POINT.ME: Redeem Points For Award Flights With Ease

POINT.ME: Redeem Points For Award Flights With Ease

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I’m writing a series of posts about some of the tools and services I most use for managing, earning, and redeeming points. While I often mention these websites and services in passing, I’ve never written dedicated posts about them, so that’s what I’m trying to do now.

In this post I wanted to talk about how and why I use point.me, which is a tool that makes booking award flights easy. In separate posts I talked about Google Flights, AwardWallet, ExpertFlyer, Seats.aero, MaxMyPoint, aeroLOPA, and more.

Let me start with a disclosure — I have a small stake in point.me, as in early 2022 my award consulting service, PointsPros, joined forces with point.me. For what it’s worth, I don’t have any day-to-day involvement, so I’m just sharing my impressions as a user, and as someone who books a lot of award tickets.

What is point.me?

Plain and simple, point.me is intended to make searching award availability and booking award flights easy. It offers both a self-serve option, as well as a concierge service, though I’ll focus on the former.

There’s a huge learning curve to redeeming points efficiently, and point.me is intended to simplify that. Think of it as a one stop shop for redeeming points — you can sync your points balances, and then point.me will search across dozens of rewards program to find the best deals with points. Once you find the best option, point.me even walks you through the process of transferring points and making the booking.

Look, if you’re a total pro at redeeming points, point.me will likely only be marginally useful. I mean, I kind of get a real thrill out of opening a dozen different tabs to search award space, but I realize that a vast majority of people don’t share my passion in that regard.

So, who is point.me targeted at? Let me put it this way. When I meet people socially (I’m in an introvert, so I try to minimize that, but I also enjoy staying married, so…), often the topic of points comes up. People will tell me how they redeem points, and I try to not audibly shriek when I hear how they’re redeeming points for less than one cent each.

Then I’ll say something like “well, you can transfer your Amex points to Air Canada Aeroplan or Avianca LifeMiles, and then redeem for Lufthansa first class…” As you’d expect, I get a blank stare.

Fortunately this is where point.me comes in handy, because it’s like a website that helps you book your award flight from start to finish. It’ll show you award options across airlines, and even show you how to book.

Search award flights with point.me

How much does point.me cost?

There’s both a self-serve and concierge service available through point.me. The self-serve option is what’s going to interest most, and the available plans are as follows:

  • Any new user can do three free searches when they sign-up for a point.me account, with no credit card required
  • You can buy a starter pass for $5, giving you access to unlimited searches for 24 hours
  • You can then buy a monthly standard plan for $12 per month or $129 per year (a 10% discount), and that gets you unlimited searches, the ability to sync your rewards balances, and step-by-step booking instructions
  • You can also buy a premium plan for $260 per year, which offers all of the above, plus a 10% discount on concierge services, a personalized points strategy consultation call, and five starter passes to gift to friends and family

As you can see, if you use point.me on an ongoing basis, it’ll cost you $129 per year.

How do you use point.me?

Let’s get into the actual logistics of using point.me. How do you use the websites, what airlines does it support, how do you actually book your travel, etc.?

Which airlines & programs does point.me support?

The point.me search tool supports searching award space with all major transferable points currencies, including Amex Membership Rewards, Bilt, Capital One, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Citi ThankYou. Even beyond transferable points currencies, point.me provides support for 30+ loyalty programs, covering travel on 100+ airlines.

At this link you can find the full list of loyalty programs, credit card rewards programs, and airlines, that are supported by point.me.

Search availability on 100+ airlines with point.me

How do you sync points balances with point.me?

While it’s not required, there’s value to syncing your points balances with point.me. That way you’ll be given flight recommendations based on your points situation, and can also be walked through the process of transferring points, if that’s needed.

If you have an AwardWallet account, then the easiest option is to connect your AwardWallet account to your point.me account. This can be done directly through the point.me website. That way most of your balances will be synced — just keep in mind that AwardWallet doesn’t support American AAdvantage or Delta SkyMiles.

