Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Generous Avios Balance Boost promo running to Monday – buy at 0.92p

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British Airways launched ‘Avios Balance Boost’ in June 2023.

It is a surprisingly good value way of buying Avios.

Put simply, you can buy a lump sum of Avios equivalent to 100%, 200% or 300% of the Avios you have earned in the last 30 days. The cost can be as low as 0.92p per Avios.

Until Monday, a flash offer makes it substantially easier to qualify to buy up to the annual 300,000 Avios cap.

Buy cheap Avios with the new Avios Balance Boost - is it worth it?

What does it cost to use Avios Balance Boost?

You can find Avios Balance Boost on the usual ‘buy Avios’ page here.

Here is the standard price list:

How does Avios Balance Boost work?

Unless you are trying to buy over 300,000 Avios via Balance Boost, which is unlikely unless you are trying to boost a chunky credit card sign-up bonus or made a large transfer from American Express Membership Rewards, you will pay between 0.92p and 0.96p per Avios.

The 300,000 Avios cap is based on your Boost purchases over a calendar year and not per transaction.

How does Avios Balance Boost work?

Before we go into this new flash offer, let’s summarise how Avios Balance Boost works.

When you go into Avios Balance Boost you will see a list of all of your eligible transactions from the last 30 days.

You can either select individual transactions, select entire categories (eg ‘Credit Cards’) or select everything.

You will then be shown your pricing options for doing a x1, x2 or x3 boost based on the price list above.

Buy cheap Avios with the new Avios Balance Boost - is it worth it?

What sort of transactions qualify for Avios Balance Boost?

You can boost:

  • Avios earned from the BA shopping portal
  • Avios earned from credit card spending
  • Avios earned from flights
  • Avios earned from ‘hotels and travel’ eg Uber

According to the terms and conditions, you CANNOT boost Avios obtained via:

“balance transfers from other airlines [presumably Qatar Airways or Finnair Avios transfers], Nectar exchanges, Avios shared or gifted by other members and previously bought Avios.”

Other inbound transfers, from American Express Membership Rewards, HSBC Premier, Heathrow Rewards etc will count for boosting.

You can only boost a transaction once.

What is the special offer?

Until Monday night (3rd February), British Airways is running a special offer.

There are two big changes:

  • you can boost ALL of the Avios you earned in 2024, instead of just the last 30 days
  • you can boost up to 4x the Avios you earned, instead of the usual 3x

…. with two restrictions:

  • the annual cap of 300,000 Avios via Avios Balance Boost remains in place
  • you can’t reboost a transaction which was previously boosted

Here’s the bottom line: for anyone who earned 75,000 Avios from qualifying transactions in 2024, you can (until Monday night) buy up to 300,000 Avios for 0.92p each.

Don’t forget that there is a 300,000 Avios cap on what can be boosted at the special rate. If you are shown a price that is higher than 0.92p per Avios then it’s because you will be over the 300,000 Avios cap.

If you earned more than 75,000 Avios last year, you need to unselect transactions until you have reduced the total to be boosted to 75,000 Avios or fewer. If you don’t, you will be paying too much.

Conclusion

If you are in the market for Avios, this is an excellent deal at 0.92p each.

Of course, however low the price, we don’t recommend buying Avios when you don’t have a specific plan to use them. The risk of devaluation is always there.

You can access Avios Balance Boost here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

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.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

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

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (112)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Ann Marie says:
    31 Jan31 January 08:01

    What is a point worth…..is 0.9 cheap?

    • Rob says:
      31 Jan31 January 08:25

      If you can’t answer that question based on YOUR travel style and plans, do not buy.

    • ND says:
      31 Jan31 January 08:28

      Historically buying it outright, yes. But it all depends on how you spend it. Word of advice as above: don’t spend unless you already have a specific redemption in mind ready to go.

    • David says:
      31 Jan31 January 09:28

      0.92p is very cheap. But not if your use of Avios is exchanging for wine or Avios hotels at 0.5p. if it’s for biz tix then thats a whole different kettle of fish.

  • h1jfg says:
    31 Jan31 January 08:06

    Are you sure the 300,000 cap is still in place.
    I have been offered a 400% boost of 927,308 for a price of £13,865.35.
    I have tested this by clicking on “Go to checkout” and it does go all the way through to my payment where I could pay with BA AMEX and get another 41,595 points for a total of 968,903 points.
    However, the rate for this is very poor at 1.4p per point.
    The 200% and 300% rates are also poor. Both well over 1p per point.
    The 100% rate would give me 231827 Avios for £2225.54 plus AMEX bonus of 6676 Avios, which is 0.93p per point. Thats a decent rate.

