The 12 Best Tools To Make Points and Miles Travel Easier
This post contains affiliate links for some of the products mentioned, but we personally use and pay for most of these services ourselves because we believe in their value. We want to share the best points and miles tools that have helped us maximize our travel rewards.
As travel enthusiasts, we’re always looking for ways to optimize our points earning, simplify our trip planning, and keep our travel organized. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll share the exact tools that help us earn more points with minimal effort, find the best award flights, and stay organized throughout our journeys.
Quick Navigation
- Earning Points
- 1. Card Pointers
- 2. Zil Money
- 3. Travel Freely
- 4. BoldlyGo Transfer Bonus Calculator
- Planning & Booking
- 5. PointsYeah
- 6. Seats.aero
- 7. Point.me
- 8. FlightConnections.com
- 9. Thrifty Traveler Premium
- 10. BoldlyGo Point Redemption Calculator
- 11. Points Path
- Travel Organization
- 12. TripIt
Earning Points and Miles Efficiently
The foundation of award travel is having enough points and miles. Here are the tools that help maximize every dollar spent:
1) Card Pointers
What it does: Card Pointers helps you use the right credit card for every purchase to maximize points earnings.
Key features:
- Automatically adds Amex, Chase, Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, and US Bank offers to your cards without sharing logins
- Uses augmented reality to show which card to use at nearby stores
- Tells you which card offers the best multiplier for any merchant
- Helps you discover valuable offers you might otherwise miss
Cost: $72/year for the paid version (free version available with limited features)
Personal experience: This app has paid for itself multiple times over. Once, I received a $20 statement credit from an automatically-added Dell offer that I didn’t even know about—on top of the $200 Amex Platinum Dell credit I was planning to use. Without Card Pointers, I would have missed out on these savings. Personally I’ve been able to save a couple hundred dollars a year in random offers with various cards which more than make up for the cost
2) Zil Money
What it does: Allows business owners to put payroll and other business expenses on credit cards.
Key features:
- Charges your credit card to generate funds for payroll
- Works with existing payroll providers (ADP, Paychex, etc.)
- Transactions often code as office/shipping expenses (3-4X multipliers on certain cards)
Cost: $50/month + 3% transaction fee + $10 wire fee per transaction
Personal experience: I earn 50,000-60,000 points monthly through this platform. While there’s a 3% fee, using cards with 3X or 4X multipliers makes this very worthwhile, especially since transaction fees are business write-offs. It’s also incredibly helpful for hitting sign-up bonuses on cards with high minimum spend requirements.
3) Travel Freely
What it does: Helps track credit card annual fees, bonuses, and 5/24 status.
Listen to our full-length episode with the Travel Freely founder, Zac hood
Key features:
- Tracks when annual fees are due
- Reminds you of signup bonus deadlines
- Monitors your Chase 5/24 status
- Provides recommendations on keeping or canceling cards
Cost: 100% free
Personal experience: With numerous cards in my wallet, this app helps me stay organized and plan ahead for annual fees. About 30 days before a card’s annual fee is due, I get a notification allowing me to decide whether to keep, downgrade, or cancel the card.
4) BoldlyGo Transfer Bonus Calculator
What it does: Calculates exactly how many points to transfer during promotional transfer bonuses.
Key features:
- Accounts for transfer ratios and promotional bonuses
- Shows how many points to transfer to get a specific amount in the destination program
Cost: Free
Personal experience: This tool eliminates the math when trying to determine how many points to transfer during promotional periods, such as the recent Amex to Hilton 25% bonus that changed the ratio from 1:2 to 1:2.5.
Planning and Booking Trips
Once you’ve accumulated points, these tools help you find the best ways to use them:
5) PointsYeah
What it does: Aggregate search tool for points flights across multiple programs. Best all around points and miles searching tool.
Key features:
- Shows seat availability for business class searches
- Daydream Explorer tool finds great points deals to any destination
- Paid version allows searching from multiple origin airports to multiple destinations
- Also includes hotel award searching
Cost: $12/month or ~$100/year (free version available with limited features)
Personal experience: This is my primary tool for searching award availability. The Daydream Explorer feature is particularly useful when you’re flexible on destinations but want to maximize point value.
