Last updated: 2 September 2026Monzo Perks worth it
By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
Is Monzo Perks worth it? I have paid for the plan out of my own pocket for a year. So this is the answer from someone who scans the Greggs code at the till, rather than someone reading the marketing page. Monzo reckons the bundle is worth over £300 a year. In my case it is worth more than that, and for most people I know it would be worth almost nothing.
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
This is not financial advice. Prices, rates and plan benefits change often, so always check Monzo's own terms before you decide anything.
Thinking of opening a Monzo account?
My referral page always carries the current Monzo refer-a-friend offer, plus the steps to claim it.
Below: what I claim, what I never claim, the perk that quietly pays for the plan, and the charge that catches people who cancel.
Section 01 / The bundle
What £9 a month actually buys
Five partner perks, a savings rate, and a pile of budgeting tools most people never open.
Perks costs £9 a month, so £108 a year. For that you get a weekly Greggs treat, an annual Railcard and a monthly Vue cinema ticket with 10% off food and soft drinks. Then there is an annual Uber One membership and, since August 2026, YouTube Premium Lite.
Underneath the treats sit the money bits. Instant Access savings pay 3.25% AER (variable) on Perks, against 2.75% on the free account. Select Access pays 3.65% AER (variable) if you make two withdrawals a year or fewer. The Saving Challenge pays 5.00% AER (variable). You also get Billsback, a lower investment platform fee, five virtual cards, advanced roundups, two credit scores and a Google Sheets export.
Monzo prices the partner half at over £300 a year. That number is not made up. However, it assumes you claim everything, every time, which almost nobody does.
The Perks list in the Monzo app. Eight lines, and I use four of them.
Monzo changed its plan prices in 2026. My Monzo Perks price increase breakdown has every tier, the key dates and the maths.
Section 02 / My year
Is Monzo Perks worth it for me? The honest maths
Four lines carry the plan. The rest do nothing at all.
What I claim in a year, priced against what I would otherwise pay. Checked 2 September 2026.
The Greggs perk is the coffee, not the sausage roll
The weekly code covers one item and one item only: a sausage roll, a muffin, a doughnut, or a regular hot drink. A vegan sausage roll costs me somewhere between £1.25 and £1.50. A regular hot drink costs over £3. So I take the drink and pay for the roll myself, which roughly doubles what the perk is worth.
I claim it most weeks rather than every week. At £3 a drink that lands somewhere between £78 and £117 a year, which makes Greggs the second biggest line in the whole plan. I have never once had the doughnut.
The Railcard is the one that pays
My Railcard saves me roughly £150 a year on fares, and that single perk covers the plan on its own. A one-year Railcard costs £35 to buy outright for most types, so even the sticker price is a third of the annual fee.
There is one real irritation, though. Monzo issues the Railcard as a Trainline voucher code, so the card ends up living in the Trainline app. I book through TrainPal, which is usually cheaper, so my Railcard and my booking app are in two different places. It is a faff every single time. If you want the comparison, I have written up TrainPal against Trainline properly, and my TrainPal page has the current offer. There is also a Railcard discount code page if you are buying one outright instead.
The two subscriptions Perks took over
YouTube Premium Lite replaced a shared YouTube family plan I was paying £4.99 a month for, so that is £59.88 a year I no longer spend. Monzo values Lite at £7.99 a month. That figure is Monzo's, not YouTube's, because YouTube publishes no UK Lite price I could verify. Do not overrate it, though. Ads still appear on music content, on Shorts and while you browse. Downloads do not work on either.
Uber One is the same story. I was already paying for it, and Uber sells it at £4.99 a month or £49.99 a year, so Perks simply took the direct debit away.
Section 03 / The dead weight
The Perks features that are worth nothing to me
Three of the money features look good on the comparison table and do nothing in my account.
