London or Paris: Paris Wins 20 of 25 Airports, London Has the Floor

London and Paris are the two cities Americans book most often for a first trip to Europe, and the fare comparison between them is lopsided in a way that almost nobody expects. Paris is the cheaper flight from 20 of the 25 US gateways that priced both. London wins 3, and 2 are level.

Paris medians $690 and ranks 10th of the 40 cities we price. London medians $771 and ranks 29th, which puts the most-connected city in Europe in the bottom third of our board.

Across the 25 US gateways that priced both

Paris is cheaper from 20 of 25

On median the two are $771 and $690, which favors Paris. The two measures agree here, which makes the answer unusually safe to act on.

London

Median round trip

$771

Cheapest fare found

$405 from Orlando

Gateways where it is cheaper

3 of 25

Its strongest airport

Orlando by $193

Paris

Median round trip

$690

Cheapest fare found

$459 from New York

Gateways where it is cheaper

20 of 25

Its strongest airport

Dallas by $189

From	London	Paris	Cheaper by
New York	$526	$459	Paris by $67
Orlando	$405	$598	London by $193
Miami	$584	$526	Paris by $58
Boston	$574	$558	Paris by $16
Washington DC	$620	$573	Paris by $47
Los Angeles	$610	$617	London by $7
Chicago	$650	$589	Paris by $61
Seattle	$646	$690	London by $44
Atlanta	$674	$674	Level
Denver	$699	$649	Paris by $50
San Francisco	$674	$674	Level
Las Vegas	$760	$670	Paris by $90
Nashville	$801	$629	Paris by $172
Minneapolis	$735	$726	Paris by $9
Portland	$793	$694	Paris by $99
Tampa	$786	$704	Paris by $82
Philadelphia	$782	$754	Paris by $28
Houston	$873	$710	Paris by $163
Raleigh	$833	$756	Paris by $77
Charlotte	$860	$732	Paris by $128
Austin	$879	$787	Paris by $92
Detroit	$880	$795	Paris by $85
Salt Lake City	$880	$795	Paris by $85
Phoenix	$884	$795	Paris by $89
Dallas	$957	$768	Paris by $189

London's case is one airport, and it is a good one

The three airports where London wins are Orlando, Seattle and Los Angeles, and the first of those is remarkable. Orlando to London is $405, the cheapest fare to either city anywhere in our grid, and it beats Orlando to Paris by $193. It is also a nonstop.

That single result is worth more than its weight, because it is the whole argument for London on price. A leisure airport most people would never consider a transatlantic gateway holds the best London fare in the country, on a low-cost nonstop into Gatwick, and it beats New York by more than a hundred dollars.

Everywhere without that kind of service, London reverts. From Nashville, Paris is cheaper by $172. From Portland by $99, Las Vegas by $90, Tampa by $82.

Two Londons, and most airports only sell one

The explanation is that London is two separate markets wearing one name, which the London guide takes apart in detail.

Gatwick is where low-cost transatlantic operators land, and it is the source of every cheap London fare in our data. Heathrow is where the legacy carriers land. It is the best-connected airport in Europe and one of the most expensive to fly into, with passenger charges among the highest anywhere, and they end up in the ticket.

If your airport has a low-cost Gatwick nonstop, London is one of the cheapest cities in Europe for you. If it does not, London is a Heathrow connection and it is priced like one. There is very little middle ground, which is exactly why London's spread from best gateway to worst is $552, the widest of any city we price. Paris, for comparison, spreads $336.

The practical consequence: a London fare quoted without naming the departure city is almost meaningless. Ours vary by more than five hundred dollars across the country.

Paris is the steadier of the two

Paris is not cheap because of a bargain; it is cheap because it is consistently competitive. Six airlines fly it nonstop from the US and a crowd of European carriers sell it as a one-stop from almost everywhere else, which is what produces a low median and twenty airport wins rather than three large ones. The Paris guide prices every gateway into all three of its airports.

Its floor, $459 from New York, is also the cheapest fare into any French, Italian, Spanish or German city in our data.

Which one to fly into

Three rules, in order.

If you are in Orlando, fly to London. The $193 gap is larger than any other result in this comparison and it is a nonstop.

If you are anywhere else, start with Paris, and check London only if your airport has Gatwick service worth checking. The Alternate Airport Checker will tell you whether a nearby gateway has it when yours does not.

If the trip includes both, the Eurostar makes this a non-decision: London to Paris is about two and a half hours city center to city center, and an open-jaw into one and home from the other frequently costs no more than a round trip into either. Price that before you price two separate trips.

Neither one is a nonstop bargain

Something both cities share, and it catches people out: paying for a nonstop is a premium in both, not a shortcut to a better price.

Paris is the extreme case. On every route into Paris in our carrier grid where a nonstop was available, the cheapest ticket connected, and not one of the six airlines flying it nonstop was cheapest on its own route. The premium for flying direct ran from about thirty dollars out of New York to nearly seven hundred out of Los Angeles.

London is the same story with one important exception, and the exception is the whole reason it wins Orlando: where a low-cost carrier flies the Atlantic nonstop into Gatwick, the nonstop and the cheapest fare are the same ticket. That combination is rare and it is worth checking for, because it is the only arrangement in our data where the convenient option is also the cheap one.

What counts as a good fare to each

The thresholds are further apart than the medians suggest, because the two cities behave so differently.

For Paris, anything at or below $459 beats every gateway we priced, and from most of the country a fare under about $620 is worth acting on. For London the number depends entirely on where you are: from Orlando or New York, under $550 is ordinary; from Dallas, Phoenix or Detroit, where London runs into the $880 to $957 range, a fare under $700 would be exceptional.

That is why a national rule of thumb is worse than useless here. The Fare Deal Checker judges a fare against what your own airport pays, and the Deal Alert Setup Wizard prints both cities' lines for your gateway before any alerts arrive.

What we are not telling you

This page compares two airfares. It does not compare two cities, two currencies or two weeks on the ground, and the difference between a London week and a Paris week on the ground is larger than anything on this page.

It is also off-season data: our grid prices the six months after collection, which is autumn and winter for the current snapshot. Both cities are at their cheapest and quietest then, and neither summer market is one we have measured.

For the country-level version of this question, the UK or France prices all five British cities we track against all three French ones, and the answer there is even more one-sided. For the full board, the cheapest places to fly into in Europe ranks all 40.