Fixed-fare offers are paused just now.
Any fixed-fare route price quoted below was a limited-time promotion and is not running at the moment — we will be opening them again. Everything else in this article still stands, and every journey is quoted upfront on our standard rates before you book.
Most people say "taxi" for anything with a driver, and in everyday use that is fine. But in Southampton — as everywhere in England outside London — the word covers two legally distinct services, licensed differently and priced differently. The distinction matters most on exactly the journeys where getting it wrong is expensive: airport runs and cruise embarkations.
Hackney carriage: the one you can flag down
A hackney carriage is a licensed taxi that can be hailed in the street or picked up from a rank. Southampton has ranks at the Central station, in the city centre and outside the terminals on busy days.
Priced by meter. The fare is set by the council's table and counted as you travel. Longer journey, more traffic, higher fare — the traffic risk is yours.
Best for: short, immediate, unplanned journeys. Standing outside a pub at midnight. Getting from Central to a hotel with a bag.
Private hire: the one that must be pre-booked
A private hire vehicle cannot legally be flagged down or wait on a rank. Every journey has to be booked in advance through the operator — an app, a website, or the office phone. Fare 1 is a private hire operator.
Priced before the journey. Because the booking exists before the car moves, the price can be agreed up front instead of counted afterwards. That is the whole practical difference: the traffic risk sits with the operator, not with you.
Best for: anything you can plan. Airport transfers, cruise embarkations, hospital appointments, station runs, contracted work.
Ride-hailing apps
Legally private hire — the app is the booking. What distinguishes them in practice is dynamic pricing: the fare depends on demand at the moment you tap, which is why a 04:00 airport run on a bank holiday can cost several times the daytime rate.
Best for: immediate, short, in-city journeys when supply is normal.
Worst for: a pre-planned airport run at an unsociable hour, which is precisely when the multiplier applies and when the number of drivers willing to accept is lowest.
Why this matters for an airport run
Three properties decide whether an airport journey goes well, and only one licence class gives you all three:
A price that is known in advance. A meter cannot give you this, because the meter has not run yet. A surge-priced app cannot give you this, because the number is not fixed until you book — and if you book at 04:00 you get the 04:00 number.
A car that is definitely coming. A pre-booked private hire journey is a commitment made days or weeks ahead. A rank at 04:00 is a hope, and an app at 04:00 is a queue.
Flight tracking. The pickup time moving with the aircraft rather than the timetable requires somebody to be watching the flight, which requires a booking with a flight number attached to it.
How we price, specifically
Fare 1 quotes every journey before you book, on a published per-mile rate, and locks the number at the moment of booking — it does not change afterwards even if our rate sheet changes before your travel date.
On our most common routes there are pre-set fixed fares instead: Southampton to Heathrow, Southampton to Gatwick, Winchester to Heathrow and others, the same price in both directions. The full list is on the fixed fares page.
Airport drop-off charges, congestion and ULEZ where they apply are shown as their own lines on the booking form rather than folded into the fare, so you can see what is a fee and what is the journey.
We do not surge. The explanation of why is in why we don't surge.
The trade-off, stated plainly
The thing private hire cannot do is come immediately. We are a pre-booked fleet rather than a rank: there is no guarantee of a car in ten minutes at three in the morning, and we would rather say that than take the booking and disappoint you.
For a same-minute journey in the city, a rank or an app is the right tool. For anything you can see coming — a flight, a sailing, a meeting, a hospital appointment — pre-booking is both cheaper and calmer.
More about how we operate in Southampton, including coverage and the office address, is on the Southampton page. Get a price at book.fare1.co.uk.