The old Lidl Plus rewards died on 5 May 2026. Coupon Plus, the system that handed loyal shoppers a free bakery item at £10 of monthly spend and a 10% discount after £250, is gone. A new points scheme called Lidl Plus Points replaced it overnight.
Most guides covering the Lidl Plus card still describe a system that no longer exists. The earning rate, the redemption math, and the entire reward structure changed in a single update.
This piece is for the weekly Lidl shopper spending £40 to £80 per trip who opened the app in June, saw a points balance instead of spending tiers, and thought: wait, did I lose something?
The Earning Rate Looks Simple Until the Exclusions Hit
Lidl now awards 1 point for every £1 spent in store. The app rounds up to the nearest pound before awarding points, so a £4.20 shop earns 5 points.
Even a single bakery croissant for 65p still earns 1 point. Points land in the app within 48 hours of purchase.
That part is clean. The exclusions are where attention matters.
Products That Never Earn Points
Gift cards, lottery tickets, EV charging sessions, charitable donations, newspapers, medicines, and alcohol all sit outside the points system.
A £60 weekly shop that includes a £12 wine bottle and a £5 gift card earns points on £43, not £60. That gap adds up across a year. Returns also deduct points from the balance, so a refunded item reverses the earn.
How Coupon Plus Compared
The old system worked on monthly spending ladders. Spend £10 and grab a free bakery item. Hit £50 for free fruit or veg. Reach £250 and unlock 10% off your next shop, capped at £20.
A household spending £250 per month could pull back roughly £15 to £20 in monthly value, which worked out to around an 8% return. The replacement delivers a flat 1% return when redeemed as money off. That math is brutal for heavy spenders.
A £250-per-month household now earns about £2.50 in points. The gap between the old scheme and the new one is about £12 to £17 per month for families at that spending level.
Freebie Rewards vs Money Off: The Per-Point Trick Nobody Runs
The Rewards Marketplace inside the app offers two redemption paths: free products (bananas, pastries, bakery items) or money-off coupons applied to a future shop. The consensus advice says money-off coupons give the cleanest value because cash is flexible.
I think that advice is wrong for most Lidl shoppers, and the math backs it up. A £1.09 bunch of bananas costs 100 points in the Marketplace, which works out to 1.09p per point. A money-off coupon? That sits at roughly 1p per point. The freebie is 9% better.
A 75p pastry for 70 points hits 1.07p per point. Again, above the cash baseline. The trick is dead simple: divide the shelf price of the free item by the points it costs. Anything above 1p per point beats money off.
Not every freebie wins. A £1 item priced at 150 points drops to 0.67p per point, and that trade is terrible. But most of the standard Marketplace freebies in mid-2026 are beating the money-off rate, and nobody seems to be running this five-second calculation before choosing.
Getting Started on the Lidl Plus App
The entire Lidl Plus card lives inside the Lidl Plus app. No plastic card exists. No paper version. No keyring fob. The setup process takes under five minutes.
Download the app from the App Store or Google Play, tap "Create a Lidl Plus account," and register using a mobile number and email address. A text verification code confirms the account. After choosing a local store (so weekly offers match the right branch), the digital card appears on the home screen with a scannable barcode.
One detail trips people up constantly: the barcode must be scanned before payment, not after. Scanning after the transaction is complete earns zero points and applies zero coupons. Make it the first action at the till, not an afterthought.
The Welcome Bonus Has a Deadline
Anyone opening the app for the first time before 31 July 2026 receives 100 welcome points with no spend required. That is enough for a free reward from the Marketplace on day one. After that date, the bonus disappears.
No Physical Card Workarounds
Shoppers without a smartphone cannot join the scheme at all. For those with patchy in-store signal, a screenshot of the barcode scans at the till just as well as the live app. Save one to the camera roll as backup.
Lidl does not offer family or joint accounts. But nothing stops two people in the same household logging into one account on separate phones. Both people's spending pools into a single points balance, reaching rewards faster.
