Private Chauffeur or Chauffeur Company: Which Is Better in London?

Journey times are typical, not guaranteed. We plan departure times around live traffic on the day.

What's the real difference between a private chauffeur and a chauffeur company?

A private chauffeur is one person in one car who takes every booking themselves, while a chauffeur company is an office that allocates whichever driver and vehicle happen to be free on the day. With a private chauffeur you deal with the same individual from your first message to the moment you're dropped off.

A chauffeur company works like a dispatcher. You contact an office, the booking goes into a system, and on the day a car and driver are assigned from a pool — which driver and which car can change between bookings, and can change again at short notice if someone calls in sick or another job overruns. That's a reasonable model when several cars need to move at once, but it means the person who answers your enquiry is rarely the person who turns up to drive you.

Crest Chauffeurs London works the other way round. There is one driver and one car — a black electric Mercedes-Benz EQE that seats up to three passengers — both DBS-checked and operating under a TfL-licensed operator partner. Every booking comes through WhatsApp, every journey is confirmed in writing before you travel, and the person who quotes your price is the person who drives the car. There's no substitute driver to be handed to and no second vehicle swapped in if plans change on the day.

The practical effect is continuity. Your chauffeur remembers the pickup instructions from last time, knows which terminal exit you prefer, and doesn't need any of it re-explained to a stranger on the morning of the journey.

How do the prices actually compare?

Crest's prices are fixed and agreed before you travel, from £45 for a point-to-point journey up to £150 for Gatwick or Stansted, with no meter running and no waiting charge. A chauffeur company's price can shift with which car from the pool gets dispatched, since larger or newer vehicles are often billed at a higher rate.

• Heathrow: £80 within about 12 miles of a non-central pickup, £115 otherwise
• London City: £65 or £90 depending on distance
• Gatwick: £150
• Stansted: £150
• Luton: £140
• Point-to-point journeys: from £45
• Hourly hire: £55 an hour, three-hour minimum
• Half day: £250
• Full day: £400
• Night journeys, 23:00 to 06:00: add 20%

The Heathrow split shows how the fixed-price model actually works: it isn't one flat rate regardless of distance, it's two flat rates either side of a roughly 12-mile line. £80 covers the shorter, non-central pickups; £115 covers everything beyond that. Either way, the number is set before the car moves, so traffic adding minutes to the route doesn't add pounds to the fare — and airport pickups come with 60 minutes' free waiting built in, so a delayed bag or a slow queue at passport control isn't a waiting charge either.

If you need a car for the day, see day hire and day trips.

What about payment — is a deposit taken or a card held on file?

No. No deposit is taken and no card is held on file for any booking. Payment happens at the end of the journey, using a card machine carried in the car that accepts Visa, Mastercard and American Express by contactless, chip and PIN, Apple Pay or Google Pay.

This matters more than it sounds. A chauffeur company that takes a deposit or pre-authorises a card is committing you to a payment before the journey has actually happened, and you're often dealing with a different name on the statement to the person who drove you. With Crest, nothing is charged until the journey is complete, and the only payment detail involved is the one you tap, insert or hold up at the end.

One practical point worth knowing before you travel: UK contactless payments cap at £100. That's comfortably above a £45 point-to-point fare or an £80 Heathrow run, but a £140 Luton transfer, a £150 Gatwick or Stansted fare, or a £250 half day will need chip and PIN or a phone payment (Apple Pay or Google Pay) instead of a simple tap. It's a small thing, but worth knowing before you reach for a card at the end of a long journey.

Which is better for Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted and London City?

All five airports are covered at a fixed price with flight tracking and 60 minutes' free waiting included, whichever you land at. The difference between a private chauffeur and a company shows up less in the airport itself and more in how reliably the car finds you once you're through arrivals.

Flight tracking means your pickup time adjusts automatically if your flight is early or delayed, rather than you having to call ahead to warn a dispatcher. At Heathrow Terminal 5, for example, a driver can't come inside the terminal, so pickup happens outside the arrivals exit — and because that's true for every driver working the airport, there's a landmark everyone uses to find each other rather than a gate number.

Journey times into London vary by day rather than by airport. Weekday mornings are heavy on the roads into London; weekday evenings are heavy heading back out towards Heathrow as the working day ends. A run from Heathrow Terminal 5 to the South Bank, for instance, is unpredictable on a weekday afternoon and straightforward at the weekend, when traffic into central London is comparatively clear on both Saturday and Sunday. A fixed price covers all of that variation — what changes with the day of the week is how long the 60 minutes' waiting might actually get used, not what you pay.

Can one chauffeur handle landmarks and stadium events as well as a company fleet?

Yes, for the same reason a single car is often easier than several: there's only one vehicle to keep track of and one person making the judgement call on the ground. The constraint is parking, not capability, and it's solved the same way at every tricky landmark.

Big Ben and Trafalgar Square have nowhere for a car to wait. The method that actually works is to stop, let passengers out, then drive on and circle nearby rather than park — staying within about five minutes of the group and coming back when they text to say they're ready. Passengers get the photo stop without the car ever sitting illegally parked.

Covent Garden works differently again: the usable drop-off and collection point is Covent Garden Underground station, with passengers walking the short distance to the piazza, and Trafalgar Square station as a fallback collection point if the streets around the piazza are busy.

Stadium matchdays are the clearest case for a single driver on WhatsApp rather than a phone-based dispatch. Dropping off is rarely difficult if the car arrives early. Picking up is harder, and the cause isn't the road closures — it's that when around 60,000 people leave at once and all reach for their phones, the mobile network slows to a crawl. A phone call is likely to fail at exactly the moment you need it; WhatsApp's live location lets driver and passenger steer each other to a meeting point instead.

More guides: Chauffeur for Elderly Parents in London | Crest Chauffeurs · London Sightseeing Chauffeur | Crest Chauffeurs London · Private Driver vs Hop-On-Hop-Off Bus in London

What do you only find out by doing this journey?

Where to actually meet at Heathrow Terminal 5. Drivers can't go inside the terminal building, so pickup happens outside the arrivals exit. The Pret a Manger just outside is the landmark every driver uses, which is why 'meet me by the Pret outside arrivals' is the instruction that works, not a gate number.

When is this the wrong choice?

You need four or more passengers in one car. The Mercedes-Benz EQE seats three; a larger group needs a second vehicle, which a single-driver service can't provide at the same time.

• You need several cars moving at once. One driver can only be in one car on one journey — simultaneous pickups for a group splitting up aren't possible here.
• You need a car within the hour and the driver is already on a job. There's no dispatcher to pass your booking to another driver, so a booking already underway means a genuine no, not a short delay.

Airports and services