    • ND says:
      31 Jan31 January 08:21

      300k cap is there for the rate of 0.92p per Avios – any other Avios above this are not at that rate, see the table in the article above. In your use case, it seems you are looking at buying 300k Avios at 0.92p and the remaining 627,308 Avios (to total 927,308 Avios) at ~1.77p. This brings it to your total that you’re seeing, at £13,865 or so.

    • The other Kevin says:
      31 Jan31 January 12:36

      You are not buying them from BA, therefore using the BA Amex only gives you 1.5 avios/£

  • h1jfg says:
    31 Jan31 January 08:12

    Just to confirm, my rate at 400% is 1.49p, at 300% is 1.4p, at 200% is 1.23p per point and at 100% is 0.96p per point.

    • ND says:
      31 Jan31 January 08:27

      And same as per my reply above – buying 927k Avios at £13,865 would put your average at 1.49p per Avios at 400% rate as that’s the average cost of all of your Avios, which will account for the average cost of the first 300k boosted Avios which is the lower rate and the remaining 627k boosted Avios at the higher rate.

    • Erico1875 says:
      31 Jan31 January 08:28

      You can buy 300K at 0.92. The rest are at a higher price. 1.7
      You may be better off buying the extra at the Qatar deal

  • BJ says:
    31 Jan31 January 08:38

    Maybe asking a nit much 🙂
    But, any thoughts on whether there might be amex or Barcs BA cards with boosted SUB on Monday or just around the corner?

    • JDB says:
      31 Jan31 January 08:52

      Well the Amex Plat offer has just finished, BAPP currently has enhanced offer and Barclays is apparently out of that game, so not sure what you are expecting!

      • BJ says:
        31 Jan31 January 09:22

        I was unaware BAPP was currently boosred. You never know when Barcs may have a change of heart, they did with the free card last year. I was asking for the benefit of informing other readers, I’m not a buyer at 0.92ppa but I get why others would be.

    • Andrew says:
      31 Jan31 January 09:26

      Both Amex BA cards are running enhanced sign up bonuses until 25/02 if you apply via the link on britishairways.com. 7,000 avios for the free card and 60,000 for the premium.

      • BJ says:
        31 Jan31 January 09:47

        Thanks Andrew, I’ll give the BAPP dome thought. I cancelled when RFS went global nut will need to check if that was over two years ago. It’ll also depend if I can come up with a good use for the voucher that offers real value, maybe South America.

    • BBbetter says:
      31 Jan31 January 10:53

      Patience is rewarded. Article on boosted SUB is up now!

      • BJ says:
        31 Jan31 January 11:28

        🙂

        Good, it’s important people are aware of other avenues to obtain avios before buying them.

        As an aside, after reading comment from @Andrew I called amex to check date I cancelled last BAPP.. it seems we now have to put in a specific request gor such info if it was more than a year ago and they respond in writing within 30 days. Probably a response to multiple disputes relating to such data provided by chat or phone and declined SUB. May have bern mentioned here before but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.

  • Garethgerry says:
    31 Jan31 January 08:53

    It’s a tempting but I still have subscription at 0.89p.

    I’ve more than enough for 3 years to cape town if get 241. Plus two contingencies of gold priority. This is only route I use BA. My subscription covers annual usage at 241, my spending builds up contingency. So I will take Robs advice and say no,

  • Nick P says:
    31 Jan31 January 08:53

    I echo ‘Don’t buy unless you have a [imminent] way of spending them’ as reward value has been known to significantly drop without notice.

    There is another downside of creating Club members with buckets of Avios … there are more who are competing for the same [few] reward seats … then we will moan and BA could flip to an all seats are available model [because we moaned] … but the big BUT with variable pricing that devalues your original spend for bonus points.

    btw: [Irony face] If I spent the amount quoted for 4x on flights, I would earn GGL status in the new world!

    Points or Status [with some points] ???

  • Rupert says:
    31 Jan31 January 09:08

    I checked this last night. At 100% my rate is 1.04p, increasing to 1.06p as the boost increases while keeping it under 300K.

    Given I just redeemed 180K points for a flight, and what that would cost. BA seem to just be trying to get you to effectively buy flights upfront via avios which then won’t qualify for avios or tier points when you redeem.

    • Rob says:
      31 Jan31 January 09:18

      That’s wrong somehow. The rate is 0.92p. It’s not negotiable UNLESS you are not selecting a 3x or 4x option or you already boosted last year and part of your limit is gone.

  • JB says:
    31 Jan31 January 09:11

    It will let me buy 3.3m for £56k – not under 1p/mile… and who has that sort of money?! BA madness

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