Sync your points balances to point.me

Alternatively — or additionally — you can manually link either credit card or airline loyalty program accounts, and this can be done through the “Account Settings” page of the website.

Sync your points balances to point.me

You can just enter the program name and your points balance, so that you know how realistic it is to book a particular type of award.

Sync your points balances to point.me

How do you find award seats with point.me?

Once your accounts are synched, the process of searching award flights through point.me is simple, and will feel just like booking a revenue flight. Let me give an example of using the point.me award search tool.

To start your search, just enter your origin, destination, date of travel, class of service, number of passengers, and whether you’re traveling one-way or roundtrip. In this case, let’s say that I wanted to travel from Dallas to Tokyo on September 18.

Finding award space with point.me

Once you click “Search,” dozens of programs will be searched. The point.me search can take up to two minutes, which is obviously much longer than on most airline websites. However, keep in mind why that is — it’s because availability is simultaneously being pulled from 30+ sources, and that takes time. Usually my strategy is to start a search, and then do whatever I was doing in another tab, and return a couple of minutes later.

Once the full results populate, you’ll have several options for filtering your flights. You can filter them based on the airline, the number of stops, the travel time, the program, etc. For each option, you’ll see the number of points and cash required for a ticket.

Finding award space with point.me

When you click on the actual option, you’ll see all the programs you could book through. It’ll both show programs where you have existing points that would allow you to book this, as well as options for transferring points to book this.

Finding award space with point.me

For example, if you elected to transfer Bilt points to American AAdvantage for this redemption, you could click “Select Deal” there. The next page will provide a basic rundown that gives you a sense of what the booking process will look like.

Finding award space with point.me

If you then click “Book your Flight,” you’ll get a step-by-step guide to how you’d actually book this ticket. This could start with signing up for a frequent flyer program, transferring points, etc.

Finding award space with point.me

While this is something I don’t personally value much, I can’t emphasize enough how I think this is where there’s the most value for 99% of people, who have no clue what they’re doing with transferring points, etc.

Bottom line

The point.me search tool is intended to greatly simplify the process of redeeming points, especially for those with transferable points.

If you’re a points ninja who has redeemed dozens of tickets for international first and business class at the saver level, then you don’t necessarily need point.me. It might make your life a little easier, but that’s about it.

However, if you’re someone who collects transferable points but is puzzled by how people are able to redeem these for international first and business class tickets at a fraction of the cost, then point.me is probably for you. The beauty of point.me is that it doesn’t just find you award seats, but also walks you through the process of transferring points, booking through the best program, etc.

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  1. Nola New Member

    Roame performs one way searches and has a very fast interface. I haven't compared it head to head with point.me, though.

  2. OldCrowAZ New Member

    I used Jordan at PointsPros for a trip to Hong Kong and the Maldives before before point.me and he helped me secure some great point redemptions.

    I have since used point.me for two trips to Europe with similar success. I’ve found that you have to be persistent as the search results can differ greatly day-to-day. I agree with others that it’s slow to process search results but, other than that, I’ve found it to be a time saver when using points and miles.

  3. gsd101 Member

    @ben I just saw a note about a new feature on point.me stating that they have introduced a new "QuickLook" feature. Using data from prior searches, they are able to display results in a few second. Sounds interesting.

    I have used point.me in the past, both the concierge service and the self-service. Both have pros and cons, but certainly one downside to the self-service feature is the potential to wait a couple of minutes for...

    @ben I just saw a note about a new feature on point.me stating that they have introduced a new "QuickLook" feature. Using data from prior searches, they are able to display results in a few second. Sounds interesting.

    I have used point.me in the past, both the concierge service and the self-service. Both have pros and cons, but certainly one downside to the self-service feature is the potential to wait a couple of minutes for non-stellar results. I haven't tried the new feature, but it could be valuable.

  4. Ira N. Guest

    I have seen similar sites but I am weary of giving my login information which can be abused.
    For those who use these point sites, have you ever had fraud?

