Referral Plug · Tools
Monzo plan picker
Free, Extra at £3 a month, Perks at £9 or Max at £19: this prices all four against your own savings balance, the perks you would genuinely claim and the cover you would otherwise buy, and names the tier that leaves you most in pocket.
On the savings rate alone the bar is high. Perks needs £21,600 of instant-access savings before its 0.50 point boost covers £108 a year of fees, and Max needs £48,000 before its quarter point beats Perks. What actually moves the answer is whether you would collect the Greggs and the Vue ticket, and whether you would have bought travel or phone insurance anyway.
Fees and rates read from Monzo’s plan comparison page (opens in new tab) on 18 August 2026. Maintained by Seb Place.
Which plan pays for itself?
Your savings, the perks you would actually claim and the cover you would otherwise buy, priced against each plan’s fee.
The balance the plan rates are paid on. Select Access pots are excluded: they cap you at two withdrawals a year.
Free and Extra allow £200 fee-free every 30 days, Perks and Max £600. Monzo charges 3% above that.
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.
| 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 |
Extra also buys virtual cards, connected accounts, a second credit score and full Billsback entry. None of those has a price, so none of them is counted above: if you want them, Extra costs £36 a year on top of whatever this table says.
Every plan starts from the free account, and you can upgrade or downgrade in the app (Max has a three-month minimum term). Sign up through Seb’s tested link and you both get a mystery reward of £20, £50 or £100 after your first card payment.
Fees and rates from Monzo’s plan comparison page, read 18 August 2026. AERs are variable. Perk values are yours, not ours: this is an estimate of your own usage, not a quote.
Each plan against the free account, on savings alone
Net £ a year against the free account for a reader who claims no perks, buys no insurance separately and takes no cash outside the EEA. Interest at each plan’s instant-access AER, less the plan fee. This is the floor: every perk you would really use moves the paid rows up.
| Instant-access savings | Extra (£36/yr) | Perks (£108/yr) | Max (£228/yr) |
|---|---|---|---|
| £0 | −£36 | −£108 | −£228 |
| £2,000 | −£31 | −£98 | −£213 |
| £5,000 | −£23 | −£83 | −£190 |
| £14,400 | £0 | −£36 | −£120 |
| £21,600 | £18 | £0 | −£66 |
| £30,400 | £40 | £44 | £0 |
| £50,000 | £89 | £142 | £147 |
Positive means the plan beats staying free. Extra turns positive at £14,400, Perks at £21,600 and Max at £30,400, and Max only overtakes Perks at £48,000. Each cell is rounded to the pound independently.
How this picker works, and what it assumes
- Plan facts are Monzo’s own: fees of £3, £9 and £19 a month, instant-access AERs of 2.75%, 3.00%, 3.25%, 3.50% from Free up to Max, and fee-free non-EEA cash allowances of £200 on Free and Extra against £600 on Perks and Max. Read from the plan comparison page (opens in new tab) on 18 August 2026, and re-read on our monthly verification pass.
- The three subscription perks carry their list price. Each is priced at what the company selling it charges, and each is a tick box, because the value of a subscription is only real if you would have bought it anyway:
- £35 a year — railcard.co.uk (opens in new tab). £35 for one year — the price of every Railcard except the Disabled Persons Railcard (£20). Monzo puts the same figure on its Perks page (“worth up to £35”).
- £49.99 a year — uber.com (opens in new tab). £49.99 a year, or £4.99 a month. The annual price is used because that is what someone buying it for a year would pay.
- £95.88 a year — youtube.com (opens in new tab). £7.99 a month, the only cadence YouTube sells Premium Lite on, so £95.88 over a year. Full Premium is £12.99 a month and is not what Perks includes.
- Greggs and Vue are counted at an average. Neither has a single published price (Greggs runs no national price list, Vue prices by cinema and screening), so they are valued at £2 a treat and £10 a ticket — editorial estimates, not sourced figures. A perk you never collect is worth nothing however it is priced, so what the picker asks is how often you would claim, not what you think a pastry costs. Monzo describes the whole bundle as worth over £300 a year; that is Monzo’s number for someone claiming all of it, not a figure we pass on.
- Each is capped at what Perks actually hands out. The Greggs treat lands weekly, so the picker asks how many of the 4 in a month you would really collect and prices a full claim at 52 a year, not 48. The Vue ticket is one a month, so it is a yes or no rather than a quantity: there is no second ticket to claim, and offering the choice would credit you with value no Monzo plan gives.
- One caveat on Uber One, because Monzo’s pages contradict each other. The 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; one cell of the plan comparison table calls it a three-month free trial. We price a full year, which is the reading three of the four surfaces support and the newest of them. If it is really a trial, ticking that box overstates Perks by about £37 a year.
- The maths: for each plan, interest (your balance × the plan’s instant-access AER) plus the perks you said you would claim, plus the cover you said you would otherwise buy, minus 3% of any non-EEA cash above the plan’s £200 or £600 thirty-day allowance, minus twelve times the monthly fee. Each plan is then shown against the same sums for the free account. A plan “pays for itself” when that difference clears £1.
- Insurance counts on Max only, and only for what you say you would otherwise have bought. You pick an end of the standalone market range rather than typing a figure, because a single midpoint would be a number nobody quoted you. What Monzo actually covers is set out below each choice, taken from the detail panels on its own plan page, so you can tell whether a quote you have been given is like for like:
- Worldwide travel insurance (Zurich, powered by Qover). Multi-trip: cancellation to £5,000, medical bills to £10m, lost valuables to £750, winter sports, and a car hire excess waiver to £3,000. There is a £50 excess on a successful claim. Standalone, reckon on £60 to £120 a year.
