3.31/5
3,613 reviews
Photo by Lucas Davies via Unsplash

Cost of Living in London

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expensive

food

bad

cafes

hard

work

difficult

understand

safe

cost

weather

restaurants

great

nomad

day

rent

cold

mediocre

crowded

Living in London offers access to a dynamic and diverse environment, with strong networks in industries like finance, tech, media, and fashion. The food scene is notable, ranging from high-end Michelin star restaurants to international markets and pubs. The city stands out for its rich cultural experiences, historic architecture, and urban skylines. London can be a great fit for professionals who secure high-paying jobs, especially in in-demand sectors like software development.

However, many residents report serious downsides. The cost of living is extraordinarily high, particularly in terms of rent and eating out. The city is crowded, often difficult to navigate, and lacks a strong outdoor lifestyle or nearby natural escapes. Weather conditions tend to be gloomy and damp, which affects the day-to-day quality of life. Public safety is questioned by long-term residents who have experienced or witnessed frequent thefts and antisocial behavior. Social warmth also appears lacking; some find the overall atmosphere cold or even isolating.

In summary, London offers global-level career and cultural opportunities but requires a high income and tolerance for cost, weather, and inner-city challenges. It may work best for short-term pursuits or high earners, but it’s a tough city to enjoy on a limited budget or without preparation for its drawbacks.

AI-generated summary of reviews
15 days ago

I don't understand why London has so high safety rating. Your phone could be stolen and your bicycle WILL be stolen here (or a part of it). I live here 8.5 years and I experienced the above multiple times. Police seems only cares about crime against person by whatever reason. Insure everything expensive that you own. I would also add that antisocial behaviour is quite common here and teenagers are heavily involved in crimes as police don't do anything with them because of their age. Basically there were months that my area was patrolled by gangs on bikes trying to snatch the phone (luckily they are less noticeable in the last period). The video of cutting the bike chain in front of the shopping centre in day light got viral and even the criminal was without a mask. I could continue a list of very worrying crime that is happening in quite nice and popular by family with kids area of zone 2. Yes, except your psychological condition you will likely be safe based on my experience.

2 years ago

I find it difficult to understand what people see in this city. The cost to benefit ratio is just so terribly bad! This is by far the most expensive city in Europe (especially in terms of rent), with hardly anything to offer in comparision with other cities like Barcelona, Lisbon or Warsaw. The weather is just average, with cold and windy winters and mediocre summers. It's difficult to come by restaurants that offer anything other than Indian fast food for a decent price - most places are just unoriginal, overly expensive sushi / sandwich selling 'restaurant' chains. Most cafes have extremely limited seating spaces. The city is crowded, difficult to navigate on foot, mediocre for cycling (again, the weather!). The outdoor culture is limited to being on the way to work or Saturday night alcohol intoxication. There is no beach, there are no mountains around, not to mention the current post-Brexit atmosphere with spanish tomatos advertised as "British" in local supermatkets.

2 years ago

How did you guys classified Penge as rich? It is one of the worst neighbourhood I have ever been in London, the ammount of people I know that have been robbed there is appalling.

4 years ago

London is a SO beautiful city. The historical center is cute, but also majestic and luxurious. You feel the culture at every step. British people are really kind and welcoming! Plus, more than just one, you can enjoy TWO skylines 😍 so many skyscrapers, nothing beats its collection in Europe.

5 years ago

London is the best city in the world - you just can't do it on a budget. It's got an amazing tech scene but ALSO world class media, fashion, finance, art industries and many others. If you don't want to live in a tech / expat mono-culture then it's for you. It is a genuine melting pot with a huge range of nationalities and cultures living together (the US has a large number of nationalities but there seems to be hard segregations between them geographically, economically, culturally - so they don't mix). The downside is definitely the cost - If you want to live in London you might want to consider getting a London job - so that your income will match the expenses - there's loads of demand for developers (along with most other job types). I also want to address the strange stereotype perpetuated by Americans that the food is bad - which is laughable having toured North America extensively and found the food to be dire. London has more Michelin star restaurants than nearly anywhere. The food markets are amazing as are the cafes, restaurants and pubs. Again you'll need to pay what everyone else pays to get good food so don't expect to do this on a shoestring.

