For a weekend it's usually the taxi. For two weeks from close to the airport, it's usually parking. In between, they're nearer than most people think: Silver Zone at the gate is £100 for 3 days and £240 for a week, against a fixed return taxi from £78, and a return taxi from central Bristol is from £78 with the online discount. The real difference is the transfer bus on one side and your own front door on the other.
Prices checked August 2026.
The break-even table
Return taxi, city centre pickup, against typical pre-booked parking. Parking prices move with demand, so treat them as the going rate, not a promise.
At the gate, Silver Zone is £100 for 3 days, £170 for 5 days and £35 for each day after that, so a week costs £240. Our return from central Bristol is from £78 fixed. Pre-booked parking is much cheaper but the airport quotes it dynamically rather than publishing a rate, so price your dates on Bristol Airport parking prices and compare with your fixed quote.
Bristol Airport prices its car parks by demand, so figures vary with your dates and how far ahead you book. Check Bristol Airport parking prices for your trip. Every car park's published gate price — including the drop-off charge and the free Waiting Zone — is broken down in our Bristol Airport parking prices guide.
Two weeks is where it flips for nearly everyone: the taxi's price doesn't grow with your holiday and the car park's does.
Work out your own break-even
Enter your trip below and it compares Bristol Airport's own turn-up gate price against our fixed £78 return taxi from central Bristol. Pre-booking a car park almost always costs less than the gate price the calculator uses, so treat its parking figure as the worst case, not the best one, and check the live pre-booked rate before you decide.
Parking vs taxi: your numbers
Gate prices from Bristol Airport parking prices, checked 1 August 2026; the full tier tables for every car park are in our parking prices guide. Without JavaScript the calculator won't respond, and that's fine: the tables give you the same numbers by hand.
What the parking price doesn't include
Silver Zone is a transfer bus ride from the terminal, so add 15 to 25 minutes each way and a bus queue at 4:30am with your cases. Add the petrol both ways, and the pricing details that catch people out, like walk-up rates being double the pre-booked ones. Multi-storey is next to the terminal, but for a fortnight the cost climbs well past what most people expect.
And one nobody budgets for: coming home. After a red-eye landing, the bus to Silver Zone, finding the car in row K, and driving the A38 tired is the worst hour of the holiday. The taxi version of that hour is a nap.
When parking genuinely wins
Short trips if you live out where our pickup fare grows, odd hours with a car boot full of kit, or if you just like having your car. We're not going to pretend a 3-day trip from Bath makes taxi sense, the table's right there.
Frequently asked questions
How much is a return taxi from Bristol to the airport?
How much is Bristol Airport parking per week?
Is Silver Zone far from the terminal?
Where's the break-even?
Is it cheaper to park at Bristol Airport for a week or take a taxi both ways?
Price both in 90 seconds: your fixed taxi quote is at ticktaxi.co.uk/en/book-online.