London restaurants with a view, including the two that are free

Every round-up of London restaurants with a view sells you a table. Two of the best views in the city are free, and they belong at the top of a list like this rather than nowhere on it.

Below: the free ones first, then the ones worth paying for, with what makes each different rather than which has the tallest number.

The two you do not pay for

Horizon 22 is the highest free viewing platform in London, in the City, and it costs nothing. The catch is the hours: it closes early, so it is a before-dinner view rather than an evening one, and it books up.

Sky Garden, at the top of the Walkie Talkie, is the other free one, and it has restaurants and bars inside it if you want to turn the free visit into a paid evening. Booking ahead is effectively required at both and neither takes walk-ups reliably.

Neither is a restaurant with a view in the sense the phrase usually means. Both are a view you can stand in for nothing, which is the more useful fact.

The one that never closes

Duck and Waffle is on the 40th floor of Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, London EC2N 4AY, and it is open 24 hours a day. Checked on the venue’s own site on 9 September 2026.

That is the thing no other London view has. Sunrise breakfast, business lunch, dinner and a three in the morning plate of something, all forty floors up, seven days a week. There is a Sunday roast from 11:30 to 3:30 and an afternoon tea served inside a hand-painted egg. If the question is where to eat above London at an hour when nowhere else is open, the list has one name on it.

Note there is a second Duck and Waffle in Edinburgh which keeps ordinary hours, so check you are reading London’s when you book.

The rooftops, and which survive a London October

This is the question that decides most bookings between October and April, and most round-ups never ask it.

Alto by San Carlo, on the roof of Selfridges, has a fully retractable roof, so it works in weather that closes the rest. Pergola on the Wharf sits inside the covered Crossrail Place roof garden at Canary Wharf, which is a garden you can use in November. And El Pastor at Battersea Power Station has a covered, heated terrace open all year, with the Power Station itself as the view.

Wagtail, on King William Street, is the City’s late licensed one, and its claim is checkable from what it lists: Tower Bridge, St Paul’s, the Shard, the Gherkin and the Walkie Talkie from a single terrace.

Roof East in Stratford is the opposite case and the useful warning: no roof, and it closes for winter on 27 September.

How to choose

For the view alone and no money, Horizon 22 or Sky Garden, booked ahead, early. For an evening that carries on, Wagtail, because the City’s other high rooms shut when the offices empty. For bad weather, Alto or Pergola, because a retractable roof and a covered garden are the only honest answers in a London winter. For an hour when nothing else is open, Duck and Waffle.

Rooftop bars in London covers drinking rather than eating, and best bars sorts the rest by what you want from the night.