Monzo Perks review

Here are all of the extra benefits you get with Monzo Perks

Monzo Perks is a new account offered by Monzo that gets you some additional perks, including a weekly sausage roll and an annual Railcard for £7 per month, as well as all the benefits of the Monzo Extra account. Here’s what we think of the account.

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What you get with Monzo Perks vs Monzo Free and Monzo Extra

We won’t be reviewing all of the features of Monzo Perks in this review, just the ones it’s got in addition to the free Monzo account and Monzo Extra. If you want to learn more about what you can do with Monzo, you can check out our in-depth review of the account. Here’s an overview of what you can get.

FeatureMonzo FreeMonzo ExtraMonzo Perks
Cost:Free£3 per month£7 per month
Spending analysis:
Trends:
Instant spending notifications:
Spending categories:
Pots:
Monthly spending summary:
Spend and withdraw abroad for free:
Savings rate:3.60% AER (variable)4.6% AER (variable)4.61% AER (variable)
Fee-free cash withdrawals abroad: £200£200£600
Connect other banks and credit cards:
Virtual cards:
Advanced roundups:
Custom categories:
Auto-spreadsheet:
Credit insights:
Fee-free cash deposits:3 free per month
Discounted investment fees:
Free Railcard:
Free Greggs treat:
Free Vue ticket

Monzo Perks benefits

In addition to all of the features of the free Monzo account and the additional features of Monzo Extra, you get a couple of extra things, including a better savings rate and a higher withdrawal limit abroad. Here’s more about what you get with Monzo Perks: 

Free Railcard

You can nab yourself a free Railcard with a Monzo Perks account. This is actually a pretty decent benefit, usually costing you up to £30 (we often have deals to get them cheaper here). A Railcard can get you a third off rail travel — however, having this account doesn’t mean you’re automatically eligible for one. This depends on your age, where you travel and who you travel with. 

However, don’t just get it for the Railcard — if you don’t use any of the other benefits of the account, this means that the Railcard costs you a massive £84 per year. 

Free Greggs

A nice little perk to the Perks account is that you can get a freebie at Greggs every week. This can be a sausage roll, regular hot drink, doughnut or muffin. 

You’ll pay £1.20 for a sausage roll, and between £1.50 and £2.50 for a hot drink. So if you were to average that at £2 a week, assuming you also manage to claim it every single week (in reality you’ll probably miss a few), that’s worth £104 a year, which means you’d save £20 on this alone.

But this isn’t going to be worthwhile unless you get one most weeks, and you may as well admit that you’ll likely nab yourself a sausage roll or sweet treat to go with that coffee, so you may end up spending more!

Free Vue ticket

This feature was added in October 2024, and you claim it each month to use on a standard ticket at any Vue in the UK. If you want to upgrade to a VIP, 3D, recliner or IMAX ticket you’ll have to pay an extra fee on top.

You’ll need to use the code before the end of each calendar month, though that can be for a screening at a later date.

Vue ticket prices vary across the country, and standard tickets seem to range from £4.99 to £9.99. That means it has an annual value of between £59.88 and £95.88 – though there are other ways to get cheap or free cinema tickets.

Each month you can also get 10% off any spend on food and drink at Vue locations.

20% off at Pizza Express

The other new perk is 20% off food at Pizza Express from Sunday to Thursday. This offer runs until 1 June 2025. Though Pizza Express offers aren’t as frequent as they once were, you can often find other discounts.

Higher savings rate

You get a slightly better savings rate of 4.1% AER variable instead of 3.6% AER variable with Monzo perks. This is an instant access account, so you can access it whenever you need it. 

This rate can still be beaten with other savings accounts, which we detail on our savings best buy tables

Fee-free cash withdrawals abroad

You get a significantly higher fee-free allowance when withdrawing cash abroad — £600 rather than the usual £200. This is a nice perk if you need to withdraw higher amounts while abroad, or travel a lot. Other allowances when abroad stay the same. We reckon there are still better options when travelling abroad.