Lidl Plus Points vs Tesco Clubcard vs Nectar
All three schemes now operate on a points-per-pound basis, and the differences between them are narrower than the marketing suggests.
| Feature | Lidl Plus Points | Tesco Clubcard | Sainsbury's Nectar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earn rate | 1 point per £1 | 1 point per £1 | 1 point per £1 |
| Point value (money off) | ~1p | 1p (up to 2x with Rewards partners) | 0.5p |
| Annual fee | Free | Free | Free |
| Physical card available | No | Yes | Yes |
| Points expiry | 2 years | 2 years | 2 years |
| Coupon activation required | Yes, manually | Some automatic | Yes, manually |
Lidl matches Tesco's base rate and doubles Nectar's standard value per point. But Tesco's Clubcard Rewards partnerships can stretch points to 2x value at restaurants and cinemas, which Lidl cannot match. Nectar's 0.5p per point is the weakest return of the three.
The real separator is base grocery pricing. Lidl's shelf prices regularly beat Tesco and Sainsbury's by 10% to 15% on comparable baskets.
A loyalty scheme returning 1% on top of prices already 10% lower is a different proposition than 1% on top of prices that start higher. Points alone never tell the full story.
What the Coupons Are Worth Beyond Points
Points get all the attention since the May 2026 switch, but the personalised coupons loaded into the app each week are where quiet savings stack up.
These are percentage discounts on product ranges the app tracks the shopper buying, and they often outperform the points earn on a typical weekly shop.
The catch is always the same: every coupon must be activated inside the app before scanning at the checkout. An unactivated coupon applies nothing, even if it is sitting right there in the account.
Beyond coupons, the app includes:
- Lidl Pay, which links a debit or credit card so one scan applies discounts and processes payment in a single motion
- Digital receipts toggled from the card screen, replacing paper till receipts
- Partner offers from brands like Jet2holidays and Tastecard, rotated monthly
- Discounted EV charging at stores with charging points
None of these are reasons to switch supermarkets alone. But for an existing Lidl shopper, the app turns a routine grocery run into a marginally cheaper one with about ten seconds of effort per visit.
Questions People Ask About the Lidl Plus Card
Searches about the Lidl Plus card spiked after the May 2026 change, and several questions keep repeating across forums and social media.
- Q: Can I get points added for a shop where I forgot to scan?
Lidl does not currently offer a way to claim points on past receipts. If the barcode is not scanned before payment, that shop earns nothing. There is no customer service workaround for this, so scanning first is the only fix. - Q: Do Lidl Plus points work at Lidl online?
Lidl's online shop (for non-food items like tools and clothing) does not participate in the points scheme as of mid-2026. Points are earned and redeemed exclusively in physical stores through the app. - Q: Is the Lidl Plus card available outside the UK?
Lidl Plus operates in over 30 countries, but the points structure, rewards, and earning rates differ by region. The UK scheme described here launched its points system on 5 May 2026 and may not match the version in Germany, Ireland, or Spain. - Q: What happens to my points if I delete the app?
Points are tied to the account, not the device. Reinstalling the app and logging back in restores the full balance. Deleting the app does not erase points, but losing access to the registered phone number and email could make account recovery difficult. - Q: Are Lidl Plus rewards taxable in the UK?
Loyalty points and cashback from supermarket cards are treated as rebates by HMRC, not taxable income, for personal shoppers. Business purchases on a loyalty card could attract different treatment, so sole traders using Lidl for stock should check separately.
Conclusion
The new Lidl Plus Points scheme is simpler than what came before, but less generous for big spenders. Smaller-basket shoppers earning on every pound may find the system fairer than the old spending ladders.
Running the per-point math on freebies versus money-off coupons is the single best habit for extracting real value. A free app that costs nothing and sits on top of already-low prices is still a hard deal to argue against.
