Is Monzo Max worth it? £19/month, Max vs Perks vs Extra (2026)

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Monzo Max is Monzo's top paid plan at £19/month, and the short verdict is this: it's worth it if you travel abroad at least a couple of times a year and would otherwise buy travel insurance separately, because the bundled worldwide travel cover, phone insurance and breakdown cover cost less together than buying even two of them standalone. It is not worth it for the savings rate alone: Max pays 3.50% AER instant access against Perks at 3.25%, and the two are identical at 3.65% on Select Access, so that quarter-point only covers the £10/month jump above roughly £48,000 of instant-access savings. Below that balance, what the jump buys is insurance, a £600 overseas ATM allowance and lounge discounts.

Monzo repriced on 18 August 2026: Perks went from £7 to £9 a month and Max from £17 to £19, while every savings rate stayed put. The gap between Perks and Max is unchanged at £10/month, so the Max verdict below survives the increase; what moved is the balance at which Perks pays for itself, from £16,800 to £21,600.

Work out which plan pays for itself

Would a paid plan pay for itself?

Your savings, the perks you would actually claim and the cover you would otherwise buy, priced against each plan’s fee.

Your plan: Free

Instant-access savings you keep with Monzo

£

The balance the plan rates are paid on. Select Access pots are excluded: they cap you at two withdrawals a year.

Greggs treats you would actually claim, in a typical month

01234

Perks and Max give you one a week, so 4 means you claim every one (52 a year). Counted at £2 a treat, the average across a sausage roll, hot drink, doughnut or muffin.

The monthly Vue cinema ticket, if you’d use it

Vue ticket£120 a year

One a month, 12 a year, counted at £10 a ticket.

Perks subscriptions you’d pay for anyway

Each comes with Perks and Max, priced at what it costs to buy on its own. Pick the ones you would have paid for anyway, because a subscription you would never have taken out saves you nothing.

Railcard£35 a yearUber One£49.99 a yearPremium Lite£95.88 a year

Cover you’d otherwise buy, a year

Only Max bundles these. The prices are standalone market ranges, not quotes.

Worldwide travel insurance

Wouldn’t buyCheaper end · £60Pricier end · £120

Worldwide phone insurance

Wouldn’t buy£8 a month · £96£15 a month · £180

UK & Europe breakdown cover

Wouldn’t buyCheaper end · £30Pricier end · £50

Reset the picker

Your plan

Free

On these answers no paid plan clears its own fee, so the free account leaves you best off. That is the answer for most people.

Net value per year of each Monzo plan on your answers, against the free account

Plan	Fee	vs free account
Free · 2.75% AER	—	—
Extra · 3.00% AER	£36/yr	−£31/yr
Perks · 3.25% AER	£108/yr	−£98/yr
Max · 3.50% AER	£228/yr	−£213/yr

The workings, plan by plan

• Extra £5 extra interest − £36 fee = −£31/yr
• Perks £10 extra interest − £108 fee = −£98/yr
• Max £15 extra interest − £228 fee = −£213/yr

Each term is rounded to the pound on its own, so a line can sit £1 or so off the table above.

Open the full picker to add your cash abroad and see each plan’s break-even balance

Fees and rates from Monzo’s plan comparison page, read 18 August 2026. AERs are variable. Perk values are yours, not mine: this is an estimate of your own usage, not a quote.

Quick comparison

All savings rates are AER (annual equivalent rate: the yearly rate including compounding), variable, and correct as of August 2026. Select Access is Monzo's higher-rate pot: it needs a £500 minimum and allows at most two withdrawals a year. Take a third and the rate drops to 3.10% AER until your next Pot anniversary, which is below what the free plan's Instant Access pays, so treat the Select Access column as money you have genuinely locked away. Instant Access has no minimum and takes up to £1,000,000. EEA (the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) cash withdrawals are fee-free on every plan when Monzo is your active main account, so the allowances above only matter outside Europe.

Monzo Max: what £19/month actually gets you

Max includes everything in Extra and Perks (below), plus the insurance stack that defines the plan:

• Worldwide travel insurance, from Zurich via Qover: multi-trip cover for unlimited trips of up to 45 days each, including the US. Cancellation and cut-short trips are covered up to £5,000, medical bills up to £10m, lost valuables up to £750, winter sports including ski equipment and hire, plus a car hire excess waiver up to £3,000. A successful claim carries a £50 excess.
• Worldwide phone insurance, from Assurant: loss, theft and accidental damage including cracked screens, on phones worth up to £2,000 plus £300 of accessories. A successful claim carries a £75 excess.
• UK and Europe breakdown cover, from the RAC: at-home assistance, onward travel and vehicle recovery, and you're covered as a passenger rather than only as the driver.
• £600 of fee-free ATM withdrawals outside the EEA every 30 days (3% after that).
• Discounted airport lounge access: entry to LoungeKey lounges at a fixed discounted rate, around £24 per visit. This is pay-per-visit at a discount, not free lounge entry.
• Smaller extras: three fee-free cash deposits a month (£1 each after that), and a lower investment platform fee of 0.20% a year against Monzo's standard 0.25%.

