About Gatwick Routes
An independent guide to getting between Gatwick Airport and London, Brighton, Heathrow and Croydon. Every figure on it was looked up by hand from a public source and is shown with the date it was checked.
Updated
What this site is not
It is not Gatwick Express. Despite the web address, this site is not the train service of that name, not Govia Thameslink Railway, which runs it, and not connected to either. In the comparisons Gatwick Express is one option among several, judged on the same terms as Southern, Thameslink or a coach.
It is not the airport. It has no link to Gatwick Airport Ltd. For flight information, terminal services or lost property, go to the airport directly.
Tickets come from the operator. Train and coach tickets come from the operator, a station or a ticket retailer, on their terms, never through us.
It is not live travel information. The figures describe the normal timetable on the date shown. Engineering work, strikes and disruption change things, so check with the operator or National Rail on the day you travel.
Who runs it
Gatwick Routes is a small independent publisher based in the UK. We own gatwick.express, we write and maintain every page, and we read every message sent through the contact form. If something here is wrong, out of date or hard to follow, tell us: that is the quickest way to get it fixed.
Why it exists
Getting out of Gatwick looks simple until you try to plan it. Gatwick Express, Southern and Thameslink all run trains on the line into London, National Express coaches go by road, and taxis and pre-booked cars cover the rest. Each operator's website explains its own service and says little about the others, so a fair comparison means a tab for every operator and the small print on each.
I do that reading and set the results side by side, on one page per journey and direction. For each option the page gives the walk-up fare, the journey time, how often it runs and when the first and last departures are, then says which one I would take and why. Sometimes that is the cheapest option, sometimes the fastest, and sometimes a car, because a family of five with suitcases is not the same traveller as one person with a rucksack.
The site earns money one way: a commission from Kiwitaxi on private transfers booked in its box on this site, never on train tickets. How we make money is written out in full, including what the site will never do.
How I check the facts
- Every fare, journey time, frequency and first or last service is looked up one page at a time, never scraped, and stored with the address of that page and the date it was read. Most come from the operators, the airport, National Rail and Transport for London; taxi and private transfer prices come from the firms' own price pages.
- That date is printed next to the figure wherever it appears, as "Checked" followed by the day. Nothing on a route page is undated. The figures on the site today were checked between 27 Sep 2026 and 28 Sep 2026.
- An option stays labelled unconfirmed until I have checked it against the operator's own page. That covers anything taken from a secondary source, such as a rail retailer, a timetable site or an encyclopedia, and anything where two sources disagree. Each one sits on a checklist that I work through against the source. Right now 77 of the 77 options on the site carry that label.
- Fares are shown as a range of walk-up singles. Cheaper advance fares exist, but they change too often to print, so the page points you to the operator instead of quoting one.
- An automated check flags any figure that has not been re-read for more than 60 days, so it is looked at again rather than left to drift.
- Nothing is estimated. There are no punctuality scores and no live departure boards, because the site has no real data feed for either yet. When a figure is missing, the page leaves it out rather than guessing.
- Every sentence is written for this site. Facts are recorded from operator pages; their wording is not copied.
Get in touch
Corrections are the most useful thing you can send. If you can, include the page, the figure that looks wrong and where you saw the right one. Use the contact form; every message is read.