  5. joel Guest

    i find pointsyeah.com very useful, free and fas

  6. Henry Young Guest

    First search was a #fail : I checked that VS has DEL-LHR available on the VS site first (10,000 points economy which is around 5p value), but points.me would only offer a Virgin code share routing at 28,000 points. So for me, I'll still trawl individual airline booking sites thank you. I guess they have not coded for every airline's native site and are using some other back end data aggregator. Not something you can...

    First search was a #fail : I checked that VS has DEL-LHR available on the VS site first (10,000 points economy which is around 5p value), but points.me would only offer a Virgin code share routing at 28,000 points. So for me, I'll still trawl individual airline booking sites thank you. I guess they have not coded for every airline's native site and are using some other back end data aggregator. Not something you can 100% rely on to give you the best result I'm afraid.

    1. Henry Young Guest

      Maybe be a little more sure of status / quality before you put your reputation on the line out of self-interest. Reading the other comments it seems this is more like an incomplete proof of concept that has only a partial data set. A solid #fail for both points.me and you for not doing your homework properly. You'd have been better off including this in a survey of several similar points redemption/booking sites, some of which would probably score higher.

  7. Jon Guest

    Never seen this before and on the FIRST SEARCH i found an award option that let me cancel a previous booking, saving over 60,000 miles and $700+. THANKS!

  8. GBOAC Diamond

    I'm experiencing strange and unacceptable behavior. I'm looking for premium awards for SFO to MXP next summer and most of the time i search it does not show any UNited or Aeroplan awards (occasionally it will) in spite of the fact that I have CHase rewards and I specify United and Aeroplan explicitly in my programs.
    I've contacted then to find out why does this happen and what can I do to make sure...

    I'm experiencing strange and unacceptable behavior. I'm looking for premium awards for SFO to MXP next summer and most of the time i search it does not show any UNited or Aeroplan awards (occasionally it will) in spite of the fact that I have CHase rewards and I specify United and Aeroplan explicitly in my programs.
    I've contacted then to find out why does this happen and what can I do to make sure it shows both United and Aeroplan awards whcih are the ones that are most likely based on going directly to their sites. I await their response

    Has anyone else experienced this?

  9. ymx Guest

    Ben, How does the version of point.me that’s built in to the Bilt app/website compare to the standalone version?

  10. mauipeter Guest

    I used points.me for about two months, but ended up dropping it.
    First, I found it very cumbersome to check day by day, and wait, and wait for the results. I prefer looking at monthly award charts of specific airlines, especially since i can be extremely flexible. Second, it did not find any of the flights for my Maui to Munich return trip, that I actually ended up booking at the time I tried...

    I used points.me for about two months, but ended up dropping it.
    First, I found it very cumbersome to check day by day, and wait, and wait for the results. I prefer looking at monthly award charts of specific airlines, especially since i can be extremely flexible. Second, it did not find any of the flights for my Maui to Munich return trip, that I actually ended up booking at the time I tried it out, 2 years ago. Not saying, that I won't look into it for a month or so to get some inspiration at some future point. For now, my round the world for next June/July in 'J' is booked for 185 K miles, again, by just checking with the airline booking sites.

  11. Srini Rao Guest

    I signed up for it and realized it's not a finished product. I have Alaska miles and I had a couple of credit card points. I kept seeing crazy redemptions like 2 million miles or 1 million miles for something that I can normally find On alaska for 85k miles on Qatar. whoever heard of a 2 million mile redemption plus you have to pay fuel surcharges on Etihad.
    I rather go back to the normal way of searching on the airline sites since you can look a month at a time.

    1. Kevin Guest

      It's been an unfinished product for years now. It will not be finished.

  12. Jacob Mochel Guest

    I search point.me almost everyday. Mostly for aspirational travel but also for flights that I am booking cash in economy for. Great tool, I have found plenty of hidden gems. There are partnership award programs that it doesn't find, but good tool for searching. My number one suggestion would be to have a 3+/- view or week view, its all dynamic so I am not sure if its possible but most award travelers already know you can't be set on a date...