5 years ago

I've been living in London for most of my life. I still do not understand the hype for this city. It's wildly expensive, unfriendly, polluted and with the worst weather I've ever seen. It's not only cold - the sky is constantly plain white, it's always just cold enough to make you uncomfortable, and it's humid. It's like stepping on a piece of paper, zero personality. If you've never felt depressed before and want to know what that's like, come to London, you'll be googling therapists within a few days. Should I continue? The skyline is ugly, the river is murky brown, it's too crowded to move, and people don't care about you. What are these £600 apartments people are talking about? Lol - try over £1500 for anything that's better than a cardboard box in a terrible area. I guess you can visit for a few days to tick it off your bucket list, but I'd reconsider any plans to live here longer term. My only benefit of having lived in London is that any place is better and cheaper in comparison.

5 years ago

I have been living in London for over 2 years as a student. It's ridiculously expensive. However, there are options. What I like about the city is you can find many events anytime you want. It's active all year 24/7. There are so many foreigners and tourists which make the living more vibrant and less racist. London has sub-communities which I think is a good thing. Those communities bring their cultures, ethics and foods. Public transportation and restaurants are great. I used to spend 3-4 hours in Costa or Nero cafe without interruptions. Though if it's raining or summer season it could be hard to stay long. On the negative side, the UK suffers from slow and old bureaucracies making life difficult sometimes. It's not easy to open a bank account or to rent. The government systems are slow. Also, you will feel depressed in winter when the sunset is before 4pm and the temperature is 0c. All in all, everything is great about the city except the affordability and the winter.

6 years ago

Although London isn't an ideal 'digital nomad' city due to the cost, it is very much made for working, networking and having a great time while you do it. Rent is silly expensive, but you can find a room in a shared house for around £500-600 per month. One review on here complains about bad food, unsafe and bad banking - sounds like they had a bad time to be honest. I disagree strongly with all those negatives. Food is awesome, with lots of incredible places to eat and reasonable (ish) prices. Head to Brixton, Brick Lane, Hackney/Dalston, Tooting etc for top quality food. For your banking, you'll find Revolut, Monzo, Starling etc all allow you to get set up in a few days. Oh and safety.... I've lived here for 7 years (on and off) and been drunk in 'dodgy' parts of town and can say London is one of the safest cities anywhere. Can't say the same for Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona etc.

6 years ago

I do not recommend London for nomads. It's very hard to find places to work in London. Cafes don't like people with laptops, there won't be any power outlets and you'll get funny stares from staff. That's because London is expensive, and it's a loss for cafes to have you. Flexible coworking is hard to come by and day passes are very expensive. That makes it practically impossible to work properly in London as a nomad.

6 years ago

Expensive and crowded. Low quality of services. Customer service is a joke. Great internet connectivity. Mediocre food, unless you like Indian, which is everywhere. Crappy weather. Not safe at night (depends on the area of course). I lived in Docklands, didn't feel safe outside of my apartment. Difficult to get anything done without proof of address, so make sure to get a place as soon as possible. Opening a business account in a "traditional" bank can take weeks. Banking is very backward - unless you enjoy browsing PDF statements... I honestly don't understand why London is so popular. I was deeply disappointed and left after a few months. The only real upside is the job market, but as a nomad, you can provide services to London-based businesses from somewhere else.

