Using oyster card in buses

Question

How are bus rides accounted for when using an Oyster card? London Underground stations have ticket barriers that scan the card on entry and exit, but using a bus the card is only scanned when boarding. How is the correct fare calculated in this case?

Answer 1

They do not need to - there is a fixed fare per bus journey (£1.50 at the time of writing), no matter how long you travel.

It gets a little bit more complicated if taking more than one journey - with the new 'Hopper Fare' you can make unlimited journeys (on busses) within one hour. A British transport enthusiast celebrated this by changing bus over twenty times in an hour.

There is a daily price-cap for bus travel too - no matter how many bus trips you take, you will be charged at most £4.50 (assuming no travel on other Oyster services).

The above applies for bus and tram (or a combination of the two) travel. Things are more complicated if you also take other services which are available on Oyster (tube, national rail, DLR, etc.)

Source: https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/bus-and-tram-fares