How to earn Avios points from Budget car rentals

We have run various article on how to earn Avios from Avis car rentals.  The Avis / BA partnership is fairly well publicised and has good benefits, in particular the free additional driver when booking using the British Airways Executive Club discount codes.

The Avis parent company is Avis Budget Group and, unsurprisingly, it is also possible to earn Avios with Budget.  I thought it was worth looking at again today.

The main Budget website is here.

The relationship between Avios and Budget has historically been a bit odd, to say the least.  It was presumably down to the wording of the contract between Avis and British Airways.

Prior to 2018, you could earn Avios points with car rentals from Budget but ONLY if you credited them to an avios.com or Iberia Plus account.  You could not credit to British Airways Executive Club.  If you looked at the Budget UK website there was no mention of Avios at all.  It wasn’t even listed under their European partners.

This all changed in 2018.

You can now credit Budget rentals directly to British Airways Executive Club.  You now have the combined Avis / Budget / Avios website – you can find it here.

How many Avios do I earn from Budget?

It’s very simple.

You earn 2 Avios per £1 spent. All Budget locations worldwide are included. You do not need to use any special British Airways booking codes.

There is minimal small print – you are capped at 10,000 Avios per rental (!), corporate rates do not qualify, chauffeur and van hires do not qualify, rates booked via third parties do not qualify. Apart from that, you’re good to go.

Note that you do NOT get a free additional driver when renting with Budget as a British Airways Executitve Club member.  This benefit is only available with Avis rentals.

The earning rate with Budget is clearly poorer than the Avis earning rate (5 Avios per £1 with Avis vs 2 Avios per £1 with Budget) but if Budget is more convenient or a better deal then you can at least pick up some Avios.

You can find out more on the Avis Budget / BA site here.  For more general information on Budget, visit their website here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (September 2023)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

EDIT: Applications for this card are temporarily suspended due to IT issues with the British Airways On Business SME loyalty scheme.

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.