Somewhere between £14 and £50 a person, which is a uselessly wide answer. The reason it’s wide is that tracks price sessions of wildly different lengths, on circuits of wildly different sizes, and then add compulsory costs at the counter.
Here’s how to work out what you’ll actually pay.
Headline prices don’t compare
Two examples from tracks we’ve checked. Karting at Haynes charges £35 for a twenty-minute arrive and drive. Dunkeswell Raceway charges £46 for thirty minutes. The cheaper-looking one is the worse value.
Per minute on track, that’s £1.75 at Haynes against £1.53 at Dunkeswell. Aviemore Kart Raceway comes in lower still at £1.40 for a ten-minute time trial in a cadet kart.
We calculate cost per minute the same way for every track on this site: session price divided by minutes on track. It’s the only number that lets you compare a twenty-minute session against a thirty-minute one, and it’s on every listing.
Circuit length matters too
Cost per minute still isn’t the whole story, because a minute at one track buys more driving than a minute at another.
Dunkeswell is 750 metres. Karting at Haynes is 400. At roughly a 46-second lap, thirty minutes at Dunkeswell covers about 29 kilometres. The same money at a short indoor circuit buys you a lot of corners and not much road.
Neither is better in the abstract. A tight indoor track is more work per lap and often more fun for beginners. But if you’re comparing on price, distance covered is the honest measure, and we show it wherever a track publishes lap times.
The costs they don’t put in the headline
This is where budgets go wrong, and it’s rarely more than a few pounds a head, but it adds up across a group.
Most tracks require a balaclava, and many require gloves. Some sell them, none of them include them:
- Karting at Haynes: £5 for balaclava and gloves
- Absolutely Karting: £5 for balaclava and gloves, £3 for the younger Whizz Kart sessions
- Full Throttle Raceway: £4 a set
- Aviemore Kart Raceway: £1.50 for a balaclava, £1.50 for gloves
- Nottingham Raceway: £2 for a balaclava
So a “£35” session for two people at Haynes is £80 by the time you leave. Bring your own balaclava and gloves and you keep that money. They’re reusable and cheap online.
Deposits are the other thing worth knowing. Bayford Meadows takes £25 per person to hold a booking. Nottingham Raceway takes £10, non-refundable, and charges for the number booked even if fewer turn up. That last clause is common and catches groups out constantly.
What group events cost
Race formats cost more than open sessions, because you’re getting qualifying, heats and a final rather than laps.
Dunkeswell publishes a full set, which is unusually transparent. Sprint races run from £54 for ten laps up to £71 for thirty. A Grand Prix is £79. The Ultimate Grand Prix is £97.
Nearly all of them carry a minimum group size. Six drivers is typical at Dunkeswell. Bayford Meadows needs eight for an exclusive event. Nottingham Raceway needs ten to have the track to yourselves. Full Throttle Raceway needs ten for corporate, twelve for a Grand Prix and six for an enduro, or seven at weekends.
If your group is smaller than the minimum, you’re either paying for absent drivers or booking an open session instead.
The format that’s better value than it looks
Team endurance is usually priced per kart rather than per driver, and people miss this.
At Dunkeswell, an hour of endurance is £95, two hours £165 and three hours £220, with a minimum of six karts. Split between four drivers sharing a kart, an hour works out under £24 each for far more track time than a £54 sprint race. Clay Pigeon Raceway runs the same idea with endurance races for pairs, threes and fours.
For a group where budget matters more than everyone racing individually, it’s the format to ask about.
Owning a kart is a different scale
If the question is really about getting into club racing rather than a day out, the numbers change completely. An ARKS test and licence, club membership, a used kart, safety kit, race entries and tyres come to several thousand in a first season.
We’ve written that up separately in our guide to racing your own kart.
Working out your real total
- Find the cost per minute, not the headline price.
- Add the compulsory kit, or bring your own balaclava and gloves.
- Check the minimum group size before you commit to a race format.
- Ask whether endurance is priced per kart if your group is larger than four.
- Check the deposit terms, particularly what happens if someone drops out.
Every listing on this site shows the session price, the cost per minute, and any compulsory extras we’ve found. Prices change, so we show the date each listing was last checked, and it’s always worth confirming with the track when you book.