Best Student Deals This Month: April 2026
7 min read Article Updated 2026-04-24 Last reviewed by Ella Woodward on 24 April 2026
April 2026 is a quietly expensive month for students. Easter breaks run into exam prep, you are probably travelling home at some point, and the good deals scatter across half a dozen apps. This roundup pulls together the discounts that are actually worth using right now, with prices checked against each provider's own site this week. Affiliate disclosure: some links below are tracked, and we earn a small commission if you sign up. We only include a deal if we would use it ourselves.
The free stuff you should already have
Before paying a penny for a discount card, make sure you are using the free tier of everything. UNiDAYS and Student Beans are both free to join with a uni email and cover most high street brands, streaming services, takeaways and tech. If you are paying for TOTUM while sitting on an unused UNiDAYS account, you are doubling up.
Tesco Clubcard and Sainsbury's Nectar are also free and consistently outperform branded student discount cards for weekly food shops. Clubcard prices in particular are now a genuine saving of 10 to 25 percent on a big chunk of the shelves, not just a loyalty sweetener. If you are not scanning one of those cards at the till, that is the cheapest easy win this month.
Our fuller comparison of free student discount apps sits in the TOTUM vs UNiDAYS vs Student Beans guide, which explains which one actually has the wider merchant list in the UK. For food shopping specifically, read the cheapest supermarkets for students breakdown before your next big shop.
The paid cards worth paying for in April
There is exactly one paid discount card we still think makes sense for most students, and that is TOTUM+. It costs £14.99 for one year, £24.99 for two years, or £29.99 for three years on totum.com. The three-year option works out at £10 a year and is the obvious pick if you are in first or second year. You break even the moment you use it on an ASOS sale, a laptop purchase, or a big ISIC-discounted European train ticket.
We would not pay for a Tastecard, a Gourmet Society membership, or a random "VIP" student card this month. UNiDAYS and Student Beans between them cover most eating-out offers you will actually use, and Clubcard prices at Tesco Cafe and Sainsbury's restaurants quietly beat the headline "50 percent off" marketing on most of those cards for solo meals.
Travel: the Railcard maths still works
If you are on a train more than three or four times a year, a Railcard pays for itself, and April is the right month to buy one ahead of end-of-term travel. The 16-25 Railcard is £35 for one year or £80 for three years direct from railcard.co.uk, which is a £25 saving against buying three annual cards. Mature students in full-time study qualify for the same 16-25 card regardless of age.
If you are on the wrong side of 25, the 26-30 Railcard is £35 a year on the same site and carries the same one-third discount on most fares. Neither card works on season tickets, but both stack nicely with Advance fares booked a few weeks out. London-based students should also activate the 18+ Student Oyster photocard for 30 percent off Travelcard and Bus & Tram Pass season tickets: it is a separate TfL product, not a Railcard, and it is the single biggest travel saving available to London undergraduates.
Our UK Railcard picker walks through which card fits your pattern if you are unsure, and the Railcard guide has the rules on discount caps and off-peak times.
Streaming and software: the sub stack to actually keep
Spotify Premium Student is £5.99 a month on spotify.com/uk/student, which is half the price of the standard individual plan and includes Hulu in markets where Spotify bundles it (not the UK) plus a discount on audiobooks. Apple Music's student plan is also £5.99 a month, so you are choosing on library, not cost. Either is a fair price if you listen most days. If you do not, cancel.
Students also qualify for free or discounted access to the core productivity stack: Microsoft 365 is free for most UK university students through the Office for Education portal (check with your IT team, do not pay), and GitHub's Student Developer Pack gives you credits on AWS, DigitalOcean, Namecheap, JetBrains and dozens of other tools if you are doing anything code-adjacent. Neither costs a penny. If you are paying for an Office 365 sub out of your own pocket while your uni licences it, that is the easiest refund request you will ever fill in.
Netflix has no student plan in the UK and will not be cheaper in April; the basic tier is the only lever you have there. A single shared household sub split between flatmates is still the cheapest way to watch anything on it, assuming you are in the same actual address.
Food and drink: the deals actually worth claiming
Greggs Rewards is free, gives you a free drink when you join, and stamps run pretty generously on coffees and sausage rolls. Pret's monthly subscription (Club Pret) is not a student deal, but the 20 percent off food for members is worth the £5 a month only if you are in there more than twice a week. For most students it is not.
