Getting value out of your points forms the entire crux behind Roame. However, since points don't exactly have a direct value associated with them (it's not cold, hard cash), many ask about how you can best value your points.
In this article, we will delve into the logic behind how we determine our Cents Per Points valuations across the various ways you can use your points.
Ways You Can Redeem Your Points
By design, there many ways you can use your points. We've consolidated some of the broader ways to redeem your points across all the major issuers (excluding issuer specific ways to redeem your points):
- Redeem as statement credit/cashback
- Pay with points at checkout
- Redeem for gift cards
- Travel portal
- Transfer to partners
However, it's clear that there are some good & bad ways to use your points from a pure valuation perspective. In summary, you should always strive to get as much as you can out of your points. We'll discuss our valuation of each of these broad redemption techniques in the following sections.
Why We Don't Track Bank Of America, Discover, Or Barclays "Points"
In this analysis, we only discuss the following issuers:
- American Express
- Chase
- Capital One
- Citi
- Brex
- Bilt
- Wells Fargo
Other common issuers like Bank of America, Discover, and Barclays are excluded from this discussion because none of them issue "transferable points." While they may market themselves as earning "points," these are actually just fixed value cashback. Your value and potential are basically capped at 1 cent per point for these types of currencies.
Redeem As Statement Credit/Cashback
This is probably one of the easiest ways to use your points, as you just use your points directly against your credit card transactions to redeem your points. However, with ease of use comes low value. Here's a summary of the value you get out of directly using your points for statement credit:
BRAND
Issuer
Statement Credit Value (CPP)
AMEX
0.6
Chase
1.0
Chase (Pay Yourself Back)
1.0-1.25
Capital One
1.0
Citi
1.0
Bilt
1.0
Brex
0.6
Wells Fargo
1.0
While AMEX points have a very low value when used as statement credit, other programs have higher valuations across the board. Chase, in fact, through Pay Yourself Back, lets you get up to 1.25 CPP for using your purchases against grocery, gas stations, etc. However, given the limitations of transactions/you must have certain cards to use PYB, we think redeeming as statement credit/cashback generally has a 1 CPP value associated with it.
Pay With Points At Checkout
Major issuers also offer the ability to use your points while shopping. For example, for Chase, you can use pay with points at checkout for Paypal and Amazon. Unfortunately, the value of this is going to be a bit capped as well.
BRAND
Issuer
Statement Credit Value (CPP)
AMEX
0.7
Chase
0.8
Capital One
0.8
Citi
0.8
Bilt
0.7
Brex
n/a
Wells Fargo
n/a
Given the generally low value of using your points via checkout, we think it's fair to assign a 0.75 CPP to this technique on average.
Redeem For Gift Cards
You can also redeem your points for gift cards. The types of brands are pretty consistent across all the issuers (e.g. Nike, Adidas, Doordash, etc.). Interestingly, you can typically find small promotions that can help you get ~10% more out of your points.
However, unsurprisingly, some issuers will make the value of using your points for giftcard lower.
BRAND
Issuer
Statement Credit Value (CPP)
AMEX
0.5–1.0
Chase
1.0
Capital One
0.5–1.0
Citi
0.5–1.0
Bilt
n/a
Brex
1.0
Wells Fargo
1.0
Given the fact that you can redeem for gift cards at a slightly increased rate at times, it's worth factoring that in. At the same time though, the valuation range when using points for gift card can vary significantly. Thus, we think it's fair to assign a 0.85 CPP that factors in this range, while being slightly higher than paying with points at checkout.
Travel Portal
Using points via the travel portal is one of the most classic ways of using your points. If you use this method for all your points, there's a chance you might be missing out on a lot of potential value here.
The travel portal is essentially just a Google Flights booking where you can use your points to pay instead of cash. Prices usually match what you see on Google Flights, but there can definitely be discrepancies (which can be a major disadvantage of travel portals).
BRAND
Issuer
Statement Credit Value (CPP)
AMEX
1.0
Chase
1.0
Capital One
1.0
Citi
1.0
Bilt
1.0
Brex
1.0
Bilt
1.0
While all cards in general offer a 1 cent per point redemption path via their respective travel portals, having other cards specifically allows you to get a higher than average redemption value out of your points. With the likes of the Chase Sapphire Preferred, you can immediately get 1.25 cents per point via the travel portal.
You can get even more value out of your points by using a Business Platinum Card (35% rebate on eligible flights booked through the Amex travel portal) or a Sapphire Reserve to get ~1.5 cents per point.
