Will my car be charged to drive in the ULEZ?

Most cars are not charged. London's ULEZ charges £12.50 a day only if your car fails the emissions standard — Euro 4 for petrol, broadly 2006 onwards, or Euro 6 for diesel, roughly September 2015 onwards. Registration year is a guide, not the test. The charge runs 24 hours a day, every day except Christmas Day, in all London boroughs.

The test is the emissions standard, not the age

A car is judged on the Euro emissions standard it was type-approved to, which is why two cars registered in the same year can be treated differently. Petrol cars must meet Euro 4, which broadly applies from 2006 onwards. Diesel cars must meet the much later Euro 6, roughly September 2015 onwards. That gap is the single most useful thing to know: a fifteen-year-old petrol hatchback is usually compliant, while a diesel from 2014 usually is not.

Fully electric cars are exempt from the ULEZ and from every clean air zone in the UK. Hybrids are judged on their petrol or diesel engine. Registration years are a guide rather than a guarantee, because the standard is set per model at type approval and some models met it early, so a car sitting on the changeover year should be checked by registration on Transport for London's official checker before you rely on it.

You can check any registration against every UK charging zone at once with our clean air zone checker.

What the ULEZ charge is and when it applies

Transport for London charges £12.50 a day for a non-compliant car. It applies 24 hours a day, every day of the year except Christmas Day, across all London boroughs up to but not including the M25. It is a daily charge rather than a per-entry charge, so several trips on the same day cost £12.50 in total, and it is separate from the Congestion Charge you may also pay in central London.

Arithmetic on that daily figure, not a quoted price: driving a non-compliant car into the zone five days a week costs £62.50 a week.

Vehicles built before 1 January 1973 are exempt, as are vehicles registered in the DVLA historic tax class. Vehicles in the disabled tax class have a grace period that ends on 24 October 2027.

Clean Air Zones outside London mostly do not charge cars

GOV.UK lists 7 Clean Air Zones in England. They are graded A to D, and only a Class D zone includes private cars — which is why a zone existing in a city does not mean your car pays anything to drive there.

So only Birmingham and Bristol charge private cars: £8 a day inside Birmingham's A4540 Middleway ring road and £9 a day in Bristol's small central zone. Bath, Bradford, Portsmouth, Sheffield and the Tyneside zone — listed above under Newcastle and Gateshead, the two councils that run it — charge buses, taxis, vans or lorries, and a private car drives through them free whatever its age or fuel.

Greater Manchester has no charging clean air zone. GOV.UK guidance no longer lists one, those references having been removed on 18 February 2025.

One zone sits outside the scheme entirely. The Oxford Zero Emission Zone covers what Oxfordshire County Council describes as “A small set of central Oxford streets (pilot zone)”, operating 7am–7pm, seven days a week, year round. Unlike a Clean Air Zone it charges in emissions bands rather than on a pass-or-fail standard, so what a car pays turns on its CO2 rather than on whether it clears the ULEZ standard:

• •£0 a day — Zero-emission vehicle (0 g/km CO2)
• •£2 a day — Ultra-low emission (under 75 g/km CO2)
• •£4 a day — Low emission (Euro 4 petrol / Euro 6 diesel)
• •£10 a day — All other vehicles

So a fully electric car pays nothing in Oxford, while a Euro 4 petrol or Euro 6 diesel that drives through every Clean Air Zone in England free still pays £4 a day there. Those published charges were checked on 25 August 2026.

Scotland fines rather than charges; Wales and Northern Ireland have neither

Scotland runs Low Emission Zones rather than Clean Air Zones, enforced by the councils operating them: Glasgow from 1 June 2023 (with residents inside the zone from 1 June 2024), Dundee from 30 May 2024, and Edinburgh and Aberdeen from 1 June 2024. The difference matters. There is no daily charge you can choose to pay, so a non-compliant car entering the zone is not buying access — it is committing a contravention.

The penalty charge starts at £60 and doubles on each further contravention in the same zone, capped at £480 for a car. It is reduced by 50% if paid within 14 days, and the doubling resets after 90 clear days without a contravention.

Wales has no charging clean air zone and no low emission zone, and Northern Ireland has no ULEZ, no Clean Air Zone and no Low Emission Zone. Nothing on this page about charges or penalties applies in either.

What this means when you are buying a used car

If you drive in London or into Birmingham or Bristol, the fuel and the standard matter more than the mileage. Diesel is the case to look at hardest: Euro 6 applies roughly September 2015 onwards, so anything registered earlier — the first months of 2015 included — is the combination most likely to be charged, and a car registered in the changeover year itself should be checked by registration rather than assumed either way. A petrol car from 2006 onwards, a hybrid with a compliant petrol engine and any fully electric car are all clear.

Emissions charging is separate from vehicle tax, and being ULEZ-compliant says nothing about what a car costs to tax. Vehicle tax does not transfer when a car is sold — it is cancelled and refunded to the seller, and the buyer must tax it before driving or declare it off the road. Our car tax calculator and our guide to vehicle tax when buying a used car cover that separately.

If avoiding charges is pushing you towards an electric car, compare the running costs properly first with our electric versus petrol calculator. Unfamiliar terms on a listing are explained in the car buying glossary.

Charges and compliance standards on this page come from Transport for London and GOV.UK clean air zone guidance, checked 28 July 2026. Zone rules change; confirm your own registration on the operator's official checker before you travel.