7 years ago

London is an amazing city but it's eye-wateringly expensive, don't expect to save money...
Expect to be paying a minimum of £600/month for a bedroom in a shared house (and for this price you'll be in zone 2/3). Look on spareroom for houseshares and openrent for flats.
Download the app Citymapper to help you get around it's a godsend - London is a massive city and it can take ages to get from one place to the next. There's tonnes of cafes, workspaces and public spaces to work in (Google campus, Barbican, Southbank centre etc). World class food, world class culture, people from all over the world! Liberal city, mostly safe... Bad air quality though.
Don't come here thinking you can do it cheap as you will end up in a 10 person houseshare with a dodgy landlord and be stuck in some crap area of town. It's a hard, ruthless and expensive city to break into, plus we have a population of over 8.6MILLION so competition is tough. There's start-ups on every corner so plenty of people in similar situations.
Just factor in the cost and be willing to stay for a while (so you can properly embrace the city) and you'll have a blast.

7 years ago

London is a pretty bad place for nomads. It's very hard to find places to work in London. Cafes don't like people with laptops, there won't be any power outlets and you'll get funny stares from staff. That's because London is expensive, and it's a loss for cafes to have you. Flexible coworking is hard to come by and day passes are very expensive. That makes it practically impossible to work properly in London as a nomad. It's a city where lots of people are scraping by cooped up into tiny shared housing with skyhigh rents, lots of superficial tourists and a few rich people.

7 years ago

✅ Culturally diverse

✅ Thriving job market

✅ Excellent dining scene

✅ Very safe

✅ Fast internet

✅ Lots of fun stuff to do

✅ Warm now

✅ Perfect humidity now

✅ Good air quality on average

✅ Many Nomads.com members here all year round

✅ Very easy to do business

✅ High quality of education

✅ Great hospitals

✅ Roads are very safe

✅ Great freedom of speech

✅ Democratic

✅ Everyone speaks English

✅ Very safe for women

✅ Very family friendly

✅ Very friendly to LGBTQ+

✅ Not many people smoke tobacco

❌ Very expensive

❌ Unfriendly atmosphere

❌ Poor weather

❌ High crime rates

❌ Crowded

❌ Extremely expensive

❌ Gets cold in the winter

❌ Nomads.com members didn't like going here

❌ Feels crowded

❌ Very difficult to make friends

❌ High alcohol consumption

❌ Marijuana is illegal

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Feels (median)

5°C / 41°F cold

6°C / 43°F cold

9°C / 48°F cold

11°C / 52°F cool

12°C / 54°F cool

19°C / 66°F mild

18°C / 64°F cool

20°C / 68°F mild

18°C / 64°F cool

14°C / 57°F cool

9°C / 48°F cold

4°C / 39°F cold

Real (median)

6°C / 43°F
very cold

8°C / 46°F
cold

10°C / 50°F
cold

11°C / 52°F
cool

13°C / 55°F
cool

18°C / 64°F
cool

17°C / 63°F
cool

19°C / 66°F
mild

18°C / 64°F
cool

14°C / 57°F
cool

10°C / 50°F
cold

6°C / 42°F
very cold

Humidity

damp
82%

damp
78%

damp
71%

nice
64%

damp
74%

nice
76%

damp
81%

nice
75%

nice
76%

damp
80%

damp
84%

Most common

☀️ Clear

☔️ Rain

☀️ Clear

☔️ Rain

☀️ Clear

☔️ Rain

☀️ Clear

Rain

rainy
59mm

dry
49mm

dry
32mm

dry
7mm

rainy
57mm

rainy
69mm

rainy
63mm

dry
38mm

dry
46mm

rainy
63mm

dry
6mm

rainy
67mm

Cloud

pockets
49%

cloudy
53%

pockets
45%

pockets
35%

pockets
49%

pockets
47%

cloudy
52%

pockets
46%

pockets
47%

pockets
44%

pockets
50%

Air quality

okay
60 US AQI

okay
66 US AQI

okay
59 US AQI

okay
62 US AQI

okay
56 US AQI

okay
55 US AQI

okay
56 US AQI

okay
61 US AQI

okay
55 US AQI

Remote workers

4,924 people

4,384 people

4,772 people

4,784 people

5,793 people

5,310 people

4,964 people

5,007 people

5,231 people

5,281 people

4,946 people

4,490 people

Green is good. Red is bad. Values shown are the medians of all daily highs in a month based on past few years, not necessarily current numbers. Remote worker count is estimated based on the total amount of trips logged by Nomads.com members.

