Moving to London is exciting. It is also expensive, slightly chaotic and full of things nobody thinks to tell you beforehand.
You’ll probably know roughly how much rent you can afford. You might know which Tube line you want to live near. But do you know that you can link some Railcards to an Oyster card and get cheaper off-peak travel? Or that the flat you love might ask you for a guarantor before you can move in?
Then there are the things you only learn after living here for a while. The cheapest supermarket might be a ten-minute walk away. The bus can be better than the Tube. And a flat that looks close to work on a map can somehow involve three trains and 45 minutes of your life every morning.
So, before you move, here are a few things worth knowing.
Check the journey, not the distance
Three miles in London can mean almost anything. A flat can look really close to your office on a map and still be a nightmare to get to. Another might be much further away but sit on a direct Tube or train line.
Always put the actual journey into Citymapper or Google Maps before booking a viewing. Better still, check it for the time you’ll normally be travelling.
And don’t only check how you’ll get to work. Where do your friends live? Where are you likely to go out? Can you get home late at night? Is the station actually a five-minute walk away, or is that five minutes according to an estate agent with an unusually fast walking pace?
London gets much easier when you live somewhere that works for your actual life.
Have more money put aside for moving than you think you’ll need
Rent is only the start. The average private rent in London was £2,332 a month in August 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics. Of course, that varies hugely depending on where you live and whether you’re renting a room or a whole property.
But whatever you’re renting, there are upfront costs to think about too.
You’ll usually need your first month’s rent and a deposit. In England, the tenancy deposit is normally capped at five weeks’ rent where the annual rent is below £50,000.
Then you’ve got the move itself. You might need a van or removals company. You may have to buy bedding, pans, a drying rack, cleaning products and approximately 25 other boring things you didn’t realise you needed until you didn’t have them.
If you can, keep some money aside for the first few weeks rather than spending your entire moving budget on getting the keys.
Find out if you’ll need a guarantor before you find the perfect flat
A guarantor is basically someone who agrees to pay your rent if you don’t.
Not everyone will need one. But you might be asked for a guarantor if you don’t meet the landlord or letting agent’s income requirements, you’re a student or you don’t have much UK financial history.
This is worth sorting early.
London rentals can move quickly, and finding a flat you love isn’t the best moment to discover that you need paperwork from somebody else before your application can go ahead.
If you don’t have someone who can act as your guarantor, there are other options. Services such as Rentmigo can act as a professional guarantor for renters who need one.
Even if you’re fairly sure you won’t need a guarantor, ask about the referencing requirements before handing over a holding deposit. It’s much easier to know where you stand from the beginning.
Don’t bring everything you own
If you’re moving from a bigger home, prepare yourself.
London flats can be small. Bedrooms can be even smaller. And if you’re moving into a furnished flat or house share, there may already be a surprising amount of stuff waiting for you.
Find out exactly what’s included before packing. If there’s already a bed, wardrobe, desk, sofa and dining table, you probably don’t need to pay someone to transport yours across the country just so you can spend moving day wondering where on earth to put it.
You also don’t have to get rid of everything you can’t fit.
If you’re only planning to rent somewhere for a year, you might want your furniture again when you move. The Box Co. collects boxes and larger items from your home and stores them until you want them back, which can be useful if your first London place doesn’t have much spare room.
For everything else, be ruthless before you move. Sell it, donate it or give it to someone who actually wants it. Moving things you don’t even like is a particularly annoying way to spend money.
Put your Railcard on your Oyster card
This is one of the best London tips to learn early. If you have an eligible Railcard, including a 16–25 or 26–30 Railcard, you can get a third off eligible off-peak pay-as-you-go Tube and DLR fares.
But you need to use an Oyster card. Get a registered Oyster card, take it and your Railcard to a participating station and ask a member of staff to add the discount.
Once it’s set up, use that Oyster card for your off-peak journeys to get the eligible discount. Don’t tap your normal bank card out of habit and expect it to know you have a Railcard. It doesn’t.
If you’re going to be travelling around London a lot outside rush hour, it’s well worth doing.
Get to know the buses
Everyone learns the Tube first. The buses take a little longer. Don’t ignore them.
Sometimes the Tube route between two places involves going down three escalators, changing lines and coming back up again when you could have sat on one bus for 20 minutes. Buses are also cheaper. A single adult bus or tram journey currently costs £1.75, and the Hopper fare lets you take other bus and tram journeys within an hour without paying another fare.
They also help you work out where everything actually is. Take the Tube everywhere and London can feel like lots of separate little places connected by tunnels. Get the bus and you suddenly realise that two areas you thought were miles apart are basically next to each other.
And yes, the front seat upstairs is the best one.
Find your cheap places to eat
You can spend an astonishing amount of money eating in London. You can also eat very well without spending that much. You just need to know where to look.
Don’t assume the places you see all over TikTok are your only options. Get to know the restaurants around where you live. Look for lunch menus and early evening deals. Try the little cafés and restaurants that don’t have queues outside them.
Apps such as Too Good To Go are handy too. Restaurants, cafés, bakeries and supermarkets use it to sell food that would otherwise be left at the end of the day for much less than its usual price.
London’s markets can be good for cheaper food too, although the famous ones aren’t always the bargains people expect.
Most importantly, find a few reliable places near home. You need somewhere for the nights when you want dinner but don’t want dinner to become a £50 event.
Choose an area you actually want to live in
There isn’t one “best” place to live in London.
There are areas that work for different people. Maybe you want pubs, restaurants and people around all the time. Maybe you’d rather have a bigger bedroom and a park nearby. Maybe you don’t care about either of those things and just want one train to work.
Before agreeing to a flat, spend some time in the area.
Walk around. Find the supermarket. Check how far the station really is. See what’s open at night. Work out whether there is somewhere you’d actually want to get coffee on Saturday morning.
It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to get distracted by a lovely flat and forget that you’re also choosing the place you’ll be coming home to every day.
Stick to the same card when you travel
You don’t need to buy a travelcard every time you want to get around London.
With pay as you go, TfL has daily and weekly caps on eligible journeys. Once you reach the relevant cap, you won’t keep paying the normal fare for every journey you make within it.
There’s one small thing that catches people out: use the same payment method.
If you tap in with your phone in the morning and use your physical bank card later, TfL can treat those as two different cards, even if they’re linked to the same bank account. Pick one and stick to it.
And remember to tap out on trains and the Tube. We’ve all forgotten. Your bank balance would prefer you didn’t.
You don’t have to spend loads of money to enjoy London
Some of the best things to do in London cost nothing. The Natural History Museum, British Museum, National Gallery, Tate Modern and plenty of other major museums and galleries have free permanent collections.
There are parks everywhere. You can walk along the Thames for miles. There are free events, markets and exhibitions throughout the year.
Theatre doesn’t always have to mean £100 tickets either. Look for rush tickets, lotteries and last-minute offers if there’s something you want to see. You don’t need to do everything in your first month, though.
One of the nice things about actually living in London is that you don’t have to squeeze the whole city into a weekend.
Give yourself time to get used to it
Your first few weeks in London might not look like the version you imagined.
You might get on the wrong train. You will almost certainly come out of the wrong station exit. You’ll spend too much on something you later discover was much cheaper somewhere else.
That’s normal. After a while, the city starts getting smaller. You find your favourite pub. You know which supermarket to use. You stop checking your phone every time you leave the house. You even develop opinions about Tube lines that nobody asked for.
And eventually a friend visiting London will ask you how to get somewhere.
You’ll tell them exactly which line to take, which carriage to sit in and which exit to use when they arrive. At that point, you’re probably doing alright.