Urgent: Regular rail user? Consider buying a season ticket NOW to beat Sunday's price hikes

Doing this could save you £100s on your travel. For example, when we checked today (Thursday 27 February), the price of an annual season ticket from Swansea to Bristol starting on Saturday 1 March was £6,080. But the same ticket for the same route starting a day later on Sunday 2 March cost £6,292 – an increase of £212.

This applies to all types of season tickets bought for travel in England and Wales including Flexi, seven-day, monthly and annual, and open period returns.

If you're not sure whether a season ticket is worth it, you can use our Train Season Ticket Calculator to help you compare the cost against other kinds of tickets.

In Scotland? Consider buying a season ticket before 1 April

The Scottish Government confirmed in January this year that rail fares will be rising by 3.8% from 1 April 2025.

So if you buy a season ticket on or before 31 March 2025 it'll be charged at the current rate – regardless of when it's due to commence. Again, this applies to all season ticket types.

What about Northern Ireland?

Translink, which runs the rail network, hasn't yet announced if and how rail fares will change this year, but we've asked and we'll update this story when we know more.

How rail fare rises are calculated

In England, annual increases to 'regulated' rail fares, which include season, anytime day, off-peak, and super off-peak tickets, are usually linked to the previous July's retail prices index (RPI) measure of inflation, which for 2024 stood at 3.6%.

However, as part of the Autumn Budget last October, the Government confirmed that regulated rail fares in England would rise by 4.6% instead, to "recover a shortfall in revenue" incurred since the pandemic.

The cost of unregulated fares – including first class, advance, anytime and off-peak day tickets – is set by train companies.

Other ways to cut rail travel costs

Here are just a few ways you can try to save on train travel:

• Buy a railcard if you spend over £90 a year. Railcards usually cut a third off the bill. You can buy them on the Railcard website and elsewhere, but prices are set to rise this Sunday – from £30 to £35 for a one-year railcard and from £70 to £80 for a three-year card. However, right now you can bag 25% off current prices if you buy or renew a digital railcard via TrainPal or Trip.com – meaning a one-year railcard will cost you £22.50.

• Book 12 or more weeks in advance for the cheapest tickets. Most people know if you book early, you can get cheaper train tickets, yet often these vanish quicker than empty seats on a peak-time journey. To ensure a bargain, the key is to start looking for tickets about 12 weeks before you want to travel.

• Split your ticket, not your journey, to save money. Instead of buying tickets for the whole journey, buying tickets for its constituent parts can slash the price, even though you're on exactly the same train. There are tools to help you do this, including the UK's biggest train-booking site Trainline (though beware its fees!). See our Cheap Train Tickets guide for full info.