If you'd like to filter destinations based on their climate, try Nomads.com's Climate Finder

Based on London's cost of living, here's selected remote jobs that would cover your costs:

	Senior DevOps Engineer @ Prompt
	Senior Security Engineer @ Loft Orbital Solutions
	Senior DevOps Engineer @ FetLife
	Senior Mobile iOS Engineer @ Yassir
	Member of Technical Staff Transpare... @ Anchorage Digital
	AI Driven Engineer Ruby @ CloudWalk
	Senior Security Engineer @ Immutable
	Partnerships Lead @ Espresso
	Lead Software Engineer II Backend @ Best Egg
	Application Engineer @ LaunchBrightly
	Full Stack Engineer @ ReadMe

Help pick the best photos for London and improve this page's look by tappingclicking on them and the site saves your feedback Vote photos

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✈️7h

$3,022 / mo

10 Mbps

Singapore

⭐️ OverallAll

💵 Cost 🧐 Very expensive

📡 InternetWiFi 🏎 Fast

👍 Liked mediocre

👮 Safety great

Tap to open

🌧 Feels 33° 91° 29° 84°

✈️14h

$4,163 / mo

85 Mbps

Sliema

Malta

⭐️ OverallAll

💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey

📡 InternetWiFi 🏎 Fast

👍 Liked good

👮 Safety good

Tap to open

🌦 Feels 24° 75° 24° 75° AQI 52 😷

✈️1h

$3,265 / mo

🌇 Also went here918 people

Portugal

⭐️ OverallAll

💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey

📡 InternetWiFi 🏎 Fast

👍 Liked very bad

👮 Safety good

Tap to open

☀️ Feels 32° 90° 30° 86° 🥵 AQI 27

✈️2h

$3,937 / mo

🌇 Also went here1,368 people

Istanbul

Turkey

⭐️ OverallAll

💵 Cost 🧐 Very expensive

📡 InternetWiFi 🏎 Fast

👍 Liked mediocre

👮 Safety great

Tap to open

🌧 Feels 33° 91° 29° 84°

✈️14h

$4,163 / mo

🌇 Also went here849 people

5,200 remote workers in London now, of which 24+ members checked in (some members are set to private)

Members who will be here soon

Members who have been here

Values shown are estimated visits by traveling remote workers based on the total amount of trips logged by Nomads.com members. Visits to a place are only counted once per year per user, even if they visit more in that year. Visits are also normalized by overall trips added per month on the site, so if site usage goes up or down it does not affect trends. Not all digital nomads are on Nomads.com, and not all Nomads.com members log their trips. So the data is only indicative.

The chart below shows visitors by nationality normalized for population size. This means we take all trips logged on Nomads.com, check which country of origin the user is from, then divide that total visit count by the country of origin's population. If we didn't, it'd just show the big countries like US, Brazil and India always on top. Instead, this shows which nationalities worldwide proportionally visit more or less, which is more useful.