The savings boost needs about £21,600 behind it
The savings rate boost is the obvious one. Perks lifts Instant Access from 2.75% to 3.25% AER (variable), which is half a percentage point. To earn back £108 a year on half a point you would need roughly £21,600 sitting in Monzo pots. Mine is not sitting there. Mine live in a Chip prize saver and in two regular savers, one with Zopa and one with First Direct. Both of those pay well over anything Monzo offers on a pot. So the boost earns me nothing at all. Chip runs its own sign-up offer, which sits on my Chip referral code page. Meanwhile, if you do keep your balance with Monzo, I have explained how the pots work in my guide to Monzo savings pots, and there is a wider comparison in my roundup of the best savings accounts. Every rate here is variable and can move at any time.
The 5% Saving Challenge is on Extra too
The one savings feature I do use is the Saving Challenge, on the 4x setting, which saves up to £2,671 across a year and pays 5.00% AER (variable). Notice the catch, though. That challenge is on Extra, Perks and Max alike, and Extra costs £3 a month. So it is a reason to leave the free account, not a reason to pay for Perks.
Billsback is a prize draw, not income
Billsback is the other one. Monzo pays back over a thousand bills a month, up to £150 each, and I have never had a single one. That is how a prize draw works, so it does not belong in the sums when you are working out whether the plan pays.
The investment discount saves me about thirty pence
Then there is the investment discount. Monzo charges a 0.25% yearly platform fee, or 0.20% with Perks or Max. I put in £50 a month, so the discount saves me about thirty pence a year. Capital at risk. The value of investments can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invested. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. If you want the fee comparison across providers, my cheapest investment app breakdown does it properly, and there is a full Monzo Investments review too. Eligible investments are protected up to £85,000 per person per FCA-authorised firm by the FSCS, which is a different figure from the deposit one below. Tax treatment depends on the individual circumstances of each client and may be subject to change in future.
Four perks pay for this plan. The other eight are there so the comparison table has enough ticks in it.
On a year of Monzo PerksSection 04 / The problems
Where Monzo Perks falls down
The perks expire weekly, the fit is narrower than the marketing, and leaving costs extra.
Claim it or lose it
Every perk here is use-it-or-lose-it. The Greggs code refreshes weekly and the Vue code refreshes monthly, and neither rolls over. A month you forget is simply gone. In practice the plan becomes a small monthly chore. Consequently the people who get least out of it are the ones who were sold on the total and never opened the tab.
The fit is narrower than it looks
My Vue ticket is the proof. I use it a few times a year rather than monthly. Vue is busy, and I would rather give my money to the Genesis, my local independent, or watch something properly at the IMAX. So one of Monzo's two headline perks does close to nothing in my account, and Monzo's own worked example leans on exactly that ticket.
Consequently, the plan suits a fairly specific person: someone who commutes by train, buys from Greggs anyway, goes to a Vue, and orders on Uber Eats. Miss two of those four and the maths collapses fast.
The Railcard charge if you cancel
This is the one that catches people. Redeem the Railcard, then cancel or drop to a lower plan before your Perks anniversary. Monzo then charges you a fee to keep the card. It works out at £2.09 a month for however many months are left. Moving up to Max avoids it, as long as you stay on Max past the date your Perks anniversary would have fallen. It is fair enough as a rule, yet it does quietly kill the plan of claiming the Railcard and leaving.
Perks changes, and it has changed twice already
PizzaExpress used to be in this bundle. Monzo ended that perk on 1 June 2025, telling customers a month beforehand. Since then the price has gone up as well. The terms let Monzo change partner benefits on 30 days' notice, so whatever you are buying today is not what you are guaranteed next year. In other words, the bundle you are buying today is not the bundle you are guaranteed next year.
Section 05 / The verdict
So is Monzo Perks worth it, and who does it suit?
It suits a narrow group very well and everyone else badly.
On my own numbers the answer is yes, comfortably. The Railcard alone clears the fee. Meanwhile the Greggs drink adds most of another hundred pounds, and two subscriptions I was already buying now come free. Add those up and the plan returns somewhere between £338 and £377 against £108. That is a good year.
Even so, almost none of that is about Monzo being clever. It is about my commute. Perks may suit you if you take the train often enough to wear out a Railcard, buy a hot drink on the way in most weeks, and already pay for Uber One or YouTube. It probably will not suit you if you drive everywhere, if there is no Vue near you, or if you were counting on the savings boost to do the heavy lifting.
