West End tickets: how to pay half what the person next to you paid

London has the best theatre in the world and it is cheaper than Broadway, but the pricing is close to random. Two people in adjacent seats can have paid £150 and £25 for the same evening, and the difference is almost never luck. It's knowing which door to go through.

Here are the five legitimate doors, roughly in order of how much effort they cost you.

1. The theatre's own website

Start here every time, even when you think you'll do better elsewhere.

Producers hold back cheaper seats and release them in waves, so a show that looked sold out in March often has £30 seats in September. Booking fees are usually lower direct than through an agent, and if you buy in person at the box office there is frequently no fee at all — worth knowing if you're walking past anyway.

Restricted view is the most underrated bargain in London. It can mean a pillar in front of your nose, but far more often it means you can't see two feet of the far corner of the stage. The discount is real and the compromise usually isn't.

2. TKTS, Leicester Square

The one booth worth queuing at. TKTS is run by the Society of London Theatre, the industry's own not-for-profit body — it is not a reseller, and any profit goes back into theatre. That single fact separates it from the dozen booths nearby that look similar and are not.

It sells discounted and full-price tickets for the same day and up to a week ahead. Discounts vary enormously by show and by how well it's selling — anywhere from token to well over half off. There is a booking fee, which covers the running of the booth.

It's on the south side of Leicester Square, in the clock-tower building in the gardens. Open Monday to Saturday 10.30am–6pm, and Sunday 11am–4pm. Go early in the day for the best pick, or late for the deepest discounts on that evening's unsold seats.

Every other "half-price ticket" shop around Leicester Square is a private agency. Some are perfectly legitimate; none of them are TKTS.

3. Day seats

A first-come, first-served allocation released on the morning of the performance, usually at the box office, usually cheap and usually in the front row.

You queue. For a hit show that can mean well before the box office opens; for most shows it means turning up at opening time. This is the option that rewards persistence rather than luck, and it's realistic if you're already staying central — much less so if it costs you a morning of a short trip.

Standing tickets are the same idea with a lower price and a physical cost. Fine for a two-hour play, a long evening for a three-hour musical.

4. Lotteries and rush

The app route, and the cheapest of all if it lands.

Lotteries give away a small allocation at a fixed low price — typically £25 to £35 — drawn at random from everyone who entered before a deadline. You enter the day before or the morning of, and you're told whether you've won.

Rush tickets are the same low prices without the draw: a batch released at a set time on the day, first come first served, usually through an app.

Both are genuinely cheap and genuinely unreliable. Enter them, but don't build an evening around them — have a plan that survives losing.

5. Midweek matinees

The simplest saving on this page, and nobody uses it.

Tuesday to Thursday matinees are the hardest performances to fill, so they carry the lowest prices and the best availability. Same cast, same show, usually a quieter house. If your trip has one flexible afternoon, spend it here.

Never, under any circumstances

Do not buy from anyone who approaches you in the street. Not near the theatre, not in Leicester Square, not "because the show starts in ten minutes". These tickets are frequently invalid, sometimes already used, and there is no recourse whatsoever once you've handed over cash.

Be careful with resale sites. Touts operate online too, often with sites designed to look like a theatre's own. The check that works: legitimate agents are members of STAR, the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers. If a site isn't a STAR member and isn't the theatre itself, close the tab.

Watch the total, not the headline. A £45 ticket with a £12 fee is worse than a £52 ticket with none. Agents advertise the first number.

What we'd actually do

Check the theatre's own website first for the show you want. If the price is fine, book it and stop optimising — an evening you're looking forward to is worth more than £15 saved.

If it isn't fine, and you're already in London, walk to TKTS in the late afternoon and take what's good that night. That combination gets you a good seat at a fair price without spending your holiday refreshing an app.

For the whole trip in context, see our three-day itinerary, which puts theatre on the last evening for exactly this reason: by then you know how much walking you've got left in you.