⭐️ Total score	3.31/5 (Rank #13) 3613 reviews
❤️ Liked by members	👍22 liked it 👎6 disliked it
👍 Quality of life score	Good
👶 Family score	Good
🎒 Community score	Good
💵 Cost	😳 Extremely expensive: $6,024 / mo
📡 Internet	😡 Slow: 22 Mbps (avg)
😝 Fun	Great
⛅️ Temperature (now)	🌞 Perfect: 20°C68°F (feels 21°C70°F)
💦 Humidity (now)	😊 Comfy: 62%
❄️ % of buildings with AC	🥵 Very low: 3%
💨 Air quality (now)	🌱 Great: 25 US AQI
💨 Air quality (annual)	🌱 Good: 56 US AQI
👌 Safety	Great
👩 Safe for women	Good
🌈 Safe for LGBTQ+	Great
🤮 Food safety*	Great
👮‍♀️ Lack of crime*	Great
🤝 Lack of racism*	Great
🎓 Education level*	High
⚡️ Power grid	Great
🌊 Vulnerability to climate change	Good
💰 Income level*	Very high: $3,354 / mo
🙊 English speaking*	Great
😤 People density	🧘‍♀️ Low density: 6k ppl/km² (1 per 13x13m)
🚶 Walkability	Great
🚦 Traffic safety*	Okay
✈️ Airline scores*	Good
🧳 Lost luggage*	Good
🏥 Hospitals	Great
😄 Happiness*	Bad
🍸 Nightlife	Great
📶 Free WiFi in city	Bad
🖥 Places to work from	Great
❄️ A/C or heating	Good
😁 Friendly to foreigners	Good
🗯 Freedom of speech*	Good
🎅 Startup Score	Okay

🌍 Continent	Europe
🚩 Country	United Kingdom
🗓️ Average trip length	9 days
📡 Internet speed (avg)	22 Mbps
⛅️ Weather (now)	🌦 20°C 68°F + 😊 Comfy (62%) = feels 21°C 70°F
💨 Air quality (now)	👍 25 US AQI 🍃 OK
💨 Air quality (annual avg)	👎😷 56 US AQI
🔌 Power	230V 50Hz
🧔 Best neighborhood to stay	East Walworth
🚀 Upcoming neighborhood	Livesey
🚕 Best taxi app*	Uber
🚑 Travel medical insurance	Safetywing
🏧 Suggested ATM take out:	GBP 100 = USD 134
💸 Tipping	No
💳 Cashless	💳 Yes, cards OK almost everywhere
💻 Best coworking space	90 Main Yard
💻 Best alt. coworking space	Central Working
🚰 Tap water	👌 Yes, safe to drink
♻️ Return rate	👍15% of visitors return
📸 Visitors per year	19,842,800 visitors
📸 Tourists now	380,286 tourists
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Population	8,800,000 people
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 GDP per capita*	$40,249 / year
😤 Population density	🤨 busy: 13x13m (169m²) per person
👫 Gender ratio (population)	👨 48% 👱‍♀️ 52%
👫 Gender ratio (young adults)	👨 52% 👱‍♀️ 48%
👫 Gender ratio (nomads)	👨 77% 👱‍♀️ 23%
🏞 Foreign land ownership allowed	Yes
⛪️ Religious government	Non-religious
💻 Online electronics shop	Amazon
🏠 Apartment listings	SpareRoom
✈️ Best short-haul air carrier	RyanAir
✈️ Best int'l air carrier	British

💵 Cost of living for nomad	$6,024 / month
💵 Cost of living for expat	$4,529 / month
💵 Cost of living for family	$10,870 / month
💵 Cost of living for local	$3,106 / month
🏨 Hotel (median price)	$3,832 / month
🏡 Airbnb (median price)	$4,568 / month
🏠 1br studio rent in center	$2,866 / month
🏠 Median home price	$702,651
🏨 Hotel (median price)	$179 / night
🏠 Airbnb (median price)	$150 / night
🏢 Coworking hot desk	$268 / month
🍛 Dinner	$23
🥤 Coca-Cola (0.3L)	$1
🍺 Beer in cafe (0.5L)	$8
☕️ Coffee in cafe	$4
👩‍🏫 International school	$25,307 / year
📱 Mobile data (~10GB)	$16 / month
🚕 Taxi price (avg trip ~3km/2mi)	$8 / trip
💰 Estimated tax on $50,000	$6,986
💰 Estimated tax on $100,000	$24,341
💰 Estimated tax on $250,000	$91,526