Fee-free cash deposits

With Monzo Perks, you can deposit cash into your account without any fees up to 3 times per month. This usually costs £1 per deposit. This means it could save you up to £3 per month — but when was the last time you paid cash into your account?

Get around this by paying money into a different bank and transferring it over. 

Hot coral card

The Monzo Perks card is a little darker than the original Monzo card, though it really doesn’t look very different from the original — I doubt anyone will notice it in a shop.

The Monzo Plus card was a holographic blue — if you have one of these you can keep it until it expires. 

Discounted investment fees

We don’t really cover Monzo’s investments platform in any detail, but there are discounted fees with the Perks plan. 

You get a lower platform fee of 0.35% for investing, as opposed to 0.45% without. This means that with fund fees, you’ll pay 0.49% rather than 0.59%. This is a good fee for investments, but only if you invest with Monzo already. It’s worth shopping around to see if alternatives will be cheaper for you.

Is Monzo Perks better abroad?

Monzo Perks is a little better for use abroad versus the Free and Extra accounts, but only if you think you’ll make a lot of withdrawals — you get £600 in fee-free cash withdrawals instead of just £200. The spending limits are the same, though. 

You don’t get travel insurance — this comes with Monzo Max. We’d suggest you take a look at other travel debit and credit cards that might suit you better

Customer reviews of Monzo

As Monzo only announced these accounts recently, we can’t gauge how customers feel about it just yet — so we’re looking broadly at reviews of Monzo over at our sister site Smart Money People

Customers rate Monzo 4.93/5, with customers raving about the customer service, and finding this to be a great app for digital banking.

Some customers had negative experiences when receiving large sums of money — with a few mentioning that their accounts were closed unexpectedly. We cover this issue further in our full Monzo review.

Smart Money People advert

Is Monzo Perks worth it?

Zoe’s analysis

It really comes down to whether you’ll use all the freebies that come with the account. If you’re going to buy a railcard anyway, even at a reduced price of £20, then you just need to justify £64 from the other perks. That’d likely be covered six cinema visits a year and one or two Greggs visits each month. Any more than that and you’re in profit.

Certainly it’s better than paying £3 a month for Monzo Extra, which has additional features that can help you with budgeting and saving but none of the perks.

And if you’re still on Monzo Plus, the account this replaced, and want the extra budgeting features you get with that, then it’s well worth it for an £2 extra per month.

Monzo Perks

Cost:£7 per month
Benefits:All Monzo free and Extra features
£600 fee-free cash withdrawals abroad per month
3 fee-free cash deposits per month
Free annual Railcard
Free weekly Greggs treat
Discounted investment fees
Card colour:Hot Coral card
Exclusive savings rate:4.1% AER variable

How does Monzo Perks compare with Monzo Plus?

You can’t get Monzo Plus any more, though you can keep it for now if you already have it. This was a previous tier of Monzo that cost £5 per month. Here’s the main differences between Monzo Plus’ extra benefits and Monzo Perks’ extra benefits. In general, it’s better for an additional £2 per month, considering the typical cost of a Railcard and cinema ticket.

FeatureMonzo PlusMonzo Perks
Cost:£5 per month£7 per month
Card:Holographic blue cardHot coral card
Savings rate:4.10% AER (variable) on up to £100,0004.10% AER (variable)
Fee-free cash withdrawals abroad:£400£600
Connect other banks and credit cards:
Virtual cards:
Advanced roundups:
Custom categories:
Auto-spreadsheet:
Credit insights:
Free cash deposits:1 fee-free deposit per month3-fee-free deposits per month
Discounts and offers:Free weekly Greggs & monthly Vue ticket
Free Railcard:
Discounted investment fees:

One thought on “Monzo Perks review

  1. Something you need to consider also is the increased number of companies you get with Monzo Perks that offer cashback. I’ve had a significant amount of cashback from spending at supermarkets like Lidl and Morrisons last few months. Well worth it with the other free perks. Tip: buy a muffin with the free Greggs item, it’s the most expensive item ;-;

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