  13. Randy Diamond

    Seems like you should mention that you are the founder/owner of point.me with investors who helped fun it.

    1. Randy Diamond

      Looks like you did mention your partial ownership.

  14. fab Guest

    When I received the following from point.me after mentioning to them that some redemptions available on EVA were not showing up on their website, I just gave up. If they make decisions for me as what is niche and what is not, then it's not working for me. Here it is:

    There are occasionally certain airlines that have limited results for various, and sometimes complicated, reasons.

    First, we always try to confirm availability in various...

    When I received the following from point.me after mentioning to them that some redemptions available on EVA were not showing up on their website, I just gave up. If they make decisions for me as what is niche and what is not, then it's not working for me. Here it is:

    There are occasionally certain airlines that have limited results for various, and sometimes complicated, reasons.

    First, we always try to confirm availability in various places for a flight. If the flight was only coming up available with EVA and not their partners, we may determine it's a less viable option for the majority of our customers. Also, if a result is dependent on some special caveat, like EVA's requirement of having miles in your frequent flyer account in order to search, we may not be able to show those kind of results. This is because the space is too niche for us to display given the vast majority of our users won't be able to see it to book it on the EVA site and would report it as phantom space.

  15. Craig Guest

    I tried it, but can't see the value in an annual subscription. I just don't fly enough award travel (maybe 2 or 3 flights a year).
    Seats.aero doesn't appear to be a viable option for me, since I don't think it looks at connecting options, and my primary destinations are not non-stop flights.
    I have been happiest with Roame.travel, which seems to search less programs than Point.me, but it's free (and found all of the same options).

  16. Shiki Guest

    I have to say this, but for someone based in Japan, this isn't really that good.
    I searched for a simple Sapporo -> London route, which I know well, and it should show me a pretty straight forward oneworld route with a single or 2 stops, with a good award price, since JAL, Finnair and BA, have very good flights with codeshares to London using this route, but somehow I'm given Air France and Emirates, with horrible 30+ hours routes with a very high award cost.

    1. NicktheGreek Guest

      So you're saying you found award seats with on the websites of JAL, Finnair and/or BA but when searching on point.me you could replicate it?

  17. World_Traveller New Member

    I've used this multiple times over the past couple of years, and it has never revealed a great redemption opportunity. Most of the results are duplicative (e.g., over a dozen identical redemptions, listed individually for each transferrable point source), and a great number are just ridiculous (e.g., 1,000,000 points or more for one-way business class across the Atlantic!).

    I realize that services like this ultimately rely on APIs (or website scraping) from the airlines, which...

    I've used this multiple times over the past couple of years, and it has never revealed a great redemption opportunity. Most of the results are duplicative (e.g., over a dozen identical redemptions, listed individually for each transferrable point source), and a great number are just ridiculous (e.g., 1,000,000 points or more for one-way business class across the Atlantic!).

    I realize that services like this ultimately rely on APIs (or website scraping) from the airlines, which will not necessarily be available or accessible. If I were a bit more technically sophisticated, I'd figure out how to deploy AI on this. There is nothing particularly sophisticated or difficult about what a human like Ben does when searching for award space. It's just a chore.

    1. Jake Guest

      Same experience here. It mostly showed what I was able to find on my own - overpriced redemption options for my specific dates of interest. I imagine the value of this is the same as for points program in general - outsized value mostly for folks who can schedule their whole trip around a redemption, not the other way around.

  18. JJ Guest

    Ben I've Found seats.areo a better search tool for me. What do you think?

    1. Ben Schlappig OMAAT

      @ JJ -- I'm planning on doing a separate post about seats.aero. The two sites are largely going after different users, in my opinion. I think seats.aero is great for advanced users, and I love the last minute award seats that are shown, as well as the ability to set alerts. However, I think it's not nearly as useful for a less advanced user who doesn't even understand how to transfer points.

      So while...

