It doesn't look like much from the air, but London’s Silicon Roundabout is a world famous technology cluster that has attracted thousands of innovative start-ups to launch or relocate from other areas. It is the beating heart of the UK’s dominant financial technology (fintech) sector.

But the area’s dominance has just been calculated in numerical terms for the first time. London estate agent Stirling Ackroyd’s inaugural London Hubs Tracker shows that Silicon Roundabout is eight times denser than its closest silicon rival, Silicon Mill in Manchester.

The cluster is 16 times denser than the top Birmingham hub and 17 times more packed than Brighton’s Silicon Pier. Cambridge’s Silicon Fen, home to some of Britain’s most successful technology companies, has one seventieth of the density.

"The model for these disruptive businesses relies on a small number of talented individuals working and living near like-minded people"

The figures show that a single postcode EC1V is London’s true technology bubble. It is 56 times denser than the rest of the Capital. The wider EC postcode is home to 6,792 tech firms, a more than 17% of the city’s nearly 40,000 businesses in this sector.

Andrew Bridges, managing director of Stirling Ackroyd, said: “At the bright heart of Britain’s technology industry, there’s an entrepreneurial startup spirit to the Old Street area that’s creating its own gravitational force.

“Creativity and community matter – and East London has both in spades. A new tribe of Londoners have made their home in the East, and this kind of movement develops its own momentum.

“This is especially true for tech companies. They tend to depend on a small number of highly skilled individuals. They rarely need enormous offices. But they absolutely depend on the warp-speed exchange of ideas.

“You might think a cutting edge tech start up would depend more on remote working – but the model for these disruptive businesses relies on a small number of talented individuals working and living near like-minded people.”

Shoreditch, Tech City and its surrounding area is home to famous technology firms including Transferwise, GoCardless and Tweet Deck, while large companies like Cisco, EE, Intel and Google have set up innovation hubs to encourage more start-ups to the area.