How the transferable-points system actually works
Think of it as a hub and spokes. In the middle sit five bank currencies — Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou, Capital One miles and Bilt points. They are earned with a credit card and are worth a fixed, reliable amount if you cash them out. Around the outside sit the airline and hotel programs, each with its own award pricing. A transfer moves points from the hub to one spoke, at a ratio the bank publishes.
Everything interesting follows from one property of that arrangement: while the points sit in the hub, they are every program at once. You can price a trip in four airline programs, discover that three of them want twice as many miles as the fourth, and only then move your points. The moment you transfer, that optionality is spent — and it cannot be bought back, because no bank reverses a transfer and no airline sends miles home.
The corollary is that the question "which program should I collect?" is usually the wrong one. Collect the bank currency whose partner list covers the flying you actually do, and treat the airline and hotel programs as destinations rather than as accounts to build.
Why the same point is worth more in one program than another
A program prices an award in one of four ways, and the way it prices is the single best predictor of what its currency is worth.
- Published chart
- A table of prices by region or category that the program commits to. When a cash rate triples for a conference or a holiday, the award price does not move. This is where almost all the value in this hobby lives, and the number of programs still doing it shrinks every year.
- Distance table
- Price rises with the distance flown rather than with demand. Predictable, and unusually generous on long partner itineraries — a stopover added to a one-way costs a flat number of points rather than a second ticket.
- Chart with dynamic gaps
- A chart that still governs partner awards while the program's own flights price dynamically. The partner side is where the value is; the program's own metal usually is not.
- Fully dynamic or priced off the cash fare
- The award price tracks the cash price. A redemption can be fine, but it can never be a bargain, because the mechanism that would produce a bargain has been removed. These currencies sit at the bottom of our valuation table and always will.
That is the mental model to navigate the rest of this page with. Read the chart-type column first and the valuation second — the valuation is a consequence of the chart type, not an independent fact about the program.
The transferable bank currencies
These are the currencies to earn. All five transfer at 1:1 into at least one program worth transferring into, and all five publish a fixed-value redemption option underneath the transfers, so a point is never stranded. What separates them is the partner list — which is what the transfer-partner column below counts, and what the full partner reference lays out ratio by ratio.
| Program | Award pricing | Our value | Transfer partners | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chase Ultimate Rewards | No chart — priced through partners | 1.9¢ | 14 partners | Reaches World of Hyatt at 1:1 — the single most valuable transfer relationship in the industry. |
| Bilt Rewards | No chart — priced through partners | 1.85¢ | 17 partners | The only way to earn a transferable currency on rent, and it reaches Hyatt at 1:1. |
| American Express Membership Rewards | No chart — priced through partners | 1.8¢ | 21 partners | The only US bank currency that reaches ANA, and the one that runs transfer bonuses most often. |
| Capital One Miles | No chart — priced through partners | 1.7¢ | 21 partners | The broadest partner list of the big four, with a hard cash floor underneath every point. |
| Citi ThankYou Points | No chart — priced through partners | 1.7¢ | 18 partners | Reaches Turkish Miles&Smiles, which prices Star Alliance business class lower than anything else you can transfer into. |
Airline programs, and what a mile is worth in each
Ranked by what our model says one mile is worth. Read it alongside the chart-type column: the programs at the top publish a price and keep to it, and the programs at the bottom price off the cash fare. Several of these are difficult or impossible to earn directly on a US credit card and exist mainly as transfer destinations, which is the point of holding a bank currency in the first place.
| Program | Award pricing | Our value | Reachable from | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turkish Airlines Miles&SmilesStar Alliance | Published chart | 1.6¢ | Bilt, Capital One, Citi ThankYou | The cheapest published price for Star Alliance business class to Europe, paid for with a genuinely difficult booking process. |
| Air Canada AeroplanStar Alliance | Distance table | 1.5¢ | Chase, Bilt, American Express, Capital One | A published distance-and-region table, plus a stopover you can attach to any one-way for a flat fee in points. |
| Alaska Atmos Rewardsoneworld | Chart with dynamic gaps | 1.5¢ | Bilt | Stopovers on partner one-ways. The oneworld integration narrowed the sweet spots without closing them. |
| American Airlines AAdvantageoneworld | Chart with dynamic gaps | 1.45¢ | Bilt | Web-special pricing and partner business class on Qatar, Etihad and Japan Airlines — when you can find the space. |
| Avianca LifeMilesStar Alliance | Published chart | 1.4¢ | Bilt, American Express, Capital One, Citi ThankYou | A fixed chart with no fuel surcharges, and the miles can be bought outright during a promotion. |
| Singapore Airlines KrisFlyerStar Alliance | Published chart | 1.4¢ | Chase, American Express, Capital One, Citi ThankYou | The only program that releases Singapore's own Suites and first class to members who transferred in. |
| Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | Chart with dynamic gaps | 1.4¢ | Chase, Bilt, American Express, Citi ThankYou, Capital One | A small program carried by two or three outsized partner redemptions, with heavy surcharges everywhere else. |
| British Airways Executive Cluboneworld | Chart with dynamic gaps | 1.35¢ | Chase, Bilt, American Express, Capital One | Cheap short-haul American and Alaska hops by distance band. Avoid its own long-haul, where surcharges swallow the value. |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards | Priced off the cash fare | 1.35¢ | Chase | Pegged to the cash fare, so it never spikes and never collapses. The Companion Pass, not the points, is the prize. |
| United MileagePlusStar Alliance | Chart with dynamic gaps | 1.35¢ | Chase, Bilt | The Excursionist Perk prices an entire segment at zero miles if the itinerary is built in the right order. |
| Air France-KLM Flying BlueSkyTeam | Fully dynamic | 1.3¢ | Chase, Bilt, American Express, Capital One, Citi ThankYou | Monthly Promo Rewards discount named routes by around a quarter, which is the only reliably cheap way in. |
| Delta SkyMilesSkyTeam | Priced off the cash fare | 1.2¢ | American Express | No award chart at all. Treat SkyMiles as a rebate on Delta flying rather than as a currency to accumulate. |
Hotel programs, and what a point is worth in each
Hotel currencies are weaker than airline currencies almost everywhere, for one reason: three of the four largest chains price awards dynamically with no cap. The exception is worth the whole category. Note also that the number of points is only half the comparison — award nights that include the resort fee are worth materially more per point than award nights that do not.
