6 ways to save on rail tickets

Rail fares can be notoriously expensive, despite the government taking action in recent years to reduce the impact of high inflation.

Last year, regulated train fares increased by up to 4.9% in England. They would have risen by 9% (in line with the Retail Prices Index), if the government hadn’t stepped in. From 2 March this year, fares are set to increase by another 4.6%. The price of most railcards will also rise by £5 on this date.

The good news is that there are some steps you can take to save money. For example, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced that a big rail sale will take place this month, running between 14 and 20 January. This will offer discounts of up to 50% on over two million tickets.

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The sale will apply to thousands of popular routes across almost all UK train operators, including Transport for Wales and ScotRail. It will cover journeys between the dates of 17 January and 31 March 2025.

The DfT says passengers in Liverpool could visit London for just £7, for example, or take the train from Preston to Edinburgh for just £8.40. There are a limited number of tickets, so passengers are being urged to act quickly if they want to bag a deal.

In last year’s sale, passengers saved around £5.8 million in total according to the DfT, but this year’s event is set to take place on an even bigger scale.

While the upcoming sale will offer a brief window of opportunity for discounts, there are other ways you can save on rail tickets all year round. We share six tips.

1. Buy advance tickets

As the name would suggest, advance tickets are tickets that you need to buy in advance of a journey. They are single tickets, issued for a train which departs on a specified day at a specified time.

You can usually purchase advance tickets up to 12 weeks before you travel. They are sometimes still available up to 10 minutes before a train departs.

Only a limited number of advance tickets are released, available on a first-come-first-served basis, but they can be good at saving you money. According to National Rail, half a million advance tickets are released weekly for less than £10.

All advance tickets are for single journeys, but you can combine tickets to cover your full journey, including your return. Visit National Rail’s advance booking dates page for further details.

2. Check how much you can save with a railcard

National Rail offers nine main railcards, which you can use to save money each time you travel. Most of these offer a one-third discount on rail fares, with the exception of the 16-17 saver, which offers 50% off most tickets.

The majority of railcards cost £30 for one year (although this is set to increase to £35 in March), so they can be worth buying even if you’re only planning a few long train journeys. What’s more, they’re not just available to students and retirees. Here is the full list of railcards you can buy:

3. Find out whether you qualify for a free gold card (London or South East England)

If you buy an annual season ticket in the south of England or an annual travelcard on the London Underground, you may qualify for a free annual Gold Card.

This is essentially a better version of the Network Railcard. It covers almost all of the Network Railcard area, plus East Anglia and the West Midlands. You can view a map of the Gold Card area on the National Rail website.

It is valid after 9.30am Monday-Friday, or any time on weekends and bank holidays. There is no minimum fare, and it gives one-third off for up to four adults plus 60% off for up to four children aged 5-15 (subject to a £1 minimum fare).

The Gold Card also allows you to buy another one-year railcard (16-25, Family & Friends, Senior, Two Together, Disabled Persons or Network Railcard) for just £10, either for you or another person, subject to eligibility.

Most railcards allow you to get a one-third discount on off-peak day travelcards for the Underground, but the Gold Card and some railcards (16-25, 26-30, Disabled and Veterans) also give you one-third off pay as you go (PAYG) off-peak fares on the Underground and London railway stations when using an Oyster smartcard. The discount applies both to individual trips and the daily off-peak cap, including any additional PAYG fares that an Underground travelcard holder pays when travelling outside their travelcard zone.

To get the lower PAYG rate, you need to set a discount on your Oyster, which can be done by staff at Underground stations.

Annoyingly, this needs to be re-done each time you renew your ticket – but it’s a small price to pay when you think of the savings.

4. Buy a flexi season ticket

If you take the train to work but don’t need to be in the office every day, then a flexi season ticket could be a good option for you.

These allow you to travel eight days in every 28. You don’t need to choose these in advance, and you can use the ticket on both peak and off-peak trains.

Flexi season tickets are at least 20% cheaper than the equivalent full monthly season ticket.

5. Cashback offers

Certain credit cards give you cashback offers when you buy a train ticket.

For example, the Santander 1|2|3 Credit Card offers 3% cashback on National Rail and Transport for London travel on a combined spend of up to £100 per month.

Uber also launched a travel service in 2022 that lets you buy train tickets through the app. When you do this, you can get 10% back in Uber Credits on every ticket. You can then spend these credits in the app on further train tickets, taxi rides, or food bought through Uber Eats.

If you have a British Airways Executive Club account, you can even link this with your Uber account to collect Avios points when you book tickets on National Rail trains via Uber. You can collect 1 Avios point for every £1 you spend.

6. Split ticketing

Splitting a ticket involves buying two or more tickets, with one to an intermediate station and the other from that station to your destination.

This can work out cheaper, due to the strange ways in which tickets are priced, the ability to use a railcard for part of the journey, or the chance to break a ticket into peak and off-peak segments.

While booking in this way might sound a little odd, it is allowed, as explained on the National Rail website. The train you travel on must stop at the intermediate station, but you don’t need to get off.

There are now multiple sites that calculate split tickets such as TrainPal, Split My Fare TrainTickets.com, and TrainSplit. Most sites take a percentage of what you save, around 10%-15%, which you may consider a fair payment for a useful service not available elsewhere. If not, you can use their results to book the same tickets directly with a train firm.