Don't overpay for Luton Airport parking. Compare prices from 8 leading sites plus independent operators in one search to find the best deal.

How to choose the cheapest Luton Airport Parking?

Used to just rocking up to the official Luton Airport parking on the day and paying as you enter? Perfectly understandable as you just want to relax and enjoy your holiday; however, by using Airport Parking Shop and a tiny bit of planning, you can save money and perhaps find an option better suited to you.

A comparison: Turning up at Terminal Car Park 1 is £75 for 1 day and £75 for each additional day. That is a whopping £525 for a week. Our lowest price last week was £32.55 for a 7-day stay.

Tempted? Then, whether it is the nearest car park or the cheapest, we give you the answers below in just five bite-sized chunks.

1 – Understand Your Parking Type Options (and what’s usually cheapest)

Quick Insights

Park & Ride is usually the cheapest (you park further away and take a bus), while Short Stay/Multi-Storey, right by the terminal, is the most expensive.

A Deeper Dive

(but don’t worry you will be back to the surface in no time)

The four main types of parking are Short Stay, Long Stay, Meet & Greet and Valet Parking:

• Short Stay (or Multi-Storey) — usually very near to the terminal and just a few minutes’ walk to departures.
• Long Stay (or Park & Ride) — these two names exist because Long Stay is more often used for official airport car park, while Park & Ride is used by third-party providers. What they have in common is that they usually require a shuttle bus or a longish walk of 10+ minutes.
• Meet & Greet — you leave your car and keys near the terminal; it’s parked for you in a secure compound.
• Valet Parking — like Meet & Greet but with the added bonus that a driver will meet you right by the terminal drop-off point, saving you the trouble of even having to park in a designated bay.

If you’re travelling with the family, you may find Meet & Greet is best suited to you; if you’re not carrying huge amounts of luggage then a cheaper off-airport Park & Ride may be the best option for you.

Luton Airport Carpark Specifics

A quickie: Luton Airport's official car parks are sold by the airport, so if you want to compare them with the third-party options below, head over to the Luton Airport website as well.

Walkable official parking:
Terminal Car Park 1 — official multi-storey close to the terminal.
Terminal Car Park 2 — another official multi-storey within walking distance.
Mid Stay — official, on-airport and around a 10-minute walk; keep your keys.

Meet & Greet:
Official — Luton Airport's own premium hand-over option is Priority Parking.
Third party — the options we currently compare include Vauxhall Way Meet and Greet, Maple Parking Meet and Greet, Airparks Luton Meet and Greet, Holiday Extras Perfect Meet and Greet and Purple Parking Meet and Greet. Most use Terminal Car Park 1 for the handover, followed by a short walk to departures.

Park & Ride:
Official — Long Stay is off-terminal with a free shuttle taking around 10 minutes and normally running around every 20 minutes, 24/7.
Third party — there are numerous choices, including Airparks, APH Luton, Vauxhall Way Self Park, Luton Premium Self Park, Holiday Extras Self Park and Auction House Park and Ride. Transfer times range from roughly 2 to 15 minutes; full details are in Section 4 below.
Drop & Go — several third-party Park & Ride providers let you leave the keys and have staff park the car for you. This saves finding a final bay yourself, although you still take the shuttle to the airport.

Which parking type is cheapest?

Expect to pay more for convenience. Short Stay/Multi-Storey is usually the most expensive since you’re closest to the terminal and you keep your keys. Meet & Greet can sometimes undercut walkable options on busy dates (operators park cars off-site), but you will have leave your keys and agree handover times. Park & Ride/Long Stay is typically the best value.

Using Airport Parking Shop

Tip: By default, Airport Parking Shop lists prices from low to high irrespective of the parking type, which you can see in the blue box. If you are sure what kind of parking type you want, simply hit the Filter Results option above the results and then select just what you want under Parking Options on the left.

2 – Plan to Book in Advance

Quick Insight

Start looking at least two weeks in advance.

(The Quick Dive-Down Part)

The most expensive way to park is to turn up on the day and pay as you enter. Not only will it cost more but they might not have spaces, leaving you with a lot more stress than having to remember to book! Turning up at Terminal Car Park 1 is £75 for 1 day and £75 for each additional day. That is a whopping £525 for a week. Our lowest price last week was £32.55 for a 7-day stay.

