How to choose the cheapest Aberdeen Airport Parking?

Used to just rocking up to the official Aberdeen Airport site on the day and paying as you enter? Perfectly understandable as you just want to relax and enjoy your holiday; however, by using Airport Parking Shop and a tiny bit of planning, you can save money and perhaps find an option better suited to you.

A comparison: Just turning up at Aberdeen Airport Official Long Stay is listed at £35 for the 1st day, £80 for 3 days, £125 for 7 days, and £9 per day thereafter. Our lowest price last week was £183.47 for a 7 day stay.

Tempted? Then, whether it is the nearest car park or the cheapest, we give you the answers below in just five bite-sized chunks.

1 – Understand Your Parking Type Options (and what's usually cheapest)

Quick Insights

Park & Ride is usually the cheapest (you park further away and take a bus), while Short Stay, situated next to the terminal is the most expensive.

A Deeper Dive

(but don't worry you will be back to the surface in no time)

The four main types of parking are Short Stay, Long Stay/Park & Ride, Meet & Greet and Valet Parking options:

• Short Stay (or multi-storey) — usually very near to the terminal and just a few minutes' walk to departures.
• Long Stay (or Park & Ride) — These two names exist because Long Stay is more often used for the name of the official airport car park, while Park & Ride is used by third-party providers. What they have in common is that they usually require a bus ride or are at the very least a longish walk of 10 minutes or so (depending on the airport).
• Meet & Greet — you leave your car and keys in an agreed part of the airport, and it is taken to a secure car park off-site.
• Valet Parking — like Meet & Greet but with the added bonus that a driver will meet you at the terminal drop off point, saving you the trouble of even having to go to the agreed space.

If you're travelling with the family, you may find the Meet & Greet service is best suited to you, if you're not carrying huge amounts of luggage then a cheaper off-airport car park may be the best option for you.

Aberdeen Airport Carpark Specifics

Short Stay — Aberdeen’s official Short Stay multi-storey is a 2-minute walk from the terminal; your car stays undercover and you only have a quick dash across the road where you might get rained on.

Meet & Greet — Presently, there are no Meet & Greet operators at Aberdeen airport, but that could change.

Park & Ride — Options include Park & Depart (official) and Aberdeen Airpark (third-party). Park & Depart transfers take around 3–5 minutes with shuttles every ~5 minutes; Aberdeen Airpark’s shuttle is about 10 minutes and you leave keys.

Long Stay (official) — Uses a free shuttle (around 5 minutes) and also offers free waiting for up to 1 hour for pick-up; keep keys.

Express — There is an Express option sold by various companies – Airparks, Purple Parking and HolidayExtras – that is the same car park (you might notice the 5-minute walk and wonder how they all manage to build car parks exactly that distance away). Between short stay and park & ride, it is either a godsend that exactly matches your distance vs price needs, or a head scratcher that keeps you up for countless nights as you evaluate the incremental extra time you can spend getting ready versus extra money you spend, compared to the other options.

Which parking type is cheapest?

Expect to pay more for convenience. Short Stay is usually the most expensive option as your car stays in the closest car park to the airport and your keys stay in your pocket, allowing you a quick walk back to your car. Even though you will drop your car very close to the airport, Valet and Meet & Greet can still be cheaper than Long Stay (Park & Ride) - Meet & Greet providers take your car off airport to cheaper locations, so they can be very competitive. You also have to arrange dropping off and picking up times and leave your keys.

Using Airport Parking Shop

Tip: By default, Airport Parking Shop lists prices from low to high irrespective of the parking type, which you can see in the blue box. If you are sure what kind of parking type you want, simply hit the Filter Results option above the results and then select for just what you want under Parking Options on the left.

2 – Plan to Book in Advance

Quick Insight

Start looking at least two weeks in advance.

(The Quick Dive-Down Part)

The most expensive way to park is to turn up on the day and pay as you enter.

Not only will it cost more but they might not have spaces, leaving you with a lot more stress than having to remember to book!

Each car park will have their own prices, but on the official Aberdeen Airport site Long Stay turn-up pricing shows up to 24 hours £35; 3 days £80; 7 days £125; then £9 per day thereafter — and Short Stay turn-up is £60 for 24 hours.

You can save more money by booking in advance, with the amount you save depending on how far in advance you book: aim for at least two weeks.

Aberdeen Airport - Advance Pricing Comparison

As you can see from the table above, the average price of one day’s Park & Ride parking fell from £27.64 to £12.28 when booked two weeks in advance, compared to one day ahead.

Note: The above is for guidance on price differences not an estimate of your price. It includes quotes for 1 day's parking up to 14+ days and you will pay a much lower price if you book for more days. In addition, it includes all providers in that category - for example, Park & Ride - and some will be more expensive. You can see a list of the cheapest providers over the last week above or simply do a search to compare latest prices across all the leading comparison sites. We don’t own any car parks, we are only interested in getting you the cheapest price.