How we get 1.54 cents per point for the AMEX Business Platinum Card ▼
Given the wide range of ways to redeem your points via the travel portal, we think its appropriate to value this somewhere between 1–1.5 cents per point. However, since there are only a few cards that can let you get 1.25/1.5 CPP on travel, we think it's fair to put the valuation slightly below to adjust for the fact that most cards only let you get 1 CPP. Thus, let's take 1.15 CPP as the general valuation of redeeming points via the travel portal in general, weighting towards the fact that there are only a few cards that can actually get you 1.25/1.5 CPP via the portal.
Transferring Points To Partners
Transferring points to airline partners is the general name of the game. At Roame, we believe transferring points is the best way to unlock the most value out of your points, and this is true for both economy & business class flights.
In this next section, we'll talk about valuing points when redeeming for both economy and business class flights.
How Airlines Price Award Flights
It varies by airline. Some will tie the point price directly to the cash price of booking the flight (e.g. JetBlue, Delta, Southwest), so the number of points scales proportionally to the cost of the flight. However, other airlines price based on flight distance (e.g. British Airways, Alaska Airlines, Air Canada) while others price based on a dynamic algorithm that no one really understands (e.g. Air France, KLM).
Although airlines do have dynamic pricing, most will explicitly define that their tickets start at a certain pricing. These prices are known as "saver fares." For instance, while Air France/KLM have a fully dynamic pricing system, their pricing all starts at a specified rate (e.g. 50k one way business class to Europe from the USA).
How Transfer Bonuses Impact These Valuations
Transfer bonuses are extremely powerful offerings that can help push the valuation of points even higher. In these following examples, we do not consider transfer bonuses since they are sporadically offered throughout the year and aren't traditionally available from every issuer at the same time.
Since we do not consider transfer bonuses in these CPP valuations, it's fair to say our valuations are slightly conservation. Just note that you can stretch the value of your points even further with transfer bonuses, which then in turn boosts up CPP since you're using less points to book a flight.
Economy Flights
Transferring points to use for economy award redemptions can still be a fantastic deal. We'll walk through some examples here to figure out a reasonable redemption value when using points for economy award flights.
Notably, since you can use points in the travel portal to book economy flights (they should cost the same as booking direct, not always true), you would never transfer points to book economy flights where you're getting less CPP than the portal. Thus, on a general basis, you would never transfer points to get less than 1.15 CPP (travel portal).
Example 1: Transcon Flights
Let's say we need to fly a long transcontinental flight to/from the West Coast and Boston. Using SkyView, we can quickly do a broad search for each direction to find reasonable point deals.
Roundtrip wise, we could expect to use about 15,000–20,000 points here based on our searches for a ~1 week long trip. Prices will, of course, vary by day/time.
This same flight on Google Flights is about $200–300 roundtrip, with some of the cheaper options (e.g. United Basic Economy) not having a carry on at all. Consequently, this gives us a CPP range of 1.33–2.00 CPP, which makes sense given the fluctuations in what we might need (carry on?) and departure dates.
Example 2: Flying Transatlantic Economy
You can use points to book transatlantic flights to/from Europe. The classic staple example is via Air France, which traditionally offers 20k point one-ways to/from Europe from all major US airports. This means you can fly roundtrip to Europe with carry on and checked bags for 40k pts.
Using Google Flights again, we can see comparable cash prices in general for East Coast/West Coast to Europe roundtrip starts around $500–$1,000 with bags. On a CPP basis comparing directly against the best possible flight alternative (if it meant saving money, you would likely be willing to take the layover), then this results in a 1.25–2.50 CPP.
Example 3: Flying Transpacific Economy
One of the best ways to get to Japan via transpacific economy class is via ANA, where you can book economy awards starting at just 40k pts roundtrip offpeak (55k pts peak). Taxes & fees vary depending on route, and for this specific example, the fees are definitely high.
Generally speaking, on a fungibility basis, if you compare this nonstop ANA pts option vs flights with layovers, the CPP is just about 1.3 CPP—not totally great. However, if you consider the fact that it is nonstop and you value that, then the CPP goes up to around 2 CPP.
CPP valuations are difficult since they are generalizations across many different factors. On a conservative side, we see this as 1.30 CPP, but on the higher side, we can see this going way beyond 2.00+ CPP.
Example 4: Last Minute Economy Flight Bookings
When emergencies come up, you might need to fly to places that you didn't necessarily expect. Last minute flights are generally extremely expensive since the airlines know the willingness to pay is high. However, with points, you can sometimes find opportunities to save a ridiculous amount of money with last minute availability.
While this flight would have cost $400 USD one way (we aren't evaluating roundtrip here since this was a one-way emergency), using points would have only cost 15k pts—a valuation of 2.6 CPP. This is definitely on the higher end of things, but shows the dynamicity of points.
Example 5: Fixed Value Point Redemptions
Examples 1–4 were examples of points that are non revenue based, meaning their pricing generally isn't impacted by the cash cost of the flight.