You can save substantially by booking in advance, with the amount you save depending on how far in advance you book: aim for at least two weeks ahead.

Luton Airport - Advance Pricing Comparison (Third Party only)

As you can see from the table above, the average price of one day’s Park & Ride parking fell from £41.20 to £21.48 when booked one month in advance, compared to one day ahead.

Tip: Prices go up due to availability (or lack of), so at busier times of the year, like school and national holidays, you may want to start looking at prices even earlier.

3 – Don’t Rely Just on Luton Official Car Parks

Quick Insight

Comparing like-for-like, third party car parks are generally cheaper; however, as we can’t sell Luton Airport's official ones, go to the Luton site to compare prices.

A Deeper Dive

(It is only snorkelling)

Luton, like most airports, has its own car parks — and, like most airports, it has third-party operators providing parking options. You may have read about rogue parking operators at airports and understandably that can be off-putting, but the reality is that lots of trusted, established providers run car parks all across the UK.

Luton official car parks — Terminal Car Park 1, Terminal Car Park 2, Mid Stay, Long Stay, plus Priority Parking (Drop & Go). The rest are third-party.

Why no third-party Short Stay? – By virtue of short stay needing to offer a short walk and therefore be near the terminal and on the airport grounds, it is usually the preserve of the official airport parking – with third-party operators focused on park & ride and meet & greet.

Is official or third-party the cheapest?

Comparing like-for-like (e.g., meet & greet vs meet & greet; park & ride vs park & ride), official is more often than not pricier.

For most airports, Airport Parking Shop lets you compare official and third-party side-by-side by parking type. Unfortunately, Luton Airport's official parking is not available through us, so you will have to go to the Luton Airport website to check it. We know going manual and checking multiple browser windows isn’t fun (that is why we created Airport Parking Shop), but you will have to go old school for this one. Anyway, do a search for your dates here – you can still rest assured you are getting third-party results from just about everyone – and then go to Luton Airport’s site to compare.

4 – Compare Parking Features to Find the Best Value

There is very likely to be more than one provider of your chosen parking option type – Meet & Greet etc. Therefore, once you’ve decided on a parking type, compare what the providers offer to get the right balance of price and convenience:

• Transfer time & frequency: walk or shuttle time and how often for the shuttle.
• Distance from terminal: check how many miles away your meet & greet is taking your vehicle.
• Keys: leave keys is often cheaper; keep keys is a convenience premium.
• Booking flexibility: fully flexible vs pay-now/non-refundable.
• Opening hours: 24/7 collection for late/early flights.
• Accessibility: step-free routes, Blue Badge bays.
• Security & reviews: independent accreditation, recent ratings.
• Total price, not headline: watch out-of-hours, late-return, or oversized-vehicle fees.

Luton Airport Car Parks Features Comparison

Using Airport Parking Shop

Tip: After doing a search the features above will be displayed in the tabs, or by hitting the More Info button.

Different product, same parking site

Here’s another wrinkle worth knowing: a different product name in the search results doesn’t always mean a completely different parking location.

5 – Compare Sites to Find the Cheapest and Save More

Quick insight

Not every comparison site sells every car park, and the same space can be a different price elsewhere. Check more than one site—or save time by using Airport Parking Shop.

The Detail

(I ran out of deep dive riffs)

So, you are ready to save money — you’ve even planned out how many more drinks you can get at the pool bar. But then you google for Luton Airport parking, you see so many sites to choose from, and your head starts to hurt. Which one is best?

The world of airport parking is made up of lots of businesses:

• The official airport car parks usually run by the airport.
• National third-party car park chains — for example APH, NCP or Purple Parking — who have branded, large-capacity car parks where you can park yourself and keep your keys (or hand them over for Meet & Greet).
• Small independent ones who may be regional.
• Meet & Greet providers who take your car to a secure compound that you won’t visit.

Use a comparison site to cut through the noise

This definitely helps but not every car park works with every comparison site and sometimes, different sites charge different prices for the same space. Ever been searching for car insurance and found a provider available on one comparison site and not another, or at a different price? Airport parking is no different with the added complication that some comparison sites are selling their own spaces too.