Tip: Prices go up due to availability (or lack of) so at busier times of the year, like school and national holidays, you may want to start looking at prices even earlier.

3 - Don't Rely Just on Aberdeen Official Carparks

Quick Insight

While third-party car parks are usually cheaper than Official airport carparks, Aberdeen Long Stay, the official option, can be very competitive too.

A Deeper Dive

(It is only snorkelling)

Aberdeen, like most airports, has its own car parks which cover Short Stay, Long Stay, and (premium) Priority, among others. And, like most airports, it has third party operators providing parking options. You may have read about rogue parking operators at airports and understandably that can be off putting but the reality is that lots of trusted, established providers – APH, NCP, Purple Parking, FHR and so many others - run car parks all across the UK.

Aberdeen official car parks — At Aberdeen the official car parks are Short Stay (multi-storey), Priority Parking, and Long Stay. The rest, as you have no doubt guessed, are third-party.

Why no third-party Short Stay? – By virtue of short stay needing to offer a short walk and therefore be near the terminal and on the airport grounds, it is usually the preserve of the official airport parking – with third party operators focused on Park & Ride and Meet & Greet.

Is official or third-party the cheapest?

Comparing like-for-like, for example, Meet & Greet or Park & Ride (Long Stay), official operators are often more expensive than third-party; however, this is not always the case and at Aberdeen Airport, Official Park & Ride turns out to have average daily price for quotes made two weeks in advance of £11.93 compared to £16.86 for Third-Party Park & Ride.

(Sorry, a quick rant – pricing is dynamic, so we try not to litter our pages with teaser cheapest prices based on a point in the future when we know nobody is flying. We do give you some lowest prices based on actual quotes and bookings in the last week, but otherwise we encourage you to do a search. We don't collect your email or anything else so there is no inconvenience for you. Okay...rant over!)

Tip: it might be considered that the official car park has better facilities or convenience, but not necessarily; remember to check features like distance to terminal and shuttle bus schedules.

Using Airport Parking Shop

Airport Parking Shop allows you to see official and third-party car parks together based around key functionality. For example, carparks that need a bus will be under Park & Ride; we don't leave official ones under on-airport, making it difficult to filter and compare.

4 - Compare Parking Features to Find the Best Value

There is very likely to be more than one provider of your chosen parking option: Aberdeen Airport has at least 2 Park & Ride operators. Therefore, once you have decided on a parking type, you can then compare what they offer to see which one offers the right balance of price and convenience for you:

• Transfer time & frequency: walk or shuttle time and how often for the shuttle.
• Distance from terminal: check how many miles away your Meet & Greet is taking your vehicle.
• Keys: leave keys is often cheaper; keep keys is a convenience premium.
• Booking flexibility: fully flexible vs pay-now/non-refundable.
• Opening hours: 24/7 collection for late/early flights.
• Accessibility: step-free routes, Blue Badge bays.
• Security & reviews: independent accreditation, recent ratings.
• Total price, not headline: watch out-of-hours, late-return, or oversized-vehicle fees.

For example, Park & Depart quotes 3–5 minutes with frequent shuttles, while Aberdeen Airpark quotes about 10 minutes (keys left).

Using Airport Parking Shop

Tip: After doing a search the features above will be displayed in the tabs, or by hitting the More Info button.

5 - Compare Sites to Find the Cheapest and Save More

Quick insight

Not every airport parking site works with every carpark and sometimes they can sell the same space at different prices. It helps to check more than one site and use a meta provider like Airport Parking Shop.

The Detail

(I ran out of deep dive riffs)

So, you are ready to save money – you've even planned out how many more drinks you can get at the pool bar. But then you google for Aberdeen Airport parking, you see so many sites to choose from, and your head starts to hurt. Which one is best?

The world of airport parking is made up of lots of businesses:

• The official airport car parks usually run by the airport.
• National third-party car park chains – for example NCP or Purple Parking - who have branded, large capacity, car parks where you can park yourself and keep your keys.
• Small independent ones who may be regional.
• Meet & Greet providers who take your car to a secure compound that you won't visit.

The smaller ones may wholly rely on comparison sites to sell spaces for them, while the larger ones may have their own web shops. The larger ones usually sell their own spaces and often ones from other car parks – they may even rebrand these spaces as their own. The result is a lot of choice and understandable throbbing in your head.

Use a comparison site to cut through the noise

This definitely helps but not every car park works with every comparison site and sometimes, different sites charge different prices for the same space. Ever been searching for car insurance and found a provider available on one comparison site and not another, or at a different price? Airport parking is no different with the added complication that some comparison sites are selling their own spaces too.

