Point.me Review: Why This Points and Miles Tool Is Worth It

I’ve been collecting points and miles for a very long time and usually rack up around one million miles per year. It’s the best way to transform your everyday spending into free flights and hotel stays so that you can travel more, without spending more.

But earning points and miles can come off as complicated and time-consuming. People don’t want to juggle lots of different programs and figuring out how to redeem your all those points can be difficult if you’re new to the practice.

Where do you transfer your points? What program offers the best award tickets to where you want to go? What are the current deals?

Most pros just have it all in their head from experience but there’s been a few tools that have made finding redemptions a lot easier.

And one of my favorites is Point.me.

Point.me aims to streamline the process of finding the best redemptions so that you don’t have to spend valuable time searching for them. It helps you get the most bang for your buck with the points and miles that you have and it’s a service I use all the time to find award redemptions. Here’s a breakdown of the company and you I think you should use it.

 

What is Point.me?

point.me is a search and booking engine that helps you find the best ways to use your points and miles. It searches 30+ loyalty and 100+ airline programs to find the best value possible and usually comes back with routes and combos you wouldn’t have found on your own.

Point.me works like airline booking tools like Skyscanner: you put in your desired flight details (location, dates, etc.) and it brings up all the available award flights that you could book for that journey.

The interface is sleek and easy to use, and it walks you through every step of the booking process, making it great for newbies. You can’t do any bookings on the website but it will tell you how to book the flight using miles.

 

How Does Point.me Work?

Say you want to book a flight from New York to Paris.

An optional first step is syncing your awards programs so it knows where your point balances are and can help you determine which points to use for the best redemption. It automatically synchs with American Express, Citi, and Chase. For other point balances or card issuers, you can manually add them.

You can also choose to manually filter by a few programs or only a specific program:

Next, it’s time to search for flights.

Once your results are up, you might want to play around with filters and sorting, to get a good look at your options. Here is the finished search from above, sorted by “point.me picks” (again, which uses an algorithm to deliver the best overall flight):

However, you’ll notice that while the number of points required is quite low (just 10,000 points), the fees are quite high ($147 USD). This is where you probably will want to start playing around with dates. There might be better options on other days, as reward flights can vary drastically by day.

In this case, this was the next day’s result:

You’ll notice that while the points required are higher, the fee is lower.

The right choice also depends on your personal situation. For example, you might have tons of Chase points but not many Citi points (or vice versa). For this example, let’s assume you have a ton of miles and prefer to use less cash. That means the second option is clearly the better one for you.

Once you’ve picked your redemption option, hit “view booking options” and you’ll see this:

Choose your preferred option, and it’ll bring you to a page that gives you an overview of the three main steps in the booking process and what you need to do:

Next, point.me walks you through each step of actually booking the flight, with screenshots and even videos on the right-hand side that show you exactly where you need to click. Here you can see the step for learning how to transfer from a credit card (American Express Membership points) to an airline rewards program (Flying Blue):

All you have to do is follow the steps and book your preferred flight. Anyone that’s already familiar with the process can simply click to skip through these steps.

 

 

Point.me’s Explore Tool

Point.me also has feature that’s akin to Skyscanner’s Everywhere search option, except for points. With the Explore tool, simply put in your departure airport and set “Anywhere” as your destination to see where you could go for the fewest points.

This is a fantastic tool to use if you just want to go somewhere with points but are flexible with where you go. And if you’re new to points and miles, using this tool can help you get an idea of how far your points can take you. It’s very user-friendly. Here’s what it looks like:

If anywhere in the entire world is a bit broad for you, you can narrow down your search with the available filters. You can select/deselect entire continents or individual countries, or click on point.me’s curated destination categories. These include “Beach,” “Culture,” “Adventure,” “Cityscape,” and more. The best part of the Explore tool is that it’s available to all point.me users, including those on free plans!

Point.me Membership Options

Point.me a few different tiers of service. While I like that they offer a free option, to get the most out of point.me, you’ll want a paid option. Here’s a break down of all the plans:

Basic Plan:

• Free
• Access to the Explore tool
• Sync your account balances

Standard Plan:

• $12/month or $129/year
• Everything in the Basic Plan
• Unlimited searches
• Real-time award flight search*
• Step-by-step booking instructions

Premium Plan:

• $260/year
• Everything in the Standard Plan
• 10% discount on all concierge services
• $100 credit towards concierge services
• Free points strategy consultation ($200 value)

*Search is for personal use, and is subject to fair use policies. Point.me reserves the right to limit or otherwise constrain searches in case of excessive use.

While most people will likely be fine getting their Standard plan, if you want more personalization and hands-on help, go for the Premium Plan. You’ll get a free points strategy consultation and discounts on their concierge services. These are full service options where you can pay for personalized consulting. You can even get one of their experts to find and book the best award flight for your trip.

Get 4 months free on the Standard plan with code NOMADICMATT4.

It’s also worth noting that if you have the Bilt card, you can use the point.me search engine integration right within the Bilt app (it only searches for Bilt transfer partners though, so if you have cards other than Bilt, you’ll likely want to subscribe to use point.me’s full capabilities.)

 

Pros of Point.me

1. The ability to search across many programs at once
The most obvious pro of using point.me is pulling up all available award flights for your desired journey. Without this tool, you’d have to search across all the programs in which you have points and miles. That involves logging into each website, finding the award charts, factoring in any fees, and comparing across all programs. It’s not that hard, but it does take time.

2. Enhanced search features
point.me includes enhanced search features that aren’t available elsewhere. This includes the Explore tool I talked about above, as well as a variety of features and filters you can use when searching normally. One that I like is the ability to search by mixed-cabin flights. That means you’ll be in different fare classes on different legs of the route (such as economy on one leg and business on another). This can be a great option if you’re taking a long journey and want to pay a more comfortable (and more expensive) class on the longer leg, but still want to save money by traveling in economy class on shorter legs.

There is also a “Point.me picks” filter, which ostensibly uses an algorithm to find the absolute best options across the board. It shows you the most comfortable flight available (i.e., the fewest transfers and shortest layovers) for the best point redemption. Sometimes this is the same as sorting by “points low to high” (that is, from the lowest to the highest number of points required), but not always. It’s nice to see at a glance what you’re working with.

Finally, it highlights programs that are currently offering transfer bonuses, which is when programs offer more points if you transfer between programs before a certain date.

3. You can connect your awards accounts
I love the ability to connect all your awards accounts to point.me by syncing with AwardWallet. For our purpose of tracking airline points, you only need to connect your airline and travel credit card programs, but if you want to use it to track everything, go wild!

4. The interface is easy to use
The website is very straightforward and easy to use, walking you through every step of the process, with screenshots and tips.

***

Point.me is a powerful booking tool that streamlines the award-booking process. It helps you find the best award flights, including some that you might not have even considered. It’s a great addition to the toolbox of anyone looking to travel with points and miles, especially if you’re a newbie that doesn’t want to spend tons of time going down the points rabbit hole. I love the site and use it to find all the award flights I want to take.

And, while it is a paid service, you can easily recoup the price on one flight alone, making it well worth the monthly fee.

Get 4 months free on the Standard plan with code NOMADICMATT4.