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.


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.

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.

Comments (112)

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

  • Swiss Jim says:

    I can buy 7.1 million Avios for £123,000. Bargain 🤣

  • patrick says:

    My issue is not whether to purchase or not, it is the impossibility to do so. I receive these 2 messages simultaneously:

    (1) You need to have a balance of at least 1 Avios or have collected Avios within the last 3 years to be able to make a purchase.
    (1) Your balance: 1,017,345 Avios

    Marvellous.

  • David says:

    What I don’t get is why 4x gets 0.92p when the 30 normal one (3x) got the same amount.

    • Rob says:

      Because the benefit of offering 4x is not to give you a cheaper price, it’s to increase the number you can buy for that price.

  • Joan says:

    I had saved up my avios and got my companion voucher and jumped at business class flights to Male when alerted by H4P . We returned last week and I must say that apart from having a comfy seat and bed , the service both ways was dreadful . No welcome drink at all . On outward flight no drink or food or anything until nearly 3 hours into the flight . We both had to have the 3rd item on menu -so no choice . I think they couldn’t cope with a tiny galley for 70+ club class cabin( flight manager confirmed this ).
    I then flew Etihad economy LHR to Abu Dhabi a couple of days ago and honestly the service and food were way better than my BA club experience .
    It’s takes dedication to earn those avios from shopping and I wonder whether it was worth it !
    So I’m wondering whether it’s worth paying for more avios … just a thought

    • Joe Bloggs says:

      Qatar Airways is a good way to use your Avios – BA sells points for less than QR, QR sells reward seats for significantly less than BA to places like Australia, and the service is actually good.

    • Paul says:

      Agreed that there’s better products than BA club out there, but +1 to recommending Qatar! Quality product, and some fab Avios-redemption rates heading East.

  • Definitas says:

    The prospect of a devaluation is off putting but there is very good value to be had. We fly transatlantic in J at least twice per year and off-peak Avios amount needed is 100,000. The cost of boosting 25,000 is £920 which, when added to approximately £850 of tax and charges comes to £1770 for a very flexible booking. However, I will make the booking using an Amex 2-4-1 which opens up extra availability and brings the price down to £1310pp so, for me, the devaluation risk is worth the gamble.

  • patrick says:

    This thread demonstrates that BA`s customers now feel that it is perfectly possible that they would sell off huge amounts of Avios and then devalue their worth. That level of mistrust and disillusionment is significant.

    • Rich says:

      100% agreed Patrick
      No trust, no transaction
      Will be trying Jetblu for the first time transatlantic thanks to BA’s underhanded no notice change to status over Christmas

  • fbrj says:

    With family in the Far East we’ve found that the boost scheme works well for us, especially as we seem to be flying less on BA these days. We use purchased avios specifically to redeem on QR to Singapore/region. The effective cost is about £3700 for 2x QR Bus return. This assumes that you can snag the QR redemptions but as we are retired we are reasonably flexible re timing.
    We have a booking on QR for this October from LON and currently the same flights/dates are now quoted at over £10000 (for 2), BA £6800, MU £4800.

  • Ben says:

    I looked at this yesterday and I could boost ~1.5m Avios but it was charging £24k (so 1.6p per point). What am I doing wrong?

    (no way would I buy that many but that’s what it was offering).

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

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