6) Seats.aero
What it does: Comprehensive search tool for award availability.
Key features:
- Free searches within 90 days
- Fast results with cached searches
- Detailed information on award availability
Cost: Free for 90-day searches, paid subscription for longer-term planning
Personal experience: While I don’t subscribe to the premium version, I use this frequently for searches within 90 days to get a good idea of point requirements for different regions.
7) Point.me
What it does: Beginner-friendly point search tool with detailed booking guides.
Key features:
- Excellent step-by-step booking guides
- Free access for Amex cardholders (limited to Amex points only)
- Comprehensive search across many airlines
Cost: Subscription fee (free for Amex Gold/Platinum cardholders with limited functionality)
Personal experience: While the searches are slower than other tools, the detailed guides make this ideal for beginners who need help navigating the transfer and booking process.
8) FlightConnections.com
What it does: Shows all possible flight routes between destinations. Makes it easier to figure out routing to plan the best routes for award travel.
Key features:
- Filter by airline alliance (OneWorld, Star Alliance, SkyTeam)
- Visualize all direct flights to a destination
- Discover routing options you might not have considered
Cost: Free version available; paid version is ~$5-6/month (lifetime access was once offered for ~$100)
Personal experience: This tool has been invaluable for planning complex international itineraries. When planning our Maldives trip, we used it to find OneWorld alliance options to utilize American Airlines miles. For our upcoming Fiji honeymoon, we discovered we could fly from Hong Kong to Fiji for just 40,000 AA miles per person in business class—a connection we wouldn’t have considered without this tool. It was much easier finding points availability to Hong Kong without spending a fortune on points then it was finding award travel to Fiji directly.
9) Thrifty Traveler Premium
What it does: Sends alerts for award flight deals and mistake fares.
Key features:
- Daily emails with award flight deals
- Text alerts for time-sensitive mistake fares
- Paid version includes 4-7 deals daily
Cost: Subscription fee (free version available with limited deals)
Personal experience: These alerts have helped us book trips we hadn’t planned by taking advantage of incredible limited-time deals, like business class to Portugal for 50,000 points instead of the usual 80,000.
10) BoldlyGo Point Redemption Calculator
What it does: Calculates the value you’re getting from points redemptions.
Key features:
- Factors in taxes, fees, and cash prices
- Provides guidance on whether redemptions are good value
- Helps make informed decisions about transfers
Cost: Free
Personal experience: I use this before every transfer to ensure I’m getting good value from my points. It helps determine if a redemption is worthwhile, even with higher taxes and fees for certain airlines.
11) Points Path
What it does: The first award flight search engine that runs directly in Google Flights, and provides both the cash price and points price of many flights.
Key features:
- Easy to install browser extension
- Search for your trip as you normally would with Google Flights.
- Points Path adds the points or miles price to each flight, and then lets you know which is the better deal for each one — cash or points.
Cost: Free
Personal experience: Since I always use google flights to research my flights, especially for domestic travel, I always get a second opinion on whether I should be paying cash or using my points/miles for the trip
Travel Organization
After booking your trip, staying organized is crucial:
12) TripIt
What it does: Creates comprehensive travel itineraries automatically from confirmation emails.
Key features:
- Automatically imports flight, hotel, and other reservations
- Displays itineraries in the correct time zone for each location
- Shareable with travel companions
- Paid version monitors flights for delays, cancellations, and alternate options
Cost: Free version available; Pro version is $50/year
Personal experience: This app has been incredibly helpful for keeping complex itineraries organized, especially when positioning flights are involved. We often use it to also coordinate our excursions, transfers, dinner reservations, and more. The Pro version’s real-time flight alerts, baggage claim information, and traffic notifications make the $50 annual fee worthwhile for frequent travelers.
Conclusion
While these tools won’t necessarily change how you travel, they will dramatically improve your efficiency in earning points, finding great award flights, and staying organized. Even implementing just one or two of these tools can make the travel rewards game significantly easier to navigate.
Which tools are you currently using for your travel planning? Let us know in the comments below!
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