Every number on this page is produced by the same engine that prices a real booking — not a range someone guessed for an article.
A London move starts at £115 — a small van and 1 mover for 2 hours — and £215 covers a three-bed house with a luton van and 3 movers over the same hours. The van itself runs £40 to £55 an hour depending on size, with each mover £17.50 an hour on top.
Worked out for a route of about 5 miles and 25 minutes' driving — an ordinary hop between neighbouring London boroughs — with level access at both ends. Your own route changes the hours, and the form works them out from your two addresses.
Almost every page answering this question gives you a range. A range is a comfortable thing to publish, because nobody can hold you to it: quote thirty to sixty an hour and you are never wrong and never useful. The figures below are a different kind of number. They are read out of the pricing configuration this company quotes from, and each one is returned by the same function that prices a job on our quote form. When the rate card changes in the office, this page changes with it.
That has a consequence worth stating plainly. Put the van, the crew and a route like the one described below into the quote form and you will see the same figure you see here. There is no marketing rate and no real rate, and nothing on this page is rounded to look better than it is.
London removals here are priced by time. The engine works out how long a job runs from three things: the loading time the van size allows, the same again for unloading, and the driving time between your two addresses. It rounds the total up to the nearest half hour and then applies the minimum booking for that van if the job comes in under it. The van has an hourly rate; each mover has an hourly rate of their own; those two lines are most of what you see.
Two things follow that tend to surprise people. The first is that on a short local run a bigger home costs more mainly because it needs a bigger van and more hands, not because the clock runs much longer — plenty of moves land on the minimum booking whatever the size of the home. The second is that distance reaches the total as time rather than as mileage. There is no cost-per-mile line anywhere in the engine, so a slow two miles across the middle of town can price like a brisk six on the North Circular, and an address with a difficult approach costs what the traffic costs, not what a tariff says it should.
The rest of the page is the detail: the rate card van by van, what a studio through to a three-bed comes to, and the things that genuinely move the number — floors without a lift, steps up to the door, how many movers you want carrying. Anything that is not on this page is not in the engine either.
The van and the crew are separate lines, which is why a rate card alone never answers the question. Both are shown here.
| Van | Van per hour | With one mover | Minimum | Extra 30 min |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small van | £40 | £57.50 | 2 hours | £20 |
| Medium van | £45 | £62.50 | 2 hours | £25 |
| Large van | £50 | £67.50 | 2 hours | £30 |
| Luton van | £55 | £72.50 | 2 hours | £35 |
Each mover is £17.50 an hour on top of the van, however many you book.
Same route, same level access at both ends, so the only thing changing between these is the van and the number of movers.
Booked for 4 hours instead: £230.
Booked for 4 hours instead: £320.
Booked for 4 hours instead: £340.
Booked for 4 hours instead: £430.
Worked out for a route of about 5 miles and 25 minutes' driving — an ordinary hop between neighbouring London boroughs — with level access at both ends. Your own route changes the hours, and the form works them out from your two addresses.
Six things move a London removal quote. Everything else you may have read about — season, day, postcode prestige — is not in the engine at all.
Steps up to a ground-floor entrance add £1 a step. A larger crew carries more, so a floor charge scales with it — two movers make it 1.5×. A lift takes the floor charge to nothing, however high the flat.
No. There is no day-of-week factor in the engine at all: the same van, the same crew and the same two addresses return the same figure on a Saturday in August as on a Tuesday in February. Nothing on this site is quietly marked up for a weekend, a bank holiday or the end of the month.
Guides that name a cheapest day are describing companies that price by hand, where a busy Saturday gets quoted higher because it can be. What a weekend genuinely changes here is availability, not the total — Saturdays in late June and September go first. Book early for the slot, not for a saving that does not exist.
£57.50 an hour for a small van with one mover: £40 for the van and £17.50 for the person carrying. The smallest booking is 2 hours. A short local job at that size comes to £115, and each hour beyond it adds £57.50.
Across the four van sizes on our rate card a typical local move lands between £115 and £215, for a route of a few miles with level access at both ends. There is no single average worth quoting, because the two things that decide it are yours to choose: which van, and how many movers. Both are on the form before you commit to anything.
Ours is £40 to £55 an hour for the van, by size, plus £17.50 an hour for each mover. National figures you see quoted elsewhere bundle those two lines together, which is why they read as a wide range: a small van with one person and a Luton with three are genuinely different jobs at genuinely different rates.
Two hours of van time comes to: small van £80; medium van £90; large van £100; luton van £110. Add £35 for each mover over the same two hours. Those are the numbers the quote form uses, not a starting point for a conversation.
A three-bed house on a local route is £215 for 2 hours with a luton van and 3 movers. Longer jobs scale from there at £107.50 an hour, so 4 hours on the same crew is £430.
£160 for 2 hours with a medium van and 2 movers, on a route of a few miles with level access. Each further hour is £80, so a 4 hours version of the same move is £320.
There is no cheapest day here. The rate card has no day-of-week factor in it, so a Saturday, a bank holiday and a wet Tuesday in February all return the same figure for the same van, crew and route. What a weekend does change is availability — late June and September Saturdays go first — so book early for the slot rather than for a discount that is not in the pricing.
No. Distance reaches the total as driving time rather than as a mileage rate, so there is no cost-per-mile line to look up. A slow couple of miles across the middle of London can work out like a quick six on the North Circular, and each extra hour on a medium van with 2 movers is £80 whichever it turns out to be.
Extra time is added in half-hour blocks at the rate you saw before confirming — £20 per half hour on a small van, more on the bigger ones. It is never renegotiated in the street, and the quote you were given for the time you booked does not move.
Yes — plans change. You can cancel free of charge up to 24 hours before your slot, and the booking form sets out exactly what, if anything, is due at the moment you confirm. Nothing is added to the figure you were quoted afterwards.
Put in your two addresses and the form does exactly what this page did, on your route rather than a typical one. Under a minute, no calls.
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