The Cheapest Day to Move House in London

People ask which day is cheapest to move because they have heard that removal prices swing with demand. On our published rate card, they do not. There is one rate for each van and crew, and only three things about the day change it: whether it is a Sunday or bank holiday, whether the work is in the evening, and, in central London, whether the Congestion Charge applies at that hour. Everything else about the date affects availability, not price.

This guide prices every day of the week for four home sizes, from a studio flat to a 3-bedroom house, inside and outside the Congestion Charge zone. It then looks at the month as a whole: why Fridays and month ends fill up first, which days in 2027 are bank holidays, and who can actually pick the day when a sale, a purchase or a tenancy sets it.

The grid below prices the same move on every day of the week. Each row is one home size, using the van, crew and hours our quote form suggests for it, moving 8 miles across London with ground-floor access at both ends. Switch between daytime and evening, and between addresses outside or inside the Congestion Charge zone, to see what changes.

Read across any row and the pattern is the same. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday share one price. Sunday and bank holidays sit 20% higher on the labour. In the evening view, every weekday and Saturday moves up by 15% on the labour, while Sunday and bank holidays stay at 20%, because the two surcharges never stack.

The base prices, weekday or Saturday daytime outside the zone, are £197.10 for a studio flat, £464.40 for a 1-bedroom home, £1,056 for a 2-bedroom home and £1,549.20 for a 3-bedroom house. Stairs, dismantling, packing and parking come on top and depend on your addresses, not the day.

You may have read that a midweek move is cheaper. That depends on how a firm sets its prices, and ours does not change with the day. The rate card has an hourly rate for each vehicle and crew size, a minimum booking and a per-mile rate. None of those figures has a weekday or weekend version, and nothing on the card changes with the date in the month or the season.

Saturday deserves its own mention, because many people assume it costs extra. On our rate card it does not. The weekend surcharge applies to Sundays only, along with bank holidays. A Saturday move is priced exactly like a Tuesday one.

So if you are choosing between a Wednesday and a Saturday, choose on what suits you: time off work, childcare, when the keys are released, and when the street is quietest for the van. The price will be the same either way, unless the Congestion Charge comes into it, which is covered below.

What does change from day to day is how quickly dates fill. A Saturday or a month end can be taken weeks ahead while a Tuesday in the middle of the month is still open. That is about availability, not price, and it is why booking early matters more than picking a particular weekday. How far ahead to book movers in London covers the lead times.

A Sunday or a bank holiday adds 20% to the labour on the day. Our quote form applies it to the removal labour, and to any dismantling or TV work done on the day. It does not apply to mileage, and it does not apply to packing materials. If you book packing on a separate weekday, that packing is not surcharged even if the move itself is on a Sunday.

Here is what each surcharge adds for the four example homes, on the same hours and miles as the grid:

The bigger the home, the more the surcharge matters, because it is a percentage of the labour, and the labour grows with the hours and the crew. On a studio a Sunday adds £37.50. On a 3-bedroom house it adds £306, enough to pay for a good part of a packing service or a parking suspension.

The quote form recognises bank holidays by date and by the collection postcode, using the official GOV.UK list for England and Wales, so a bank holiday Monday is surcharged like a Sunday without you having to say so. If a date falls beyond the list it holds, the quote says the team will confirm whether the surcharge applies.

There is one case where a Sunday may still be the right choice: when it is the only day both addresses are free and nobody needs to take time off. The 20% is a known, fixed figure, shown as its own line in the quote, so you can weigh it against a lost day's pay or a second weekend in the old flat.

An evening move adds 15% to the labour, again not to mileage. People usually ask about evenings for one of two reasons: they cannot take a day off, or they want to avoid the Congestion Charge, which stops at 18:00 on weekdays. The first reason is a fair one. The second rarely adds up.

