How to get around in London? Underground vs Lime Bike

Is the London Underground still king… or has Lime Bike taken over the city?
In this video, we tested Tube vs. Lime on speed, cost, and convenience, and the results surprised us.

📍 Route: Hyde Park → London Eye
🚇 Joanna took the Underground
🚲 I rode a Lime Bike through Central London

We timed everything, calculated the cost to the minute, and compared the experience to real locals.

🧮 Lime vs Tube: Cost Breakdown
A single Tube journey costs £2.90 using contactless

A Lime bike averages 12p per minute without a pass.

That means:

£2.90 ÷ 0.12 = ~24 minutes
So the Tube becomes cheaper if your Lime ride is longer than 24 minutes.

✅ BUT with a LimePass, it’s a different story:

🟢 LimePass 60 mins (valid 3 days): £6.99
🟢 LimePass 200 mins (valid 7 days): £18.99
🟢 LimePass 400 mins (valid 30 days): £36.99
🟢 LimePrime: £8.99/month for unlimited unlocks & 30-min reservations

👉 These passes make the Lime Bike way more affordable for tourists or short-stay visitors.
For example:
200 mins = ~10 rides of 20 mins = £1.89 per ride, cheaper than the Tube!

🎁 Want FREE credit?
Use my Lime referral code and get £4 ride credit when you sign up:
👉 https://lime.bike/referral_signin/RRPVNL4MTSE

Whether you’re in London for a weekend or planning to explore beyond Zone 1, this breakdown will help you save money and time — and maybe even enjoy the ride more.

👇 Drop a comment: Tube or Lime — what would you choose?

🔔 Subscribe for real talk + real tests every week!

[Music] every time I want to go from point A to point B in London I have a problem i want to take the line bike and my girlfriend wants to take the tube and the question is what is actually more convenient faster and cheaper and today I want to solve this problem once and for all we’re going to film an experiment where we’re going from point A to point B and document what is faster cheaper and more convenient so let’s begin this episode but before that let me give you some context if you’re not from London you probably will ask yourself why did I just call the underground the tube it is the London slang and it’s short for tubular tunnels just like the sign where you see underground the shape of the tunnels is circular and it literally looks like a tube another interesting fact about the London Underground is that it was the first in the world and it opened its doors in 1863 but besides being the oldest it is also the most expensive there are 3 million people riding the underground every single day which makes £9 million per day and if you want to know how expensive that actually is we went to a machine and wanted to take a normal ticket which cost us £7 so I realized that a single ticket that you purchase from a machine here in the tube station cost £7 per person which is really really expensive and it’s the funny thing is there’s a little information at the machine that actually tells you not to use the machine and use the contact list so your Apple Pay or your um credit card instead so what is the price pretty much £3 so don’t use the machine guys i hate the tube because it is old it makes a lot of sound it is dirty and I don’t get to enjoy this beautiful weather and the beautiful sides of London i hate the line bike because as you can see London is actually very chaotic in terms of traffic and I actually genuinely don’t feel very safe riding this thing across the city across all the traffic another thing that I love using the tube is that I can use my phone except there’s no internet most of the times there is internet so Janna and I decided to go on the challenge representing our preferred transport modes and here are the rules we’re going to actually track it by three components one is convenience two is speed and three is price we’re going to start here which is the entrance of the hide park we’re going to go a typical route that a tourist would go from here to London Eye who will be faster at London Eye let’s go three two one go okay timer is rolling joiner went to the nearest underground station which was Marvel Arch the best way to travel around London is actually just using your Apple Pay you tap in and you tap out it’s just as simple as that usually the underground comes every 2 to 4 minutes and it’s very interconnected ride two stop to Oxford Circle Circus and then walk another two minutes underground to uh take the other line while the ride in itself can be very short it took Joanna 6 minute and 20 seconds to just get inside of a tube we’ll go into my Lime app and as you see I can already find so many different Lime bikes just around here when it comes to getting a Lime bike I always prefer to get a Lime pass for $6.99 you can get a pass for 3 days and 60 minutes and after scanning and getting my line pass I’m right at 3 minutes and 46 seconds joanna had a typical central line experience with a lot of graffiti on the walls and no place to sit down oh no I think I got lost um okay feels like this is just an exit in the meantime I took my line bike for a ride through the beautiful height park surpassing the famous Wellington Arch and heading straight to the Buckingham Palace and if you want to know whether the king is home you just look whether the flag is waving the flag is waving so most probably the king is at home so string looks a little bit older and there’s like graffitis everywhere inside let’s check this out i’ve been living in London for the past 4 years and unfortunately I need to take back my words because now there is internet on the rides so Jana was right uh it’s a little old for sure but still it’s kind of uh I mean it’s kind of clean i didn’t see any like rubbish or anything like that there or like stains or something like that it’s not smelly so even though it was kind of old but uh they kept it very clean which is really good we can go on the left side for the bikes but to be honest I’ll just go on this side because there’s so many people and it’s almost impossible to get through on the left side we have this incredible London Eye and here’s the thing about the London Eye the London Eye has 32 capsules and the 32 capsules represent the 32 bors that London has so here’s a fun fact for you with line bikes you always need to find a location where you can park it you cannot just randomly leave it anywhere but luckily there’s a lot of different locations throughout the city once you park you scan the bike you upload a picture and you’re good to go 21 minutes and 30 seconds i’ll send her a picture he just texted me saying that he got there okay so I just got out of the Waterlue station and according to Google Map he’s calling me according to Google map I still need to walk 8 minutes from here to the London Eye so let’s go there we go woo woo we made it we made it to the location so first of all let’s compare our time one two three so my time is 21 minutes and 32 seconds mine is 35 minutes and 40 seconds so this point goes to line bike okay sure okay next how much money did you spend the minimum fair that you will spend on the tube is 290 290 290 and for me it was around two pounds because I spent 17 minutes on the bike which if we calculated at 12p per minute is two around two probably you’ll see here how much actually put the number but here’s the point I needed to pay $6.99 up front and if I’m not going to use the lime bike at all for the next 3 days then yeah then actually I paid £7 for one ride and Joanna would win so this is something that you would need to take into consideration it only makes sense if you ride multiple times but if you want to explore London and you’re thinking to yourself which mode of transport should I choose honestly always choose the line bike in terms of going from side to side and you will also see a lot of things which leads me to my next point convenience did you find it convenient i found it super convenient the time between waiting was not that long either and then and the tube itself is you know even though it was a little bit old um but it’s incredibly clean and it’s not smelly people are very respectful there like plenty of seats so quite convenient it is convenient for me i took the ride i enjoyed a lot to see the Buckingham Palace St james Park Green Park the Big Ben the Westminster Abbey and then finally arriving to the London ISO i would say it is super convenient however if it’s snowing or if it’s raining uh you know could be a little bit difficult so this point I would say goes to both mhm yeah i think in this season even though I’m for the tube but when the weather is nice um when it’s not cold outside I would personally choose the line bike as well if you’re in summer if you enjoy riding a bike and seeing a lot of sites in London and your ride is about 20 to 25 minutes you will always be better off taking the line bike if it is raining you need to use your phone mhm because you need to stay connected you should definitely go for the tube i hope this helped if you want to see a lot of other things in London check out more videos leave a comment down below tell us which Tell us what you like what you would choose