Which London airport is cheapest to fly into from Vilnius?
London has six airports and a flight search treats them as one city. We price Stansted, Luton and Heathrow separately from Vilnius, so here is what each one actually costs to reach, and what the transfer into town does to the comparison.
Type "Vilnius to London" into a search box and you will get results for several airports at once, sorted by price, with the airport code in small print. That small print is worth reading. The airports serving London sit on different sides of the city, up to two hours apart by road, they are served by different airlines with different pricing, and the fare gap between them is larger than most day-to-day price swings on any single route.
From Vilnius the realistic choices are Stansted and Luton on the low-cost carriers, and Heathrow on full-service airlines. We measure all three routes on a schedule, so the charts below show what each one costs month by month, with the date we saw every figure. Gatwick also serves London, but we do not yet hold enough fresh measurements on it from Vilnius to publish a fair comparison, so it is left out rather than guessed at.
Stansted and Luton, the low-cost pair
The two airports the cheap fares actually use. Priced side by side, they track each other closely.
Stansted and Luton are where the low-cost carriers from Vilnius land, and their fares behave the same broad way: a low floor that holds steady from autumn through spring, a modest rise for summer, and a sharp climb only when you book close to departure. But the two are not tied. Compare the charts month by month and Luton holds the lower floor in almost every month we measure; Stansted's cheapest single month is the cheapest figure on the page, but that is one month, not the pattern. If you are flexible on airline and just want the lowest likely fare, check Luton first and use Stansted to keep it honest.
Each figure shows the date we measured it.
The same comparison from the Luton side.
Getting into town is where the two differ in practice. From Stansted the express train reaches Liverpool Street in about 50 minutes, with coaches taking longer but usually costing less. From Luton a shuttle connects the terminal to Luton Airport Parkway station, and trains run from there to St Pancras in around 25 to 40 minutes depending on the service. Both transfers cost real money on top of the fare, in both directions, so a ticket that looks slightly cheaper into one airport can come out slightly more expensive door to door.
Late arrivals deserve a thought before you book, because the cheap departures from Vilnius often land in the evening. Both airports keep overnight coach links into central London, so a late landing does not force a taxi, but the coaches are slower than the trains and run thinner overnight. Check that a service actually runs at your arrival hour before you buy the flight, not after, and remember the same check applies to the early-morning departure on the way home.
Heathrow, priced honestly
The full-service option exists, and the chart shows what it costs.
Heathrow is a different product. The fares we measure there belong to network carriers that reach London from Vilnius with a change at their home hub, so the trip takes longer than the low-cost routes as well as costing more: in its cheapest measured months the route still costs several times what the low-cost pair costs in theirs. The chart shows the floor we measured, month by month, so you can see the gap rather than take our word for it.
Fewer measured months than the low-cost routes, because the service and our coverage are thinner. Each figure shows the date we saw it.
Heathrow keeps one genuine advantage: the transfer. The Elizabeth line reaches central London in about 35 minutes and the Piccadilly line does it for an ordinary Tube fare in about 50, which is faster and cheaper than the dedicated trains from Stansted or Luton. Do not assume the ticket buys you more, either: the cheapest fares on network carriers are stripped-down light fares, and a checked bag often costs extra there too. From Vilnius, Heathrow makes sense when you are connecting onward from it or when its arrival times fit and the low-cost schedules do not. On price alone it loses in every month we can compare.
The verdict
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01Check Luton first, Stansted secondThe two low-cost airports hold the low fares from Vilnius, and Luton's monthly floor is the lower one in almost every month we measure. The gap is not huge, so always compare both for your actual dates before booking.
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02Count the transfer both waysThe train or coach into central London and back is part of the ticket price in all but name. A late-evening arrival can also add a night bus or a taxi, which is worth more than most fare gaps.
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03Mix the airports when it paysNothing forces you to fly out of the airport you flew into. The Vilnius routes into Stansted and Luton are sold as one-way fares, so you can land at one and leave from the other whenever the cheaper departure day sits on the other side of London. It costs nothing extra beyond planning two transfers instead of one.
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04Price Heathrow as a whole trip, not a fareIts flights from Vilnius involve a change on the way, so count the extra hours as well as the money. It earns its place when you are connecting onward or need its schedule, not when you are hunting the cheapest way into London.
For what to do once you land, the London guide covers the free-first way to spend a weekend there. And if London is one option among several, the cheapest flights from Vilnius rank every destination we price from the same airport by the floor we measured.