TfL's Congestion Charge is £18 a day if paid on the day or in advance, or £21 if paid by midnight of the third day after travel. On every one of our example homes, the evening surcharge costs more than that:

• Studio flat: evening surcharge £28.13, against the £18 charge it avoids
• 1-bed flat: evening surcharge £67.50, against the £18 charge it avoids
• 2-bed home: evening surcharge £156, against the £18 charge it avoids
• 3-bed house: evening surcharge £229.50, against the £18 charge it avoids

So on the rate card, an evening slot is never the cheaper way round the charge. A studio inside the zone costs £215.10 on a weekday afternoon with the charge, and £225.23 in the evening without it. Book an evening because it suits you, not to save the £18.

Evenings also have practical limits. Some buildings restrict move times, lifts may only be bookable in working hours, and a large home will not fit into an evening at all. For a bigger home, the hours in the grid show why: a full day's work cannot start at teatime.

The Congestion Charge applies if you drive within the central London zone during charging hours. If either of your addresses is inside it, we add the charge to the quote as its own line. Our vans meet the ULEZ standard, so no ULEZ charge is ever added. These are the charging hours TfL publishes:

The weekend hours are where the day of the week genuinely changes the price. At weekends and on bank holidays the charge does not start until 12:00. A move that is finished and out of the zone by noon pays nothing.

Whether your move can do that depends on its size. Assuming the team arrives at 8:00 and the van is in use for the booked hours, the studio flat (done about 10:30) can finish before 12:00. The 1-bed flat (about 12:30), 2-bed home (about 14:30) and 3-bed house (about 16:30) run past noon, so the charge applies on a Saturday just as on a weekday. That is an estimate: what counts is when the van is actually driven in the zone, so a move that loads inside the zone in the morning and unloads outside it may clear the charge even when the job runs later.

For a studio inside the zone, that makes Saturday morning the cheapest slot of the week: £197.10, against £215.10 on any weekday with the charge and £234.60 on a Sunday morning, where the charge is avoided but the 20% surcharge more than cancels the saving. It is the one place on our rate card where a particular day beats the rest.

Between Christmas Day and the New Year's Day bank holiday, inclusive, there is no charge at all. Those days are mostly bank holidays or days when many buildings and agents are closed, so check the practical side before planning around it. Moving house in London at Christmas covers that fortnight day by day, and London road charges for moving day explains the zone, red routes and the Low Emission Zone.

The government's How to buy a home guide says Fridays and the first and last days of the month are often very busy, and that avoiding them may get you better rates and availability. It also advises giving the removal company as much notice as possible.

On our side, the rate does not change on those days. A Friday costs the same as a Thursday, and the 31st the same as the 15th. What the government's warning describes is competition for dates. When many moves want the same few days, the vans and crews for those days are booked first.

For planning, here are the first and last working days of every month in 2027, worked out from the calendar and the bank holiday list. In 7 months, one of them is also a Friday, which is the busiest combination of all.

If your date sits on one of these, book as soon as the date is fixed. If it is flexible, moving a day or two away from the month end, or from a Friday to a Thursday, usually means more choice of arrival time. It will not change our price, but it can change whether the slot you want is still free.

The cheapest day is only useful if you can pick it. Many London movers cannot, because someone else sets the date.

If you are buying or selling

Completion day, when the money moves and the keys are released, is set at exchange. The Bank of England says CHAPS, the payment system commonly used by solicitors and conveyancers to complete property transactions, is usually open from 6am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, and closed on bank holidays in England and Wales. So a purchase that completes by CHAPS completes on a working day, and a Saturday or Sunday completion is not an option.

That still leaves the choice of weekday, and it is worth using. GOV.UK lists Fridays among the busiest days, so a Friday completion competes for vans with many others. A completion earlier in the week gives more room if the money is late, and more choice of van. Completion day removals in London explains how to plan the day around keys that may not come until the afternoon.

If you rent

Renters usually have more freedom. A tenancy end date fixes the last day you can be in the old flat, and the new tenancy fixes the first day in the new one, but the move itself can often fall anywhere in the overlap. If you have both sets of keys for a few days, a mid-week date away from the month end gives the most choice, and Saturday costs the same as a weekday if you need it for time off.