Those two excesses are worth checking before you treat Max as a like-for-like swap for a policy you already hold: a cheaper standalone quote that pays out from the first pound is not the same product as one that keeps the first £50 or £75 of every claim.

Two restrictions to know before subscribing: Max has a 3-month minimum term (Extra and Perks can be cancelled any time), and because of the insurance it's only available to people aged 18 to 69.

Is Monzo Max worth it? The maths

The savings rate is a small part of the answer: Max's 0.25% edge over Perks is worth £120/year only at £48,000 of instant-access savings, which is more than most people hold outside an ISA. So the question is mainly whether the £10/month gap from Perks to Max (£120/year) beats buying the cover separately:

• Standalone worldwide multi-trip travel insurance typically costs £60 to £120/year.
• Phone insurance runs £8 to £15/month from most providers, so £96 to £180/year.
• UK breakdown cover starts around £30 to £50/year, more with European cover.

Travel and phone together therefore run £156 to £300 a year against Max's £228, so buying two or more of the three usually makes Max cheaper than the sum of its parts, and buying all three almost always does. If you'd buy none of them (you don't travel, your phone is old, you don't drive), Max's £228/year is buying perks you could mostly get on Perks for £108/year. The £600 overseas ATM allowance and lounge discounts are tiebreakers for frequent long-haul travellers, not reasons on their own.

Monzo Max + family: £23/month

For an extra £4/month, the family option extends the travel insurance, phone insurance and breakdown cover to your family members. The rest of Max (savings rates, ATM allowance, lounge discounts) stays with the main account holder. It only pays if your family would otherwise buy separate cover: if your partner already has travel insurance through work or a packaged account (a monthly-fee current account bundling insurance and other extras) elsewhere, you're doubling up.

Monzo Perks: £9/month

Perks is the plan where the value calculation is clearest, and the 2026 savings boost made it stronger:

• A 0.50% AER savings boost on the free plan's rates, taking instant access to 3.25% and Select Access to 3.65%. Select Access matches Max; instant access sits a quarter-point below it.
• A lower investment platform fee, 0.20% a year against Monzo's standard 0.25%, on combined investment and pension balances up to £100,000.
• A free Greggs sausage roll, regular hot drink, doughnut or muffin every week, claimed by QR code in the app. MOTO forecourt branches are excluded.
• One standard Vue cinema screening a month, plus 10% off food and soft drinks.
• A digital annual Railcard, sold separately for £35 a year for every type except the Disabled Persons Railcard.
• An annual Uber One membership, which Uber sells at £4.99/month or £49.99/year.
• A YouTube Premium Lite membership, added alongside the August 2026 price rise. YouTube sells it at £7.99/month, so £95.88 a year.

Monzo values the bundle at "over £300 a year", which assumes you claim all of it. The honest figure is what you'd otherwise have spent.

The maths: the three subscription perks have published prices, and they add up fast: £35 for the Railcard, £49.99 for Uber One and £95.88 for YouTube Premium Lite, or £180.87 a year against a £108 fee. Only what you'd have bought anyway counts, though, and Premium Lite on its own is the interesting case: at £95.88 it very nearly covers the fee by itself. The two food-and-film perks are closer than they look: a Greggs treat averages about £2 across the sausage roll, hot drink, doughnut and muffin you can choose from, so claiming all 52 is £104 a year, which lands £4 short of the fee on its own. A monthly Vue ticket at around £10 is £120 a year, which clears it. On the savings side, the 0.50% boost over the free plan pays the fee once you hold around £21,600 in instant-access savings, so heavy savers can justify Perks without touching a sausage roll. If none of the partner brands fits your routine and your savings are well short of that, you're paying £9/month for tools you can get on Extra for £3. The plan picker does this sum for your own answers.

One wrinkle worth knowing before you count Uber One: Monzo's Perks page (opens in new tab) calls it an annual membership in its prose, its feature list and its FAQ, and the Max page agrees, but one cell of the plan comparison table still calls it a three-month free trial. We've taken the annual reading, which three of the four surfaces support. If it's really a trial, it's worth about £12.50 rather than £49.99.

Monzo Extra: £3/month

Extra is the tools plan. Over the free account it adds:

• Virtual cards: disposable card numbers for online shopping, subscriptions and free trials.
• Connected accounts, so balances from your other banks show inside the Monzo app.
• A second credit score (the free plan now includes one).
• Billsback, the monthly draw that randomly reimburses bills up to £150, included in full rather than as the free plan's 3-month trial. It's a lottery, not a benefit to rely on; we've covered the odds in our Monzo Billsback review.
• A savings challenge at 5% AER, plus custom categories, advanced round-ups and an auto-exporting spreadsheet.

