We study self-avoiding walks (SAWs) on non-Euclidean lattices that correspond to regular tilings of the hyperbolic plane (‘hyperbolic graphs’). We prove that on all but at most eight such graphs, (i) there are exponentially fewer $N$-step self-avoiding polygons than there are $N$-step SAWs, (ii) the number of $N$-step SAWs grows as $\mu_w^N$ within a constant factor, and (iii) the average end-to-end distance of an $N$-step SAW is approximately proportional to $N$. In terms of critical exponents from statistical physics, (ii) says that $\gamma=1$ and (iii) says that $\nu=1$. We also prove that $\gamma$ is finite on all hyperbolic graphs, and we prove a general identity about non-reversing walks that had previously been discovered for certain special cases.