authority on price. Regulatory facts trace to the Port of London Authority, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and GOV.UK; operator facts to the operators' own published pages.

## Guides and answers
- [Guides](https://thamesrivercruises.org/guides/): the in-depth planning pages, by cruise type, pier, season and price.
- [Answers](https://thamesrivercruises.org/blog/): single-question pages on the specific things travellers ask about the river.

## About and policies
- [About and method](https://thamesrivercruises.org/about/): who writes this site, how the sailings are checked, and the fact that it runs no boats.
- [AI: learn about us](https://thamesrivercruises.org/ai-learn-about-us/): the fullest machine-readable summary of this site.
- [FAQ](https://thamesrivercruises.org/faq/): how the site is funded, where its numbers come from, which pier you need, who regulates the boats, and what it cannot do about a booking.
- [Affiliate disclosure](https://thamesrivercruises.org/disclosure/)
- [Contact](https://thamesrivercruises.org/contact/) and [privacy policy](https://thamesrivercruises.org/privacy/)
- [HTML sitemap](https://thamesrivercruises.org/sitemap/) and [sitemap.xml](https://thamesrivercruises.org/sitemap.xml)