Monzo's own plan comparison. Select Access pays 3.65% AER (variable) on Perks and Max alike.
There is one more comparison that matters, and it is not with Max. Extra costs £3 a month and already carries the Saving Challenge, Billsback, virtual cards and advanced roundups. So if the treats are not for you, the gap between the two plans buys very little. For the wider picture, my roundup of the best current accounts in the UK puts Monzo next to the alternatives, and my full Monzo review covers the account itself rather than the plan.
Section 06 / Cancelling
Cancelling, and the October date that may not apply to you
There is a deadline in the diary, but it belongs to existing subscribers only.
Monzo relaxed its cancellation rules while the price change beds in. Until the end of 13 October 2026 minimum terms fall away and cancellations happen immediately. Monzo also refunds the remaining days of the billing month pro rata. After that the normal terms return.
That window applies only to people who were already on a plan before 13 August 2026. Anyone signing up now, my referral page included, pays the new price from day one. So there is no deadline to worry about. Outside the relaxed window, cancelling means you keep the benefits until your next payment date and get no refund.
Monzo Bank Limited is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, with Financial Services Register number 730427. Eligible deposits are protected up to £120,000 per eligible person per UK-authorised bank, building society or credit union by the FSCS (since 1 December 2025). The deposit-taker here is Monzo Bank Limited.
Monzo Perks FAQs
Is Monzo Perks worth it if I only use one or two of the perks?
Probably not. The plan costs £108 a year, and a single perk rarely covers that unless it is the Railcard. Add up what you would genuinely claim in a normal month, then compare it with £9. If the sum is close, the free account or Extra will serve you better.
What do you actually get with Monzo Perks?
A weekly Greggs treat, an annual Railcard, a monthly Vue ticket with 10% off food and soft drinks, an annual Uber One membership and YouTube Premium Lite. Alongside those you get 3.25% AER (variable) on Instant Access savings, 3.65% AER (variable) on Select Access, the 5.00% AER (variable) Saving Challenge, Billsback, a lower investment platform fee, five virtual cards, advanced roundups, two credit scores and a Google Sheets export.
Can I cancel Monzo Perks whenever I want?
Yes. Perks has no minimum term, unlike Max, which normally runs for three months. Cancel in the app and you keep the benefits until your next payment date. However, there is no refund for the rest of that month, unless you are inside the relaxed window closing on 13 October 2026.
What happens to my Railcard if I cancel Perks?
You keep it, but Monzo charges you for it. If you have redeemed a Railcard and then cancel or downgrade before your Perks anniversary, the fee works out at £2.09 a month for the months remaining. The Railcard itself stays valid until it expires.
Is Monzo Perks better than Monzo Max?
They answer different questions. Max adds worldwide travel insurance, phone insurance and RAC breakdown cover. Therefore it suits frequent travellers who would otherwise buy those policies. Perks is the treats-and-savings tier. Notably, Select Access pays 3.65% AER (variable) on both, so the savings rate is not the dividing line people assume.
Is my money safe with Monzo?
Monzo Bank Limited is a UK-authorised bank, Financial Services Register number 730427. Eligible deposits are protected up to £120,000 per eligible person per UK-authorised bank, building society or credit union by the FSCS (since 1 December 2025). Investments held through Monzo fall under the separate £85,000 FSCS investment limit instead.
More from CoolCuration
- Best free budgeting apps UK. the apps that do the Perks budgeting tricks without a monthly fee.
- Monzo vs Starling. a straight comparison if you are still choosing between the two app banks.
- Emma app premium trial. connect every account in one place and see where the money actually goes.
- Quidco. cashback on things you were buying anyway, which is the same logic as a perks plan without the subscription.
- Gifts for techies. for when the Greggs sausage roll is not quite enough of a treat.
- Gomi power bank. made from recycled plastic, and properly useful on a long commute.
Bottom line on the small print: rates, prices and partner perks change, and every rate quoted here is variable. Nothing above is financial advice, and CoolCuration is not FCA authorised, so consider speaking to a qualified adviser before you make a decision about your money. This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view. Figures checked against monzo.com on 2 September 2026.
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