How we calculate travel card value

How is a card’s value calculated?

First-year value = welcome bonus value + one year of earning value + annual bonus points that arrive in year one + the credits you said you’d use − the first-year annual fee.

Year 2+ value (each year after the first, after the annual fee) = one year of earning value + annual bonus points + credits you’d use − the regular annual fee.

Yearly cost after year 1 = the regular annual fee − the credits you’d use. This is the “net cost” shown on card pages; below $0 means the credits you use more than cover the fee.

• Earning: each dollar in each category earns the card’s highest matching rate, respecting caps (spend above a cap drops to the next matching rate or the base rate). Airline and hotel cards only earn their brand rate if your main airline/hotel matches.
• Welcome bonus: counted only if your average monthly spend × the offer window reaches the minimum (you can switch this check off). “As high as” offers can be counted or ignored.
• Credits: see how credits are counted below.
• Free nights: a certificate with a points cap is valued at the cap × the hotel’s median published point value (an upper bound). Uncapped certificates use one editable dollar figure.
• Not counted by default: lounge access, status, bags, companion certificates and insurance. We list them on card pages without a dollar value unless the issuer states one, and even then they only count if you tick them.

How credits are counted

For every card we record each statement credit, membership credit and free-night certificate from the issuer’s own card page and its benefit terms: the name, the face value per year, how it’s paid out (for example “$25 a month” or “$150 Jan–Jun + $150 Jul–Dec”), any enrollment or use-it-or-lose-it conditions, and the source and check date. 35 of 48 cards have at least one credit.

• Face value (“$895 fee vs $2,724 in stated credits”) is the sum of the yearly dollar amounts the issuer states. A credit paid every 4 years (Global Entry/TSA PreCheck) counts as a quarter. One-time first-year credits, credits that need a yearly spend threshold and free-night certificates are shown separately, not in that total. Face value isn’t real value: issuers set credits to pull you toward specific merchants, and most expire monthly, quarterly or half-yearly.
• What we count by default (our assumption): only “easy” credits, the ones that are broad, flexible or automatic: general travel credits, broad travel-portal credits, airline-fee credits usable on any airline, the card’s own airline credit when it arrives automatically, Global Entry/TSA PreCheck, small automatic credits like a streaming credit, and anniversary free nights. Merchant-specific credits (Uber, Resy, lululemon, Walmart+, Oura, StubHub, Peloton, Instacart, DoorDash, Dunkin’, JSX, Blacklane, CLEAR and the like) and hotel credits tied to a portal or a property start unticked. Each credit is tagged “easy” or “niche” on its card page.
• Your choices win: on each card page, “Which would you actually use?” lets you tick or untick each credit. We save your ticks in your browser and the calculator uses them. In the calculator you can also switch off the easy default, tick whole credit types, and set the share of each credit you’ll really use.
• In the values: credits you’d use are added to first-year value (unless marked “from year 2”) and to Year 2+ value (unless marked “year 1 only”). Credits needing a yearly spend threshold only count if your yearly spend reaches it.
• Perks with an issuer-stated value (for example Amex’s “over $850 of annual value” for its lounge collection, or Citi’s “$469” Priority Pass membership) are listed with that figure and quoted, unticked by default, and never part of the stated-credits total.
• Sorting: on All cards you can sort by “Credits value” (face value per year) or “Lowest yearly cost after year 1” (annual fee − our default credits). “Bonus value $” stays the default sort.
• Refresh: credits change often. Our twice-weekly refresh re-checks every card’s credits against the issuer page; each card shows its check date.

Where does the card data come from?

Every bonus, spend requirement, annual fee, earning rate and credit was read from the issuer’s own public card page on October 23, 2026. Each card page links its source and shows the date. If we couldn’t read a figure from the issuer page, we left it out and flagged it. We don’t use third-party data, scraped retailer data, user reviews or ratings.

Point values: the median of published valuations

Points don’t have one true value. It depends on how you redeem, and the big publishers disagree (for Chase points the published figures we found run from 1.4¢ to 2.07¢). Instead of picking our own number, we collect the cents-per-point figure each well-known source publishes for each currency and use the median: the middle value, so one unusually high or low figure can’t drag it far. With an even number of sources it is the average of the two middle values, rounded to 0.01¢.

Sources we check

• The Points Guy: October 2026 monthly valuations. page dated 2026-10-01
• NerdWallet: October 2026 values from real award searches (the “NerdWallet value”, not the 1¢ baseline). page dated 2026-10-13
• Bankrate: Bankrate’s standalone valuations page now redirects; Bankrate states its valuation only on its Chase (2.0¢) and Capital One (1.7¢) issuer guides. page dated 2026-10-22
• Upgraded Points: October 2026 points and miles valuations. page dated 2026-10-03
• One Mile at a Time: valuation tables headed “October 2026” (Ben Schlappig). page dated 2026-09-02
• Frequent Miler (RRV): Reasonable Redemption Values. page dated 2026-10-08
• AwardWallet: average value from members’ award bookings (US Bank and Bank of America are set manually by AwardWallet). page dated 2026-09-01

Rules

• Never estimated: if a source doesn’t publish a value for a currency, it is left blank (—) and simply not counted. We don’t fill gaps with our own guesses.
• What “value” means: most sources assume you redeem for travel, often by transferring to airline or hotel partners. If you only cash out, flexible points are usually worth 1¢ (the issuer’s floor), so set your own value in the calculator.
• Cash back stays at 1¢ per cent.
• Used everywhere: welcome-bonus dollar values, first-year and Year 2+ values, the bonus sort and the calculator defaults all use these medians. Your own overrides in the calculator replace them for you.
• Refresh: we re-check every source about once a month; the raw table, one row per currency and source, is point-valuations.csv (last checked 2026-10-23).

Values in cents per point or mile. † = we used a specific row of that source’s table (hover or see the card page for which): NerdWallet lists different Chase and Citi values by card; Avios figures are British Airways Avios; AwardWallet sets US Bank and Bank of America manually. Bankrate’s standalone valuations page now redirects, so we only have its figures for Chase and Capital One, taken from its issuer guides.

Other assumptions: an uncapped free-night certificate = $150; $1 of Bilt Cash = 100¢; Bilt housing earns 1x (Bilt says “up to 1.25x”). Change any of these in the calculator.

Sample profile

Card pages and the comparison table use one sample profile so cards can be compared: dining & takeout $4,800, groceries $7,200, gas & ev charging $2,400, flights (booked with the airline) $2,000, hotels (booked with the hotel) $1,500, other travel $1,200, everything else $12,000 per year ($31,100 total), no favorite airline or hotel, and only each card’s “easy” credits counted. It is an illustration, not advice.

What we don’t do

• No star ratings, scores or “reviews”.
• No APRs or rate claims; see each issuer’s pricing and terms.
• No paid placement. If we ever earn from a card link, it will be labeled “Paid link” right next to it, and it won’t change the math.