Not every site sells the same Luton car parks

This isn't just theory. Some Luton parking options are listed by several of our booking partners, while others only appear on one or a handful. The table below shows the current provider coverage we found.

On a phone? Swipe across the table to see all 8 providers.

Search more than one

The key therefore in finding the cheapest price is to check as many different sites as possible. As with anything else, there is a cost-benefit ratio so you might set yourself a target of the top 3 or 4. Or you might just give up!

All the comparison sites have a lowest price guarantee — isn’t that great?

Checking multiple sites for lowest prices is a time-consuming exercise so why not just rely on the cheapest price guarantee of the first one? Cheapest price guarantees are fantastic, but it is down to you to go find a lower price elsewhere, often within 24 hours, and then contact the original provider, send them the link, and wait for their refund. Something most of us don’t have time for.

How Airport Parking Shop Can Help

That is why Airport Parking Shop is here. We compare the car parks for you, and we even compare the comparison sites. We are independent, we don’t have any car parks of our own. Check the logos for our partners above and then look down the search results for airport parking and you can see we work with almost everyone (find one we don’t, let us know and we’ll get on it).

How we save time and money:

• See more options: both independent car parks and comparison sites.
• Compare providers: see prices for the same space, all next to each other in one search.
• See like-for-like: compare Park & Ride with Park & Ride, Meet & Greet with Meet & Greet.
• Quickly narrow down: filter by parking type, customer reviews, providers and even distance to the terminal.
• Switch dates in a click to see the cheapest.
• Understand feature differences: check summary cards or tap through for full details.

Useful things to know when comparing Luton Airport parking

Airport parking results can throw a lot of names at you. The easiest way to make sense of them is to separate who runs the parking, what broad type of parking it is, which specific parking product you're booking, who is selling it and what deal you're buying.

So what should you actually compare? First decide which parking type suits you. Then compare the specific parking products on things like transfer time, whether you keep your keys, location and facilities. If the same parking product is being sold by different booking companies or at different rates, you can jump straight to price, refundability and the small print.

What terminology is helpful to understand pricing?

Meet & Greet vs Valet Parking

Very similar, but Valet is typically a premium handover right by the terminal.

Park & Ride vs Long Stay

These terms are often used interchangeably with park & ride preferred by third-party operators and long stay by the official airport. In general, both involve a bus ride or a longish walk (depending on the size of the airport). At Luton, Long Stay uses a free shuttle (~10 minutes, 24/7); off-airport Park & Ride brands use quick courtesy buses (~10–15 minutes).

On-airport vs Off-airport

Many comparison sites have an On-Airport filter and a separate one for Park & Ride. The on-airport category might seem self-explanatory, but the search results can often include Long Stay, which may be a bus ride away — similar to Park & Ride. The reason is that Long Stay is usually owned by the airport and so put into “On-Airport”. We think this can be confusing, so we don’t categorise like that. We put all bus-served options together under Park & Ride and all walkable ones under On-Airport so you can compare them like-for-like.

Short Stay

Short Stay doesn't mean you have to stay for a short period of time. The price and closeness to the airport means it is usually used by friends or relatives sending someone off, but you can park for a week or two if you want. Just remember it will cost you a lot more.

More Information

Motorbike Parking at Luton Airport

Charges for parking your motorbike at Luton Airport differ depending on the duration of your stay. Follow the link to our dedicated motorbike parking page for full information.

Accessibility at Luton Airport Parking

Accessibility varies by car park, particularly because most of the third-party options use a shuttle. If you need wheelchair-accessible transport or step-free boarding, check the individual product before booking rather than assuming every minibus can accommodate you. Luton Airport's own official car parks have designated Blue Badge spaces.

Electric vehicles and larger vehicles

Some Luton products have options specifically for electric or larger vehicles. APH Charge and Go includes vehicle charging while you are away, while Airparks Self Park and Luton Premium Self Park can appear with larger-vehicle options. Standard size limits still apply to many products, so check the vehicle restrictions before booking.

Luton Airport drop-off and pick-up

The terminal-side Drop Off and Pick Up Zone currently costs £9 for up to 12 minutes, followed by £1 per minute, with a maximum stay of 30 minutes. If you do not mind taking the airport shuttle, Luton Airport's Long Stay car park currently allows up to two hours free for drop-off or pick-up.