- Worldwide phone insurance (Assurant). Loss, theft and accidental damage including cracked screens, on phones worth up to £2,000 and accessories up to £300. There is a £75 excess on a successful claim. Standalone, reckon on £96 to £180 a year.
- UK & Europe breakdown cover (RAC). At-home assistance, onward travel and vehicle recovery, and you are covered as a passenger, not only as the driver. Standalone, reckon on £30 to £50 a year.
- What this can’t tell you: Select Access pots are excluded (they cap withdrawals at two a year, so they are not the pot most people are choosing a plan over), the perks are priced at face value rather than at what you would have paid on a deal, Max’s three-month minimum term is not amortised, and Extra’s virtual cards, connected accounts, second credit score and Billsback entry have no price so they are named and left out of the arithmetic.
For what each tier actually includes, feature by feature, see Is Monzo Max worth it? and the wider case for the bank in is Monzo worth it after nine years. The referral scheme itself is on our Monzo referral code page.
Monzo plan picker FAQ
Which Monzo plan is worth it?
For most people, none of them: the free account pays 2.75% AER on instant-access savings and the core app is identical on every tier. On the savings rate alone, Extra (£3/month) needs £14,400 of instant-access savings to cover its fee, Perks (£9/month) needs £21,600 and Max (£19/month) needs £30,400. Below those balances a plan only pays if you would genuinely claim the perks or buy the insurance separately, which is what the picker on this page prices.How much savings do I need for Monzo Perks to pay for itself?
About £21,600 in instant-access savings, if the rate is the only reason you are upgrading. Perks costs £108 a year and pays 3.25% AER against the free account's 2.75%, a 0.50 point boost, so £108 ÷ 0.005 = £21,600. A weekly Greggs and a monthly Vue ticket you would really use are worth roughly £224 a year between them (52 treats at £2 and 12 tickets at £10), which pulls the balance you need down sharply.Is Monzo Max worth it for the savings rate?
Only above about £48,000. Max pays 3.50% AER instant access against Perks at 3.25%, and the two are identical at 3.65% on Select Access, so a quarter of a point has to cover a £120 a year price gap. Below that balance Max is bought for the worldwide travel and phone insurance, the UK and Europe breakdown cover, the £600 non-EEA cash allowance and the discounted lounge entry, not for interest.What does Monzo Max's insurance actually cover?
From the detail panels on Monzo's own plan page: Worldwide travel insurance (Zurich, powered by Qover) — Multi-trip: cancellation to £5,000, medical bills to £10m, lost valuables to £750, winter sports, and a car hire excess waiver to £3,000. £50 excess on a successful claim. Worldwide phone insurance (Assurant) — Loss, theft and accidental damage including cracked screens, on phones worth up to £2,000 and accessories up to £300. £75 excess on a successful claim. UK & Europe breakdown cover (RAC) — At-home assistance, onward travel and vehicle recovery, and you are covered as a passenger, not only as the driver. Family cover extending all three to your household is another £4 a month on top of Max's £19. The excesses matter when you compare against a standalone quote: a policy with a lower excess is not the same product, so check that before treating the two prices as interchangeable.What are the Monzo Perks partner perks worth?
Three of the five are subscriptions with a published price, so the picker uses it: an annual Railcard is £35 a year, Uber One is £49.99 a year (£4.99 a month), and YouTube Premium Lite is £7.99 a month, or £95.88 over a year. Together that is £180.87 against a £108 fee. The catch is that a subscription only counts if you would have bought it anyway, so each one is a toggle rather than an amount added by default. Monzo values the whole bundle at "over £300 a year", which assumes you claim all of it.How are the Greggs and Vue perks valued?
At £2 a Greggs treat, the rough average across the sausage roll, regular hot drink, doughnut and muffin you can pick from, and £10 a Vue ticket. Both are editorial averages rather than sourced prices, because neither has one to source: Greggs runs no national price list and Vue prices by cinema and screening. What the picker asks instead is how often you would really claim them, which is where readers actually differ — a weekly sausage roll is worth nothing to someone who never walks into a Greggs. Claim every one and they come to £104 and £120 a year.Is Monzo's Uber One perk a full membership or a free trial?
Monzo's own pages disagree, and it matters: a year of Uber One is £49.99 and a three-month trial is about £12.50. This picker values a full year. The Monzo Perks page (opens in new tab) calls it an "annual Uber One membership" in its prose, in its plan feature list and in its FAQ ("With Uber One, included with Monzo Perks…"), and the Monzo Max page says the same. The one surface that disagrees is a single cell in the plan comparison table (opens in new tab) reading "3 month free trial", and that entry is the oldest of the four. If it turns out to be a trial, ticking the Uber One box overstates Perks by about £37 a year.Where do these numbers come from?
Plan fees, savings AERs and the non-EEA cash allowances are Monzo's own plan comparison page (opens in new tab), read 18 August 2026. The perk prices come from the companies selling them: railcard.co.uk (opens in new tab), uber.com (opens in new tab), youtube.com (opens in new tab). Your savings balance, Greggs and Vue usage, cash abroad and insurance figures are yours. Interest is the balance times the plan's AER; the cash saving is 3% of whatever you withdraw outside the EEA above your plan's 30-day allowance; the plan fee is twelve times the monthly price. Rates are variable and the table is an estimate, not a quote.