How we value points

Point valuations decide rankings, so they deserve receipts. Ours come from a fixed, published basket of real redemptions — not vibes, not marketing, and never what a card issuer wishes points were worth.

The formula

• Cash valueis the issuer's actual cash/statement redemption rate — a fact, not an estimate.
• Portal valueis the issuer's stated travel-portal rate (premium cards sometimes boost it).
• Transfer value comes from a basket of ten fixed itineraries (below), each sampled three times per review cycle. Within each segment we take the median cents-per-point; across segments we apply fixed, published weights; then we multiply by a 0.85 friction discount (award seats take effort to find) and clamp the result between the cash floor and a hard 2¢ ceiling — our standing promise that we will never claim a point is worth more than 2 cents.

The basket

Ten fixed templates, weighted the way mainstream travelers actually redeem — economy-heavy, with business class capped so trophy redemptions can't inflate the blend.

Current values

Cents per point, by how you redeem. Rankings default to the transfer value only when your cards actually unlock transfers — otherwise we automatically fall back to portal or cash.

Airline and hotel currencies can't be cashed out, so their cash value is honestly zero: if you only ever want cash back, an airline card is usually the wrong card — and our cash-back view will tell you so.

Points Value Explorer — the next methodology, previewed

Distribution honesty is the point: a “point value” depends on how flexible your dates are, how hard you hunt, and what cabin you book — so we publish the whole spread, with per-cell receipts showing exactly which numbers were measured and which were modeled from thin data.