Online shopping portals can be a great way to pick up additional miles and points for purchases you’d make anyway. Just for following a specific link, you can earn bonus points in addition to the ones you’d earn for credit card spending. Whenever I make an online purchase, I always check to see which shopping portal has the best bonus.
There’s one promotion on online purchases right now that I think is worth being aware of.
In this post:
Earn bonus airline miles on Apple purchases
Apple is a retailer that generally doesn’t discount much, though at the moment there are some opportunities to earn bonus miles for these purchases. This promotion is available for a limited time, so you’ll want to act fast.
Today (Monday, September 15, 2025), you can earn bonus miles for Apple purchases. This time around you can earn 3.5-4x bonus miles per dollar spent:
- Earn up to 4x bonus points with Alaska Atmos Rewards Shopping
- Earn up to 3.5x bonus miles with American AAdvantage eShopping
- Earn up to 3.5x bonus miles with Delta SkyMiles Shopping
- Earn up to 4x bonus miles with United MileagePlus Shopping
Of these bonus options, I think the best value is with Alaska Atmos Rewards Plan and American AAdvantage, given that those are the two most valuable currencies among the four.
What Apple purchases qualify for bonus miles?
If you do take advantage of the opportunity to earn bonus miles on Apple purchases, note the following products and spending are excluded:
- iPhone 17 Pro
- iPhone 17 Pro Max
- iPhone 17
- iPhone Air
- AirPods Pro 3
- Apple Watch SE 3
- Apple Watch Series 11
- Apple Watch Ultra 3
- Apple Vision Pro
- All Apple Vision Pro Accessories
- Apple Pro Display XDR
- Apple Developer Programs
- AppleCare+
- Orders purchased from government or veteran and military stores
- Apple sells and ships products to end-user customers only; you may not purchase for resale
- Shipping, handling and taxes
- Purchases made for resale and bulk orders
- Purchases made with coupon or discount codes not found on this site
- Purchases of gift cards, gift certificates or cash equivalents
- Purchases made with gift cards, gift certificates or cash equivalents
Furthermore, rewards are subject to lifetime rewards limits, as follows:
Your rewards are subject to lifetime limits of: (a) six (6) units per model in each of the following product categories: iPhone, Mac, iPad, Watch, Vision, Apple TV, and HomePod; (b) thirty-two (32) units of each of the following: AirTag 1-pack and AirTag accessories; (c) eight (8) AirTag 4-pack; and (d) ten (10) units of each of the following: AirPods and other eligible accessories. The lifetime limit applies to any purchase you make from the Apple Store website and app. Rewards will not be issued once you exceed the lifetime limit for a product.
Bottom line
At the moment it’s possible to earn 3.5-4x airline miles on Apple purchases. We see an elevated bonus through shopping portals for Apple purchases an average of once per month. This is a worthwhile opportunity if you have any eligible purchases to make.
Anyone plan to take advantage of this Apple shopping portal bonus?
Anything worth buying is excluded.
Does the lifetime limit only apply to the elevated bonus? Is there any way to check how many lifetime purchases you've gotten credit for in each category? I guess kudos to them for being able to track that and I could see why they wouldn't want to be transparent about it. And how much heavy lifting is "other eligible accessories" doing? We buy a lot of hard drives from Apple (probably 80-100 a year) and...
Does the lifetime limit only apply to the elevated bonus? Is there any way to check how many lifetime purchases you've gotten credit for in each category? I guess kudos to them for being able to track that and I could see why they wouldn't want to be transparent about it. And how much heavy lifting is "other eligible accessories" doing? We buy a lot of hard drives from Apple (probably 80-100 a year) and so far we've been credited for all of them so I suspect hard drives aren't in "other eligible accessories"
Excluding iPhone 17 makes this a joke