Buy Etihad Guest Miles With 40% Bonus (1.43 Cents Each)

Buying miles & points strategically can represent a great value, especially for luxury travel. The Etihad Guest program has just launched a promotion on purchased miles. While I wouldn’t say this is a slam dunk, some people might still find this to be worthwhile, so let’s go over the details.

In this post:

Promotion on purchased Etihad Guest miles

Through Sunday, July 6, 2025, Etihad Guest is offering up to a 40% bonus on purchased miles. The offer is tiered, and you get a bigger bonus the more miles you buy, as follows:

Buy 1,000-20,000 miles, receive a 20% bonus
Buy 21,000-40,000 miles, receive a 30% bonus
Buy 41,000-200,000 miles, receive a 40% bonus

Etihad Guest is selling miles with a 40% bonus

How much does it cost to purchase Etihad Guest miles?

Etihad Guest ordinarily charges 2.0 cents per purchased mile, and there are no further taxes and fees. That’s before any bonuses or discount. With the 40% bonus, if you maxed out this promotion you’d receive a total of 280,000 Etihad Guest miles at a cost of $4,000, which is a rate of 1.43 cents per Etihad Guest mile.

Etihad Guest is selling miles for 1.43 cents each

The 40% bonus is quite a bit better than the recent 25% bonuses that we’ve seen, as with those offers, the cost per purchased mile was 1.6 cents.

How many Etihad Guest miles can you purchase?

Etihad Guest limits members to purchasing 200,000 Etihad Guest miles per account per calendar year, before any bonuses. The exception is Etihad Guest Platinum members, who can purchase up to 300,000 miles per year, before any bonuses.

If you do buy Etihad Guest miles, it can take up to 72 hours for them to post to your account, but they ordinarily post much faster than that.

Which credit card should you buy Etihad Guest miles with?

Etihad Guest mileage purchases are processed by points.com, meaning they don’t count as an airfare purchase for the purposes of credit card spending. Therefore I’d recommend using a card on which you’re trying to reach minimum spending, or otherwise a credit card that maximizes your return on everyday spending.

See this post for more on which credit cards are best for buying points.

Is buying Etihad Guest miles worth it?

There are lots of ways to redeem Etihad Guest miles. While the airline doesn’t belong to one of the major alliances, there are many ways to redeem the miles on both Etihad and on partner airlines.

Below you can find the award chart for travel exclusively on Etihad. As part of the Etihad Guest overhaul for 2024, we’ve actually seen redemption rates on Etihad reduced in many markets, which is pretty cool. In reality, the program’s pricing was just too unattractive before, so this just makes it a bit more competitive.

The pricing is based on the one-way distance of travel. Note that these redemption rates are specifically for situations where there’s GuestSeat availability, which is Etihad’s capacity controlled, saver award space. If you see higher award pricing than what’s listed below, that means there’s not saver award space, and redemptions won’t be a very good deal.

Etihad Guest award chart for travel on Etihad

Etihad Guest has a separate award chart for travel on partner airlines, which is also distance based, and you can find that below. This is based on the one-way distance, and you can’t mix airline partners on a single award.

Etihad Guest award chart for travel on partner airlines

The main reason to consider collecting Etihad Guest miles is because the program has access to a lot more Etihad award space than partner programs do. Partner programs, like American AAdvantage and Air France-KLM Flying Blue, typically only have access to a subset of premium cabin Etihad availability.

There are two other major catches when it comes to Etihad Guest:

Etihad Guest has a very punitive policy for canceling award tickets
Etihad Guest has a strict mileage expiration policy

I’d really only recommend buying Etihad Guest miles with a very specific use in mind, if you know what you’re doing.

Etihad Guest miles are best for Etihad redemptions

How much are Etihad Guest miles worth?

Everyone will value mileage currencies differently, but personally I value Etihad Guest miles at ~1.1 cents each. I tend to value points pretty conservatively, and there are many ways to get more value from Etihad Guest miles than that.

Do Etihad Guest miles expire?

Etihad Guest miles don’t expire as long as you have at least some account activity once every 18 months. Note that you can only reset the expiration of your miles by crediting a flight to the program every 18 months, so other activity wouldn’t help in that regard.

What other ways can you earn Etihad Guest miles?

The cost to purchase Etihad Guest miles here is really attractive, though I’d note that there are many other ways to earn these miles. For those with credit cards in the United States, Etihad Guest is transfer partners with Amex Membership Rewards, Capital One, and Citi ThankYou, so those are some great alternatives for earning Etihad Guest miles.

However, at a reasonable cost, some people may prefer just outright buying miles, rather than transferring them.

Transfer points to Etihad Guest with these cards:

American Express® Gold Card