Published: 17 August 2026
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Club Avanti Review: Are the Free Train Tickets Worth It?
If you regularly travel with Avanti West Coast, joining Club Avanti could earn you free Standard Premium and First Class train tickets.
Club Avanti is the loyalty programme of Avanti, which runs trains on the West Coast Mainline between London, and cities such as Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham plus many other stations in-between. This straightforward scheme rewards regular Avanti travellers with free train tickets and other extras.
Better still, because rewards are based on the number of qualifying journeys rather than how much you spend, there are some interesting opportunities to get some significant outsized value from the scheme…
Our verdict: Is Club Avanti worth joining?
Yes. Club Avanti is free to join, and even occasional travellers can benefit from a welcome ticket discount and a free hot drink. The real value, however, comes if you regularly travel with Avanti West Coast.
Because the scheme rewards the number of qualifying journeys rather than the amount spent, you can earn free Standard Premium or First Class return tickets through relatively inexpensive journeys and potentially redeem them on much more expensive routes.
There are restrictions, particularly around booking directly with Avanti, qualifying journey distances and reward-ticket availability, which we’ll explain below.
Club Avanti Benefits
All Club Avanti members are entitled to:
- 10% off on-board food & drink
- Priority Ticket Alerts – for the best prices
- Early Boarding Notifications at London Euston
In addition, as a reward for signing up, members get a 10% discount voucher off their next journey with Avanti.
Club Avanti at a glance
| Tier | Qualifying journeys | Main Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Silver | 0–8 | 10% welcome discount + free drink |
| Gold | 9–20 | Free Standard Premium return |
| Platinum | 21+ | Free First Class return + Euston First Class Lounge pass |
The potential sweet spot
Club Avanti counts qualifying journeys rather than the amount spent. This means nine relatively inexpensive single journeys of 75+ miles could earn a Standard Premium return on a much more expensive long-distance route.
Status Tiers
There are 3 status tiers starting at Silver, and progress up the tiers is determined by the number of qualifying journeys taken over a 12 month period.
Silver (joining tier)
- One 10% discount voucher off your next journey (joining offer)
- One free drink onboard
Gold (9 – 20 qualifying journeys)
- One free Standard Premium Return ticket
Platinum (21 or more qualifying journeys)
- One free First Class Return ticket
- One free First Class Lounge pass (can only be used at Euston station)
Some questions you may have:
What is a qualifying journey?
A qualifying journey is counted as a train trip of 75 miles or more on an Avanti operated service. The Avanti operated service can just be for one stage of a journey with trains on other operators, but that leg must be more than 75 miles. In addition, the ticket has to have been been booked either on the Avanti website or the Avanti app.
Note that a maximum of two qualifying journeys in any single day count towards status.
When does the 12 month qualifying period start?
Your Membership Year starts on the day that you sign up for Club Avanti and then re-starts on the same date in each subsequent year.
All qualifying journeys taken are reset back to zero at the end of the 12 month qualifying period.
For How Long do I retain my Gold or Platinum Status?
If you achieve either Gold or Platinum status, you retain that level for the rest of the membership year, and for the 12 months afterwards. If you are a Platinum member and do not achieve the 21 journeys in the 12 months afterwards, you will get a soft landing and only drop one level (down to Gold) for the year afterwards.
However, in practice all this appears to be of little benefit as the free Standard Premium Return ticket (Gold) or free First Class Return ticket (Platinum) still require you to travel the respective 9 or 21 qualifying journeys. I reached out to Avanti who confirmed this but also said that they “are always looking at different enhancements to the tiers and different tiers get varying third party offers throughout the year”.
How do the reward vouchers work?
- You can use your reward voucher to book any Avanti operated service so vouchers can be extremely valuable, depending on the route you are redeeming them on.
- To book a reward journey, there must be cash Advance Fares available to buy on your chosen train. If there is no advance availability in standard premium (Gold reward) or First Class (Platinum), you cannot redeem your voucher.
- Vouchers earned for free train journeys must be booked at least 7 days in advance of travel. Reward vouchers are valid for 365 days from the date of issue plus travel must be booked and made within this period.
- Travel on reward vouchers does not count as a qualifying journey for the purposes of the Club Avanti scheme and do not qualify for Delay Repay Compensation.
How Do I Join Club Avanti?
Visit the Avanti West Coast Website here
Our Observations
- Note that only bookings made directly through Avanti’s website or app count so any bookings via a 3rd party website or corporate travel agency will not qualify.
- However, if you decide to book your work travel for yourself and other colleagues directly with Avanti, you need to remember that only two journeys per day count towards your status. So if you pay for yourself and a workmate on a day return to London, you would only get 2 qualifying journeys but if you both stayed overnight in the capital and returned the following day, the trip would count for 4 qualifying journeys. If there are more than two of you travelling together, you will only every get a maximum of two qualifying journeys.
- If you regularly travel shorter distances that are still over 75 miles on Avanti you can do really well out of this. For example if you live in Carlisle and regularly travel to Preston (90 miles, £11.50 advance single) or Glasgow (102 miles, £12 advance single), 4½ return trips can get you a free standard premium return ticket to London and 10½ returns can get you a free first class return ticket.
- Split tickets (ie instead of booking Glasgow-London, buying Glasgow-Preston & Preston-London as separate tickets to save money) are excluded in the Ts&Cs, although this could be tricky for Avanti to monitor properly and I have seen various reports of people getting credited for both legs.
Who should use Club Avanti?
Ideal for:
- One Time Avanti West Coast Mainline travellers (10% discount)
- Frequent users of the West Coast Main Line (at least 4½ trips a year)
- Those who often travel on short, but over 75 mile, journeys on Avanti who want to redeem for longer trips
Not really for:
- Those who book their train tickets through 3rd parties or corporate travel agents
- People who travel under 75 miles on the West Coast Main Line
- Those who use Avanti services infrequently
- People who want to redeem their free tickets for travel to/from North Wales
Anything else to be aware of?
- The 10% discount welcome voucher is valid off two single journeys (ie a return journey)
- Paid tickets in First Class count the same as standard class tickets for the purposes of a qualifying journey
- Tickets purchased with a railcard still count as qualifying journeys
- Child Tickets, Season Tickets or Avanti Superfare tickets do not count towards Club Avanti Rewards
- When you have reached 21 qualifying journeys in a year, you cannot earn any additional free train tickets until the next 12 month period
- Standard Premium Class is not available in North Wales so if you want to use your Gold voucher in that part of the world, you can only use it to/from Crewe.
Our Take
Club Avanti is a pretty simple scheme and it is worth joining if only for the 10% off on-board refreshments and the introductory 10% ticket discount – especially if you have an expensive, long distance journey coming up.
More frequent travellers on the West Coast Main Line can effectively earn a free return trip after 4½ return journeys and a second return journey (this time in first class) after a further 6 return trips. This is broadly a 1 in 5 return on your spend, although as we have shown, there is an opportunity to do better than this if your regular journeys are relatively cheap but still exceed the 75-mile qualifying distance.
The scheme rewards the number of journeys rather than the amount spent, so there is nothing stopping you earning your status on inexpensive trips and then redeeming your reward for a much more expensive journey to the other end of the Avanti network.
