Driving to Gatwick: the roads in, the sat-nav codes and the forecourt rules

Gatwick sits on the M23 at Junction 9, about 28 miles south of central London and a ten-minute drive from the M25. The junction feeds a dedicated approach road with the North and South Terminals signed separately, so the navigation is easy; the decisions that matter come at the end. Stopping on a terminal forecourt costs £10 for up to 10 minutes, enforced by number-plate cameras with no barriers, while the long stay car parks give you 2 free hours and a free shuttle. Parking pre-booked online costs up to 60% less than driving up.

So the one-minute version is: know your terminal before you set off (the terminal lookup settles it by airline), put the right postcode in the sat-nav, decide in advance whether you are dropping off on the forecourt or using the free long stay window, and if you are leaving the car for days, book before you drive. The sections below take those in order.

From London and the north, there are two ways down. The motorway route runs clockwise or anticlockwise round the M25 to Junction 7, then south on the M23 to Junction 9, which suits anyone starting west, north or east of the capital. From south London, the A23 through Croydon and Coulsdon is the direct surface route, joining the motorway corridor near the airport; it is shorter on paper but slower through the suburbs, so the M25 route usually wins from anywhere north of the river. Budget roughly an hour from central London in normal traffic, and more in the peaks: the drive is the least predictable leg of a flight day.

From the south coast, the M23 and A23 run straight up from Brighton, and Junction 9 arrives about half an hour out. From the west along the M25, exit at Junction 7 as above; from the east, the same junction approached anticlockwise. Once you leave Junction 9, overhead signs split traffic by terminal and then by purpose, drop-off, short stay, long stay, so the road system does the thinking if you know which of those you want. Gatwick sits outside the ULEZ boundary and the Congestion Charge zone, so neither applies to reaching the airport itself; a route through London is a different matter, and Transport for London's site has the live rules.

Use RH6 0NP for the South Terminal and RH6 0PJ for the North Terminal, then trust the airport's own signs over the sat-nav for the last half mile, because the approach roads split by purpose in ways postcode navigation does not capture. If you are heading for a booked car park, the confirmation email's postcode beats both: the long stay sites in particular sit away from the terminals, and South Terminal long stay has its own code, RH6 0NY. The full postcode-per-destination list lives on the Gatwick postcode page.

The two terminals are separate buildings a shuttle ride apart, and their forecourts and car parks are not interchangeable, so arriving at the wrong one costs real time with luggage. Check the terminal on your booking, not your memory of last time; allocations move, and easyJet now flies only from the North Terminal while British Airways uses the South. Get it wrong on the day and the free shuttle fixes it in about two minutes, but with a car the simpler fix is following the signs back round the perimeter road.

The terminal forecourts are charged zones. Dropping off costs £10 for up to 10 minutes, then £1 per additional minute up to 20 minutes, with a £30 maximum and a 30-minute limit; there are no barriers, ANPR cameras read your plate, and you pay online or by automated phone line by midnight the following day. Blue badge holders are exempt. Miss the payment deadline and a Parking Charge Notice follows, so the £10 is the cheap version. The drop-off guide covers the zones and payment step by step.

The free alternative is the long stay car park at either terminal: the first 2 hours cost nothing and a free shuttle bus runs to the terminals every 10 to 12 minutes, which turns a £10 goodbye into a free one for the price of 15 to 20 extra minutes. Collecting someone works differently again: the Express Pick-Up bays (Car Park 6 at North, Car Park 3 at South) charge standard short stay rates while you wait with the car, and the same free long stay window covers a delayed arrival. The pick-up guide compares those options properly.

For the numbers, one rule dominates: pre-book. The same official car parks cost up to 60% less booked online than driven up to, and the drive-up tariffs are steep, £70 a day in short stay, £38 then £32 a day in long stay. Short stay suits hours, not days: it is a 4-minute covered walk from either terminal and the right choice for meeting a flight or a same-day turnaround. Long stay is the holiday product, a 10 to 12 minute free bus from the terminals, and the default for anything beyond a night or two. Mind the multi-storey height limits, 1.8m to 2.1m depending on the car park, and take tall vehicles to long stay, which has none.

The full picture, including valet, the North-only mid stay, off-airport operators and what a week really costs, is on the parking guide, with the honest comparisons per product. If your trip is long enough that parking charges rival a taxi both ways, run the numbers against the other ways to reach Gatwick before defaulting to the car.

Driving wins when the train does not fit the shape of the trip: a 04:00 check-in from a town with no early rail service, a car full of family and luggage where one parking fee splits four ways, a return at an hour when the connections home have stopped, or a starting point far from any station on the Gatwick lines. It also wins on pure door-to-door convenience if someone else is doing the driving, which is why the drop-off run remains the classic Gatwick send-off despite the £10.

For a solo traveller near a station, the maths usually goes the other way: about £15 and a reliable half hour by train from London against motorway variability plus parking at £32 or more a day. And if you land at Gatwick without a car and need one for the trip onward, that is the one case where none of this page applies; the car hire guide covers the rental desks at both terminals and how pickup works.