Why choose Swapfiets over Lime?

Ride with Lime

• £1 unlock fee + 31p per minute, every trip

• Rush hour is a gamble: bikes go fast, and missing one when you’re pressed for time can mean a stressful 15-minute walk instead.

• Often rideable, but frequently in poor repair, worn brakes, tyres or gears make for a rough and sometimes unsafe ride.

• Paying by the minute pushes you to rush, and even jump red lights, to save money. With Swapfiets you get unlimited minutes, so there’s no meter to beat.

Subscribe to Swapfiets

• Fixed monthly price

• Repairs included, unlimited

• Your own bike, right where you left it

• Cancel any time with a month’s notice

Cost comparison: Lime vs Swapfiets

Lime raised its London per-minute rate from 29p to 31p, and its 30-minute bundle from £3.99 to £4.49. That means a standard 20-minute pay-as-you-go journey that used to cost £5.80 now costs £6.20.

£6.20 for one 20-minute trip. Do that twice a day and you’ve spent £12.40 before lunch.

A “riding day” below means two trips, there and back.

Lime pricing as reported in March 2026; rates vary by city, time and demand, and are shown in the Lime app before each ride. Check current rates before relying on these figures.

But what about LimePrime?

Credit where it’s due: LimePrime materially changes the maths, and any comparison that ignores it isn’t being straight with you.

LimePrime in London costs £6.99 per month, with rides priced at £1.70 for up to 20 minutes. That’s below a single bus fare of £1.75 and a Tube fare starting at £2.20, plus free unlocks and 30-minute reservations.

So the real comparison for a London commuter is this:

Even on Lime’s best subscription pricing, a full commuting month runs to roughly £75; because you’re still paying per trip on top of the membership. And the £1.70 flat rate only holds for 20 minutes; after that you’re back on a per-minute rate, discounted but still ticking.

That’s the structural difference. With LimePrime, more riding costs more. With Swapfiets, more riding costs nothing extra.

Convenience: the part that isn’t in the price

• Availability. Your Swapfiets is where you left it. A Lime is where someone else left it, possibly a seven-minute walk away, on 12% battery.

• Parking. This one’s getting sharper in London. Westminster has begun issuing £100 fines to operators for bikes left blocking pavements, and boroughs including Hackney have introduced tighter parking rules and fare caps, while Hounslow ended its Lime trial entirely. Your own bike goes in a rack and stays there.

• Maintenance. Nobody services a Lime for you, but nobody services your own bought bike either. With Swapfiets, repairs are included and unlimited: if we can’t fix it in 10 minutes, we swap it.

• Theft. London bike theft is a genuine deterrent to ownership. Swapfiets includes basic theft coverage.

• Carrying things. A front rack you can load beats a shared basket you have to find first.

Electric: Lime e-bikes vs a Swapfiets e-Bike

Every Lime bike is electric, so this is the fairest head-to-head.

Swapfiets offers monthly bike rental in London. You can choose between the Power 1 and Power 7 e-Bikes on a flat monthly fee from £54.90. Ride 20 days a month and the per-day cost falls to pocket change; ride 20 days on Lime, even with LimePrime, and you’re near £75.

Two more things worth weighing:

• Cyclescheme. Swapfiets e-Bikes are available through Cyclescheme, which can cut the effective monthly cost significantly if your employer participates. Lime has no equivalent.

• It’s yours. Same battery, same fit, same saddle height, charged at home. No hunting for one with enough charge to reach the office.

So which should you pick?

Choose Lime if you ride occasionally, unpredictably, one-way, or you’re visiting. If you ride two or three times a month, LimePrime is a genuinely good deal and we’d rather say so than pretend otherwise.

Choose Swapfiets if you ride most weeks, want the same bike every time, and would rather pay one predictable amount than watch a meter, and if you have somewhere to keep a bike.