For Berlin I pay 760€ for a yearly ticket despite not living centrally (AB zone ticket still covers it). London zones 1-2 yearly ticket[1] is £1404 (=1574.45€) again factor of 2 more expensive.
When we lived in Vienna (a wealthy city, probably similar to Munich or Hamburg) transit prices were similar to Berlin (maybe even cheaper).
Not to mention that because London housing is so expensive most "common people" (who aren't living with room mates or are very wealthy) live in what we would consider a suburb rather than the city (in terms of distance from the city center) thus paying fares from further zones (iirc my friends at the time lived in zone 3 & were middle class professionals not paupers and/or with huge families).
From 8 years of living in Vienna and 5 of living in Berlin transit costs were never significant to me & I never lived in the center of either city.
The numbers quoted from the links above line up with my gut feeling when visiting London (my feeling was even more extreme actually, but a few years ago the GBP was worth a lot more € than today).
People presume that Berlin is the center of Germany, when in fact it absolutely isn't. Hamburg is a much more wealthy city that Berlin. Here's [1] the ticket prices for Hamburg [1] and here's [2] the ticket prices for London, are you seeing much difference?
[1] https://www.hvv.de/en/tickets/single-day-tickets/overview [2] https://www.visitbritainshop.com/world/london-travelcard/