      @ JJ -- I'm planning on doing a separate post about seats.aero. The two sites are largely going after different users, in my opinion. I think seats.aero is great for advanced users, and I love the last minute award seats that are shown, as well as the ability to set alerts. However, I think it's not nearly as useful for a less advanced user who doesn't even understand how to transfer points.

      So while a vast majority of OMAAT readers might fit into the more advanced category, a vast majority of the general public doesn't.

    2. JJ Guest

      I think that's a fair summary for each program.

  19. Christian Guest

    @Ben - I tried it out when they were offering a free day and it was slow and glitchy enough that I gave up after less than an hour. Any idea if the erroring out and very slow speeds have been fixed?

    1. Ben Schlappig OMAAT

      @ Christian -- It's still not very fast (as I said, 30+ programs are being searched at once, and that's never going to be an instant process), but I haven't had many issues with the site glitching out. But that's just me. Maybe others have different experiences.

  20. Alex Guest

    Do they spell out which programs they do and don't search?

    1. Ben Schlappig OMAAT

      @ Alex -- Yep, you can find all the supported programs here, which will be searched each time (go to the "Loyalty Programs" tab):
      https://www.point.me/our-services#programs

  21. Raksiam Guest

    I guess it's worth a try. But I don't find many business class awards these days, especially to Asia, with Avianca or AA search engines.

    1. Ben Schlappig OMAAT

      @ Raksiam -- Yeah, the general lack of award space across the Pacific is a challenge nowadays (and that won't materially change until Chinese carriers can add back long haul capacity).

    2. JTC Guest

      Maybe what I was looking for is just not possible anymore. I asked the point me concierge to help me find 4 business tickets from SFO to NBO, ZNZ, or KJO. I was told redemption rates are 3X or 4X what they were prepandemic and they could only offer me a tutorial on search myself. Search myself yielded one KLM seat for 780,000 Amex. I can pay for the tickets on emirates for around $17,000...

      Maybe what I was looking for is just not possible anymore. I asked the point me concierge to help me find 4 business tickets from SFO to NBO, ZNZ, or KJO. I was told redemption rates are 3X or 4X what they were prepandemic and they could only offer me a tutorial on search myself. Search myself yielded one KLM seat for 780,000 Amex. I can pay for the tickets on emirates for around $17,000 and use 1m Amex points for 10k credit booking through Amex. I’m sure I’m doing it wrong but I will get flights and dates I want.

  22. Dave Guest

    I have had mixed results. Examples: DEN-PRG search yielded only DL at 300,000 one way. DEN-HNL, LIH and OGG showed only AA and DL when AS and UA had lots of availability. When I emailed point.me, their reply was, "it's the weekend, we can reply."

    1. James Guest

      Similar results of not dining options roame.Travel found. Thinking of not renewing

Featured Comments Most helpful comments ( as chosen by the OMAAT community ).

The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.

Ben Schlappig OMAAT

@ JJ -- I'm planning on doing a separate post about seats.aero. The two sites are largely going after different users, in my opinion. I think seats.aero is great for advanced users, and I love the last minute award seats that are shown, as well as the ability to set alerts. However, I think it's not nearly as useful for a less advanced user who doesn't even understand how to transfer points. So while a vast majority of OMAAT readers might fit into the more advanced category, a vast majority of the general public doesn't.

2
Jon Guest

Never seen this before and on the FIRST SEARCH i found an award option that let me cancel a previous booking, saving over 60,000 miles and $700+. THANKS!

1
mauipeter Guest

I used points.me for about two months, but ended up dropping it. First, I found it very cumbersome to check day by day, and wait, and wait for the results. I prefer looking at monthly award charts of specific airlines, especially since i can be extremely flexible. Second, it did not find any of the flights for my Maui to Munich return trip, that I actually ended up booking at the time I tried it out, 2 years ago. Not saying, that I won't look into it for a month or so to get some inspiration at some future point. For now, my round the world for next June/July in 'J' is booked for 185 K miles, again, by just checking with the airline booking sites.

1
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