However, it's still important to consider major carriers that price their flights based on the cash fare. For instance, let's take a look at Delta, one of the big three airlines in the US flying roundtrip SLC/ATL:
You can see round trip pricing for both trips for the week in August 2024 I randomly selected. When comparing these tables, you'll notice that the price for Delta Main Cabin starts as low as $519 roundtrip (48k miles + $5.60). CPP wise across the board, you only get 1.08 CPP with your Delta miles.
Fairly Valuing Economy Flight Redemptions
When redeeming your points/miles for economy via transfer partners, you can get a wide variety of redemption rates. If you use revenue based partners, you'll get a much lower value out of your points than you might like. Consequently, we think it makes sense to exclude revenue-based transfer partners since the value is always capped—there is no dynamic valuations associated with these revenue based points.
Likewise, when using your points for other economy flights, with some savviness, you can generally see 1.5–2.0 CPP on average. Consequently, we think it's fair to put a general valuation of 1.80 CPP for economy flights when transferring your points, as that value captures some of the higher end redemptions while noticing that you may sometimes see lesser options around.
Business Class Flights
Given the uncapped nature of points, it's possible to get some amazing value on business class flights. However, there's always a good and bad side to redemptions, so let's also walk through examples here to arrive at a reasonable redemption value.
Example 1: Virgin Atlantic Business Class To London/UK Airports
Not all redemptions are built equal. Flying in/out of London charges enormous surcharges that can be almost ridiculous when looking at it.
This trip in business class from NYC runs for just $2,500, but the taxes/fees incurred for points costs over $2,000. This implies a CPP of <1.0, which is really bad (you'd get more out of your points using them to buy gift cards). Why are we starting with such a bad example of using points? Again, we just want build a theme that points can have a wide variable range, but used optimally can net significant value.
Example 2: American Airlines Longhaul Redemptions
Generally speaking, this is among of the best redemptions in the points world. American Airlines miles offer tremendous value when you can find availability with them.
For instance, you could fly from Boston to Istanbul for just 57,500 miles + $43 USD one way. Assuming round trip costs about the same, that flight generally costs about $3,000–4,000 USD roundtrip in business, meaning you are getting about 3 CPP on average. That's incredible value considering AA award bookings are fully cancellable and refundable as well.
Likewise, you can get to Tokyo from US airports from just 60,000 miles one way (and minimal taxes). Assuming the return flight costs the same, you're looking at 120,000 miles. Roundtrip nonstop business class to Japan from the US (excluding Zipair) costs generally $6,000+ USD, meaning you're getting about 5 CPP here.
If we take the idea of fungibility into play, comparing purely the Zipair lie flat seats is about $2,000. Excluding all other factors besides the seat (since Zipair charges for all other amenities, including bags and food), the floor value is 1.66 CPP. This is a high floor when compared against our other redemption methods.
Let's also consider East Coast departures to Delhi. The interesting thing here is that from a pure fungibility perspective, our CPP is still excellent. The best priced business class seats to India are on Air India (a pretty bad airline by all standards), which start around $3,200, resulting in a fungible CPP of 2.46 CPP—a very strong redemption all things considered.
However, if you compare the 65k one ways against top airlines like Etihad, American, United, or Emirates, prices start to go towards the $5–6,000 range, suggesting a CPP ~4.23 on average.
Example 3: Virgin Atlantic Partner Business Class Redemptions
Virgin Atlantic miles have access to some of the best redemptions in the game. For example, you can fly roundtrip to Tokyo in ANA business class for just 90,000 points from the West Coast and 95,000 points from the East Coast.
Similar to the above example, these roundtrip flights to Japan are going to run about $5,000 from the West Coast and $6,000+ from the East Coast. This gives us a CPP starting at 5.50 CPP for West Coast—only gets better when comparing against the East Coast.
Skeptics might bring up Zipair, but the problem with doing a comparison of these business class flights against Zipair is that you're excluding all of the other benefits that the legacy carriers provide. Zipair at base value offers the seat for ~$2,000, which still gives you a 2+ CPP. If you start factoring in everything else, that CPP just gets stronger.
Another incredible redemption is Virgin Atlantic's ability to book nonstop Air New Zealand business class for just 62,500 miles one way with low taxes. Roundtrip fungible prices seem to start as low as $5,500 USD, so calculating CPP is easy—around 4.5 CPP at the floor.
Example 4: Air France/KLM Business Class
Air France business class is typically a bit easier to book than Examples 2 and 3, but can still provide tremendous value. You can find flights to Europe starting at just 50,000 points one way. Notably, taxes/surcharges can be in the hundreds roundtrip, so that's important to factor into any CPP calculation.