If there is no chain at all

Moving between rented homes with an overlap, into a family member's home, or out of a flat you own outright, you can choose freely. That is when the grid matters most: pick any weekday or Saturday, avoid Sunday unless it is the only option, and, if you are in the zone with a small flat, look at a Saturday morning.

A parking suspension reserves the kerb for the van, and the council sets the notice and the fee. You apply for it and pay it; we plan the van and crew around it. Our council data does not show any council charging a different fee for a weekend day, so the day does not change the suspension cost as far as we can see. It can change the deadline.

Most councils count notice in working days. In our table of London council rules, 24 councils state their notice in working days. Working days skip weekends and bank holidays, so a Monday move, or a move just after a bank holiday, needs the application in earlier than the same move later in the week. How far ahead to book movers in London works out the latest application day council by council.

There are exceptions in both directions. Hammersmith & Fulham states its notice as "8 days for up to 6 bays for up to 3 days. Weekends count" and charges £48 per bay per chargeable day for days 1 to 5, so check which days it treats as chargeable for a weekend move. The City of London says its suspensions apply 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so a weekend in the City needs a suspension just as a weekday does.

Controlled parking hours also differ between streets and between weekdays and weekends. We do not hold that for every street, so check the signs at both addresses. If the bays are uncontrolled on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday, you may not need a suspension at all. Parking suspensions for moving day covers each borough's process.

Every one of these days carries the 20% surcharge, and every one moves council notice deadlines back by a day, because it is not a working day. These are the England and Wales bank holidays for 2027, from the GOV.UK bank holidays list:

• New Year's Day: Friday, 1 January 2027
• Good Friday: Friday, 26 March 2027
• Easter Monday: Monday, 29 March 2027
• Early May bank holiday: Monday, 3 May 2027
• Spring bank holiday: Monday, 31 May 2027
• Summer bank holiday: Monday, 30 August 2027
• Christmas Day: Monday, 27 December 2027 (substitute day)
• Boxing Day: Tuesday, 28 December 2027 (substitute day)

A bank holiday Monday also makes the Friday before it the last working day of a long weekend, and some of those Fridays are month ends too, the two kinds of date GOV.UK calls busy. If you were hoping to use a long weekend to settle in, book that Friday early, or move on the Thursday and use the extra day to unpack.

There is no extra charge for short notice. A home of up to two bedrooms booked by 2pm can often be moved the same day, subject to a free van and crew. The day-of-week rules are the same: a same-day Saturday move costs the same as a same-day Tuesday one, and a same-day Sunday move carries the Sunday surcharge.

What short notice limits is the parking. If the council needs several working days for a suspension, a move this week may have to work with the street as it is, a loading bay, or a yellow-line dispensation where the council offers one. Tell us what is outside each door and we will plan the van around it.

The day is one lever. The hours are a bigger one. Packing before the van arrives, clearing out what you will not take, and getting the van close to the door all cut the hours, and the hours are what you pay for on every day of the week. The cheapest way to move house in London sets out each of those savings.

Whichever day you choose, every move with us includes the same basics:

• Goods in Transit cover. Included on every move, not sold as an add-on.
• Public Liability cover. In place on every job, at home or at work.
• Our own crew. Every mover is employed by AFS. We never pass your move to a subcontractor.
• One named coordinator. Your single point of contact, from the quote to the last box.

Send both postcodes, the date or dates you are considering, and a room-by-room list. Say whether the date is fixed by a completion or a tenancy, or whether you can move it. You will get an itemised written quote within 24 hours, with any Sunday, bank holiday or evening surcharge and any Congestion Charge shown as separate lines, so you can compare two dates side by side. A 20% deposit secures the date, and the team confirms the final price in writing.

For a whole home, start from our house removals in London page, which covers every home size on the same rate card. If you are still deciding between two days, ask for both in one enquiry; the London house removals team will price each, and the difference will be exactly the lines in this guide.