Search more than one

The key therefore is finding the cheapest price is to check as many different sites as possible. As with anything else, there is a cost benefit ratio so you might set yourself a target of the top 3 or 4. Or you might just give up!

All the comparison sites have a lowest price guarantee – isn't that great?

Checking multiple sites for lowest prices is a time-consuming exercise so why not just rely on the cheapest price guarantee of the first one? Cheapest price guarantees are fantastic, but it is down to you to go find a lower price elsewhere, often within 24 hours, and then contact the original provider, send them the link, and wait for their refund. Something most of us don't have time for.

How Airport Parking Shop Can Help

That is why Airport Parking Shop is here. We compare the car parks for you, and we even compare the comparison sites. We are independent, we don't have any car parks of our own. Check the logos for our partners above and then look down the search results for airport parking and you can see we work with almost everyone (find one we don't, let us know and we'll get on it).

How we save time and money:

• See more options: both independent carparks and comparison sites.
• Compare providers: see prices for the same space, all next to each other in one search.
• See like-for-like: compare Park & Ride with Park & Ride, Meet & Greet with Meet & Greet.
• Quickly narrow down: filter by parking type, customer reviews, providers and even distance to the airport.
• Switch dates in a click: easily change date and arrival times to compare prices and see the cheapest.
• Understand feature differences: see summary cards of key features in the results or click to find more information.

What terminology is helpful to understand pricing?

Meet & Greet vs Valet Parking

Meet & Greet and Valet Parking are similar beasts, but Valet Parking offers a more premium service. With Meet & Greet it is usually your job to park in a designated space and take your keys to a desk and hand them over, while with Valet Parking someone meets you outside the terminal, speeding up the process.

Park & Ride vs Long Stay

These terms are often used interchangeably with Park & Ride preferred by third party operators and Long Stay by the official airport. In general, both involve a bus ride; at Aberdeen, Long Stay uses a shuttle bus rather than a walk.

On-airport vs off-airport

Many comparison sites have an on-airport filter and a separate one for Park & Ride. The on-airport category might seem self- explanatory, but the search results usually include Long Stay, which is often a bus ride away - similar to Park & Ride. The reason is that Long Stay is usually owned by the airport, so think of On Airport as anything owned by the airport. Unfortunately, when you filter Park & Ride you won't get the Long Stay to compare it to. We don't do this, putting Long Stay in with Park & Ride to allow that comparison.

Short Stay

Short Stay doesn't mean you have to stay for a short period of time. The price and closeness to the airport means it is usually used by friends or relatives sending someone off, but you can park for a week or two if you want. Just remember it will cost you a lot more.

Aberdeen Airport Car Parks Additional Information

Long Stay Parking at Aberdeen Airport

Operated by APCOA, the Aberdeen Airport Long Stay car park is situated within the airport perimeter (on-airport) and is a secure, well maintained car parking option most suitable for travellers going away for longer periods. Transfer coach service runs regularly between the car park and the terminal, taking approximately 2 minutes.

Alternatives: A good cost-effective alternative is Aberdeen Airpark parking, situated off-airport, with a convenient 24/7 transfer service running at 10-15 minute intervals. To compare prices for long term parking from both the airport's official Long Stay and Airpark please use the search form above.

Aberdeen Airpark postcode: AB21 OHH

Short Stay Parking at Aberdeen Airport

Aberdeen Airport Short Stay car park, situated right next door to the airport terminal, boasts 500 car park spaces and is an ideal option for travellers wishing to park their cars for a few hours or less. The Short Stay car park postcode is AB21 7DU.

Short Stay parking fees start at £4 for 20 minutes, £7 for an hour, £12 for 90 minutes and £39 for 24 hours. These are the drive-up pricesknown to be correct as of January 2021. If you book parking in advance, you can save up to 60%!

Car parks where you keep your keys at Aberdeen Airport

• Aberdeen Airport Short Stay
• Aberdeen Airport Long Stay
• Aberdeen Park and Depart

Motorbike parking at Aberdeen Airport

The airport does have free parking for motorbikes. More details on where to find the parking options can be found on our motorbike parking at airports blog.

Aberdeen City Local Area

Aberdeen is a thriving, cosmopolitan port in the north east of Scotland, built at the mouth of two major Scottish rivers. This region of Scotland is blessed with outstanding scenery - the magnificent Grampian Mountains dominate the skyline to the West, whilst miles of unspoiled and often spectacular coastline frame the area in the east.

Discover magnificent castles and gardens, wildlife galore, museums, distilleries, art galleries and championship golf courses... with bustling shopping centres, a wide variety of entertainment and leisure facilities, and a vibrant arts scene. Aberdeen is a major retail, leisure and cultural centre.

Other Services at Aberdeen Airport

If Aberdeen Airport is your final destination and you intend to explore the beauty of Scotland by car, get a competitive car hire deal with Car Hire Centre.