| Program | Award pricing | Our value | Reachable from | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| World of Hyatt | Published chart | 1.9¢ | Chase, Bilt | A published category chart in a fully dynamic industry, and award nights include the resort fee. |
| Marriott Bonvoy | Fully dynamic | 0.7¢ | Chase, Bilt, American Express | The largest footprint and fully dynamic pricing. The fifth-night-free benefit is what keeps it usable. |
| IHG One Rewards | Fully dynamic | 0.6¢ | Chase, Bilt | Fourth night free for cardholders and real value at InterContinental properties; thin in the middle of the portfolio. |
| Hilton Honors | Fully dynamic | 0.5¢ | American Express | Earns fast and spends slowly. Fifth night free is the only structural discount the program has left. |
What we do not cover, and why
We publish 21 programs, which is fewer than the market contains. That is deliberate. A valuation is only worth printing where we have enough sampled redemptions to take a median we would defend, and a transfer-partner table is only worth printing where we have re-read the bank's own published list rather than a competitor's copy of it.
7 of the programs above carry a valuation derived from a smaller sample than the currencies in our headline model, because they are transfer destinations rather than currencies most readers earn directly. Those figures are marked as derived on each program page and stated conservatively — a newly added partner can never inflate a ranking here by accident.
We also do not publish elite-status valuations as a single number, because status is worth what it is worth to your particular travel pattern and a median would be misleading rather than useful. Our elite status coverage handles that qualitatively instead. Where we have no data, we say so rather than estimating — and our corrections policy covers what happens when we get something wrong anyway.
Frequently asked questions
Which loyalty program is the best one to collect?
For hotels it is World of Hyatt, because it still publishes a category chart and honors it, so an award night does not get more expensive when the cash rate does. For airlines it depends on where you fly, but the programs that hold value are the ones pricing off a published table — Air Canada Aeroplan, Turkish Miles&Smiles and Avianca LifeMiles among them. The best currency to actually hold, though, is a transferable bank currency, because it can become any of those after you know what the seat costs.Should I transfer points before I find an award seat?
No. Transfers are one-way and no bank or airline will reverse one. Confirm the exact award seat is bookable in the destination program first — by holding it where the program allows, or by having the booking page open and priced — and only then transfer. Instant transfer partners make this easy; partners that take days make speculative transfers genuinely risky, which is why we publish the transfer time for every route.Do points and miles expire?
Most run an inactivity clock rather than a hard expiry: any qualifying earning or redeeming activity resets it, and co-brand card spend usually counts. A few programs are different and will take your balance regardless of activity, which is the failure mode worth knowing about. Every program page on this site states its expiration policy in full, and names whether it is an inactivity clock or a hard deadline.Are hotel points or airline miles worth more?
Per point, airline miles are usually worth more, because a premium-cabin seat has a high cash price and a chart-based program will sell it below that price. Hotel points are the weaker currency on average, with one exception: World of Hyatt values alongside the strongest airline programs in our model because of its fixed chart. The hotel currencies with uncapped dynamic pricing sit at the bottom of everything we track.Do transfer bonuses make a weak partner worth using?
Rarely. A transfer bonus multiplies the number of miles you receive, not the value of each one, so a bonus into a program with a poor chart still lands you in a program with a poor chart. The exception is a bonus into a program you were already going to book — there, it is a straight discount. Treat a bonus as a reason to accelerate a plan you had, never as a reason to make one.What does a transferable point actually let you do?
It lets you decide at the last minute. A bank point sits in your account with no airline attached, so you can price the same trip across several programs, find which one charges least for the seat you want, and move the points only into that one. That optionality is the entire value proposition, and it is why every transferable currency in our model values above every US airline currency in it.