What a Point Is Actually Worth: the Method, Not the Number

Every site publishes a different number for what a point is worth, and all of them are right, because they are answering different questions. This page is about the method, not the number — how a valuation is built, which of the three kinds you are reading, and how to work out the only figure that actually applies to you.

Quick answer

A published valuation is an average of other people's redemptions. It is useful for comparing two currencies at a glance and useless for deciding a specific booking. The number that decides a booking is arithmetic you can do in ten seconds: cash price of what you are booking, divided by the points it costs, times 100. That is your cpp for that redemption, and it beats any published average.

• Three different numbers get called "the valuation" — the floor, the realistic average, and the aspirational best case. Most disagreements are two people quoting different ones.
• Valuations are not prices. Nobody will sell you Membership Rewards at 2 cents, and nobody will buy them from you at 2 cents.
• A higher published valuation makes every welcome bonus look bigger, and welcome bonuses are what this industry sells. Read the incentive along with the number.

The three numbers people call "the valuation"

The floor is what you can get with no planning at all: cash out, a statement credit, or a booking through the issuer's own travel portal. It is a hard number, it is knowable in two clicks, and it is the one almost nobody publishes — because it is the least flattering.

The realistic average is what a reasonably informed person actually gets across a year of redemptions. This is what most published valuations, including the table below, are trying to estimate.

The aspirational case is the best outcome the currency can produce: a long-haul business seat booked at a chart price while the cash fare is absurd. Real, repeatable by people who plan, and not what the average reader will get.

A currency can look completely different depending on which you quote. The gap between the floor and the aspirational case on a transferable currency is routinely a factor of three or four. When a number surprises you, the first question is which of the three it is.

What this site uses, and where it comes from

Disclosure, because every "this bonus is worth $X" figure on this site is computed from one table:

Source: The Points Guy monthly valuations. These are TPG's figures, not ours — we publish no valuation of our own, because we have no redemption dataset to derive one from, and inventing one would be worse than citing a good external estimate. The full list covers more currencies than the ones above; this is a disclosure of our inputs, not a copy of their product.

These are realistic-average numbers. They are not floors, and they are not what you will get on any particular booking.

Finding your own floor, in two clicks

The floor is the only valuation you can establish as fact rather than estimate, and it takes under a minute:

1. Open your issuer's rewards page and look for cash back, statement credit or direct deposit.
2. Note how many points buy $100.
3. Divide. 10,000 points for $100 is 1.0 cent. 20,000 points for $100 is 0.5 cents.

Do the same for the travel portal, which is usually a different and better rate than cash. Now you have two hard numbers for your own currency, and every transfer you are considering has to beat them — otherwise the simplest option wins.

This matters more than it sounds. A transfer that returns less than your floor is a loss, and transfers are one-way.

Computing cpp for a real booking

The only calculation that decides anything:

(cash price ÷ points required) × 100 = cents per point

A flight selling for $900 that costs 60,000 miles is (900 ÷ 60000) × 100 = 1.5 cents per point.

Two rules that people skip, and both of them change the answer:

• Subtract the taxes and fees you still pay in cash. An award with a $250 carrier-imposed surcharge against a $900 fare is not saving you $900 — it is saving you $650, which turns 1.5 cents into 1.08. On transatlantic awards this routinely decides whether a redemption was good.
• Use the fare you would actually have bought. Valuing a business-class award against the business-class cash fare you would never have paid produces a wonderful cpp and no real saving. Compare it to the economy ticket you would have bought instead, and the honest number is usually much lower.

What a valuation is not

• Not a price. You cannot buy or sell at it.
• Not a guarantee. A devaluation can cut it overnight, with no notice and no compensation.
• Not a reason to hoard. A balance sitting at 2 cents is not savings earning interest; it is an unsecured claim on a company that can reprice it unilaterally. See why points are not savings.
• Not transferable between questions. The number that tells you which card to get is not the number that tells you whether to book this flight.

How to use the table above without being misled

Three honest uses:

1. Comparing two currencies at the same moment. If one is valued at 2.0 cents and another at 0.4, the ranking is informative even if neither number is exact.
2. Sanity-checking a welcome bonus. A bonus advertised as "worth $1,800" tells you what the advertiser's valuation is. Recompute it at the floor and you have the honest range.
3. Deciding whether a category multiplier is worth chasing. 4x in a currency worth 1.5 cents is a 6% return; 2x in one worth 2.5 cents is 5%. The multiplier alone tells you nothing — see the glossary on multipliers.

And one dishonest use: quoting a valuation to justify a redemption you have already decided on. The arithmetic above exists to test the decision, not to dress it up afterwards.

Key takeaway: a published valuation is a comparison tool, not a price. Know your own floor, compute cpp for the actual booking with fees subtracted and against the fare you would really have bought, and treat any single published number — including the one in the table above — as an average of other people's trips.