Extra buys a small savings edge as well as the tooling: 3.00% AER instant access against Free's 2.75%, though Select Access stays at 3.15% on both. That quarter-point covers the £36/year fee at around £14,400 of instant-access savings, which makes Extra the cheapest rate upgrade Monzo sells. Below that balance it is worth it only if you'd actually use virtual cards or connected accounts.

What the free plan includes in 2026

The table above has the rates. On top of them, the free account gives you instant notifications, pots, Salary Sorter, fee-free card spending abroad, fee-free EEA cash withdrawals (as your active main account), and FSCS protection (the government-backed scheme covering deposits if a bank fails) up to £120,000. The full case for staying free is in is Monzo worth it? →.

Which plan should you choose?

Most people: stay on Free. The core app is identical on every tier, and Free and Extra pay the same 3.15% on Select Access. Extra's only rate edge is a quarter-point on instant access.

If you travel frequently: Max (£19/month). Only if you'd otherwise buy the cover; note the 3-month minimum term.

If you want lifestyle perks or hold big savings: Perks (£9/month). Greggs, Vue and the Railcard pay for it if they match your habits.

If you want virtual cards: Extra (£3/month). The cheapest route to virtual cards and connected accounts. Skip it if you wouldn't use them.

The best way to test any of this is to open a free Monzo account first and use it for a month. You can upgrade in the app at any time, and downgrade just as easily (Max's 3-month term aside).

Monzo Max FAQs

How much is Monzo Max?

£19/month with a 3-month minimum term, or £23/month with the family option, which extends the travel, phone and breakdown cover to family members. It's available to UK residents aged 18 to 69. Monzo raised this from £17 on 18 August 2026.

Does Monzo Max include airport lounge access?

Not free entry. Max gives you access to LoungeKey lounges at a fixed discounted price, around £24 per visit as of June 2026. If you've seen "lounge access" listed as a Max benefit, read it as a discount scheme, not a complimentary pass.

Is Monzo Max's savings rate better than Perks?

Yes, on instant access, and only slightly: Max pays 3.50% AER against Perks at 3.25%, and both pay 3.65% on Select Access. That quarter-point is worth the £120/year price gap only above about £48,000 of instant-access savings. Below that, the insurance stack, the £600 overseas ATM allowance and the lounge discounts are the reasons to pick Max.

Can I cancel Monzo Max?

Yes, but only after the 3-month minimum term. Extra and Perks have no minimum and can be cancelled immediately in the app, which makes them safer plans to trial.

Is Monzo Max cheaper than buying the insurance separately?

Usually, if you'd buy at least two of the covers. Standalone worldwide travel insurance typically costs £60 to £120/year and phone insurance £8 to £15/month (£96 to £180/year), so the two together run £156 to £300 against Max's £228/year. If you'd only buy one, compare that one product's standalone price against the £120/year premium over Perks.

Do Monzo Max benefits apply to joint accounts?

Some do. If either holder of a Monzo joint account is on a paid plan, benefits like Billsback and virtual cards extend to the joint account. The boosted joint savings rate is the exception: Monzo pays it only when both holders are on Perks or Max. The insurance covers the policyholder (and family members on Max + family), not the other account holder automatically.

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Sources

The standalone insurance prices are market ranges rather than a single provider's quote, and are given as ranges for that reason.

• Monzo plans (opens in new tab): every row of the comparison table, including the monthly price of each plan, the savings rates, the non-EEA ATM allowances, the minimum term and the age limits
• Railcard (opens in new tab): the £35 annual price, which every Railcard except the Disabled Persons Railcard (£20) shares
• Uber One (opens in new tab): £4.99/month or £49.99/year, and what the membership covers
• YouTube Premium Lite (opens in new tab): £7.99/month, against £12.99 for full Premium
• Monzo Perks (opens in new tab): the annual-membership description of Uber One, and Monzo's own "worth over £300 a year" figure for the bundle
• Monzo Max (opens in new tab): the travel and phone insurance cover limits, and what the family option adds per month
• Monzo savings (opens in new tab): the instant-access, Select Access and savings challenge rates per tier, and the Select Access minimum and withdrawal limit
• Travel without fees (opens in new tab): fee-free EEA cash withdrawals and the fee charged past the non-EEA allowance
• FSCS: check your money is protected (opens in new tab): the deposit protection limit
• Monzo refer a friend (opens in new tab) and the referral scheme terms (opens in new tab) (v4.0, 13 August 2026): the qualifying card payment and its window, and the £10/£20/£50 reward table with its 94/5/1 odds

New to Monzo? A Monzo referral code gets you a randomised £10, £20 or £50 when you make your first card payment within 30 days, whichever plan you end up on.