Business class flights from the West Coast typically run for about $3,000 roundtrip when comparing against the most reasonable options. However, if you want to compare against nonstops, you're typically looking at $4,000+. Seeing that the taxes for the roundtrip Air France business class example total about $550, this gives us a floor CPP of 2.45 and a nonstop CPP of 3.45. Both are reasonable and make sense in the scope of this overall discussion.
Fairly Valuing Business Class Flight Redemptions
As you can see in these examples, it's possible to be completely scammed when using points (example 1) and to get tremendous value out of them (examples 2, 3, 4). Based on our discussions and examples, if you take redemptions with a grain of salt and are generally smart about them (e.g. not redeeming for <1 CPP like in example 1), you can typically net a conservative ~4.10 cents per point when looking at business class flights.
First Class Flights
First class flights have become rarer in recent years, but with the power of points you can book these incredible experiences for little out of pocket cost.
Example 1: Virgin Atlantic Partner First Class Redemptions On ANA
ANA First Class is one of the world's best experiences out there, consistently ranking among many top first class reviews worldwide. However, the airline prices these flights at a whopping ~$20,000 roundtrip—that's quite a bit to fork over...
However, with Virgin Atlantic, you can book these experiences for barely a fraction of that price. As covered in this in depth article, you can fly roundtrip first class starting at just 145,000 Virgin miles (from the West Coast). Flying from the East Coast makes that go up to 170,000 miles roundtrip. I would estimate taxes & fees for this flight to go around $500 USD roundtrip.
Calculating CPP here gives us an estimated value of ~13.5 CPP, which is ridiculous considering you could have also liquidated those same miles for an Amazon purchase of $1,160 USD. On a fungible basis, while I would never pay $20,000 for a flight, using points unlocks experiences I would never be able to do otherwise, so there is tremendous value to be gained from using points here.
Example 2: Etihad First Class Partner Redemptions
Etihad First Class is also a ridiculous experience, with suite style seats and an on flight shower. Booking these flights are also pretty cost prohibitive, usually running about $11,000 USD roundtrip—showering while in the air sounds cool, but not sure if I'd be willing to shell out $11,000 for that.
Using Air Canada Aeroplan's partner bookings, since most of these flights are flying between the 6,001–8,000 mile bucket, they cost 130,000 pts one way with minimal taxes/fees. Roundtrip, this costs 260,000 pts, giving us a 4.2 CPP, which is still incredible all things considered.
Example 3: Lufthansa First Class Partner Redemptions
Lufthansa first class is also generally well regarded, but not as highly as some of the other options out there. Nonetheless, it is still an awesome first class that unsurprisingly runs for about $11,000 roundtrip from the West Coast. Using Avianca Lifemiles, you can get this flight for just 87,000 miles one way (just be warned about Lifemiles, as they are a frustrating program to use).
This gives us a valuation of about 6.3 CPP at the lowest.
Example 4: Japan Airlines First Class Partner Redemptions
Japan Airlines recently launched their new, spectacular A350 first class product and it has received rave reviews across the entire spectrum. From New York, this flight typically seems to start around $22,000 and can go several thousand dollars higher.
American Airlines partner oneworld bookings price this flight at just 80,000 miles one way (ridiculous). Furthermore, these award bookings are fully refundable, so you can have maximum flexibility and have some insane miles prices to work with. On the low end, we're looking at a 13.8 CPP, with potential for more if you pull your levers correctly.
Fairly Valuing First Class Flight Redemptions
First class flights generally cost a lot more than business class flights, which can make it even more valuable to use your points for these types of redemptions. While it's possible to see some lower end redemptions on a relative scale, you can see some crazy redemptions without even factoring in transfer bonuses. Thus, we think it's fair to put first class redemptions at roughly 10.5 CPP, which is higher than the average of the flights we showcased here, while accounting for the fact that we looked at the lower end of the cash costs of these flights where possible.
Japan Airlines recently launched their new, spectacular A350 first class product and it has received rave reviews across the entire spectrum. From New York, this flight typically seems to start around $22,000 and can go several thousand dollars higher.
Conclusion
This was an in-depth discussion on using and redeeming points in a fair manner. We strive to display the value of points and wanted to write this post to outline our valuation methodologies behind some of our advertisements and discussions surrounding points. In summary, this is the general valuation of points across the methods we discussed in this post:
- Redeem as statement credit/cashback: 1 CPP
- Pay with points at checkout: 0.75 CPP
- Redeem for gift cards: 0.85 CPP
- Travel portal: 1.15 CPP
- Transfer to partners (economy): 1.80 CPP
- Transfer to partners (business): 4.10 CPP
- Transfer to partners (first): 10.5 CPP