Wetherspoons is not running a student-specific promo in April 2026, but the app's order-at-table function plus the under-£7 meal-and-drink deals across most UK pubs in the chain remain the reliable go-to for a cheap meal out. If you have an eating-out budget of £10 or under, that is where it goes furthest.
Food delivery discounts are a minefield this month: Deliveroo Plus Student is free for 12 months if you activate it through Amazon Prime Student, but it auto-renews to a paid Plus plan, so diary the cancel date. Just Eat and Uber Eats are running their usual rotating voucher codes rather than any student-specific saving worth planning around. Our food delivery discounts guide keeps an up-to-date list of the codes that actually work at the till.
Tech and laptops: only if you actually need one
Apple's UK Education Store is running its usual academic pricing in April (no extra back-to-uni AirPods offer right now, that returns around July) and gives you meaningful discounts on MacBooks and iPads against the standard consumer prices. TOTUM+ members stack a further discount on some models.
Dell, Lenovo and HP all run UK student stores with a standing 5 to 15 percent discount on business and education lines. Currys price-matches a lot of these into its main site, so if Dell UK Education is £40 under Currys, phone Currys and ask. They will match. Do not buy a "student laptop" from a chain without checking the same configuration on the manufacturer's own education store first; it is usually cheaper direct.
If your laptop is slow rather than broken, a £30 SSD upgrade or £20 extra RAM stick beats a new £700 laptop most of the time. April is a slow month for tech deals; the real drops are Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day.
Banking, cashback and the boring money wins
Student bank accounts are not a "deal" in the classic sense, but the switching incentives available right now (typically a £100 to £150 cash sweetener plus a 0 percent interest-free overdraft of £1,000 to £3,000) easily outweigh anything a discount card will save you this term. We keep a live comparison in our student bank accounts guide; the ranking shifts as incentives change, so re-check before you open one.
Cashback apps worth having this month: Jam Doughnut for big high-street gift-card reloads (1 to 15 percent back on everyday spend), and TopCashback for any planned online purchase over £50. Do not install a cashback app you will forget; the ones that actually work live on your home screen.
April 2026 prices at a glance
| Deal | UK price April 2026 | Worth it for |
|---|---|---|
| UNiDAYS | Free | Every student |
| Student Beans | Free | Every student |
| TOTUM+ 1 year | £14.99 | Heavy high-street spenders |
| TOTUM+ 3 year | £29.99 | First and second years |
| 16-25 Railcard | £35 (1yr) / £80 (3yr) | 3+ rail trips a year |
| 26-30 Railcard | £35 per year | Grad students who travel |
| Spotify Premium Student | £5.99 per month | Daily listeners |
| Apple Music Student | £5.99 per month | Daily listeners |
What to skip this month
Paid "student discount finder" sites that charge a membership fee. Overpriced "premium" subs to services you used twice last term. Any laptop protection plan a high-street salesperson pitches you (your contents insurance or card provider almost certainly covers accidental damage already). April is also the wrong month to sign up for gym promos: most chains lift their freshers-style deals in September and are running holdover pricing right now.
If you are in your final term, also skip multi-year commitments like the 3-year Railcard or the 3-year TOTUM. The break-even maths looks great until you graduate and can no longer use the card.
Frequently asked questions
Do UNiDAYS and Student Beans really cover most student discounts?
Between them, yes, for high street and online retail. UNiDAYS tends to have better fashion and tech brands; Student Beans has more food and subscriptions. Both are free, so install both and check whichever has the brand you actually need.
Is TOTUM+ worth it if I already have UNiDAYS?
Only if you spend regularly on brands UNiDAYS does not cover, or you want ISIC benefits for European travel. For most UK students the free apps cover 80 percent of the same ground. The three-year TOTUM+ at £29.99 pays off if you use it once or twice a month on something UNiDAYS does not carry.
Can I buy a 16-25 Railcard if I am over 25?
Yes, if you are a mature full-time student you qualify for the 16-25 Railcard regardless of age. Otherwise the 26-30 Railcard is the same price (£35 per year) with the same one-third discount.
Is Spotify Student cheaper than the family plan?
Per head, no. A Spotify family plan split between six people is cheaper than £5.99 each. But if you are not in a six-person household where someone will pay the whole £19.99 up front, Student at £5.99 a month is the right price.
How do I activate Deliveroo Plus Student for free?
Through an active Amazon Prime Student subscription: log in to Deliveroo, link your Amazon account, and the Plus fee is waived for 12 months. Set a reminder to cancel before month 13 or it rolls to a paid plan.
We refresh this roundup monthly. If a deal drops off or a price moves, it updates here first.
