Track your credit card rewards and book the best award flights with the best apps and tools in 2024 (2024)

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• Credit card reward deadlines, expiration dates, and rotating bonuses can be challenging to remember.
• The best reward apps track upcoming offers and expiration dates on the credit cards in your wallet.
• New award travel search tools help you find the best deals on booking flights with points and miles.
• Read Business Insider's guide to the best travel rewards credit cards.

How do you keep track of how many points or miles you have? Some people use spreadsheets, while others log into various bank, airline, and hotel websites to track them individually. But the smartest award hounds are using these popular tools to maximize their rewards

Why use a credit card rewards tracking app?

Playing the credit card game can be insanely rewarding. Racking up points and miles, scoring huge sign-up bonuses, and earning outsized cash-back percentages can feel like winning the lottery.

However, keeping up with the rules of the game can also be challenging. Bonus categories can change every few months, sign-up thresholds can fade to the back of your mind, and travel transfer partners and rates are ever-changing. If you're struggling to keep all those numbers straight, consider one of the apps we recommend below.

Features to look for in a rewards tracking app

You've worked hard to earn your rewards, so you'll want to keep them safe and make sure they get used before they expire — ideally at maximum value. Here are some questions to keep in mind as you consider different tracking tools.

Comprehensive rewards management

In a perfect world, the ideal app would integrate with every rewards program you use and tell you the best credit card to use each time you pull out your wallet to make a purchase. But no such tool exists as of today, so many dedicated award hounds use a combination of the apps below to track all of their credit card rewards.

Some tools, like CardPointers, link to major issuers such as Chase, Amex, Capital One, and Citi to update you on offers specific to your credit cards. Others, like AwardWallet, help you track every loyalty program and rewards system you use, from travel companies to retailers.

Security and privacy features

As with any fintech tool, there's some measure of risk involved in sharing your financial information. Credit card tracking apps integrate with your issuers to pull data from your credit card usage, so make sure you understand what each company offers in terms of security before you share your bank credentials.

Top credit card rewards tracking apps

• AwardWallet: Best for tracking multiple loyalty programs
• CardPointers: Best for managing your wallet and maximizing credit card offers
• Travel Freely: Best for couples earning points together
• MaxRewards: Best for monitoring credit alongside of rewards

AwardWallet

Cost: Freemium — Free version works for most. AwardWallet+ $30/year.

If you're considering a reward tracking app, AwardWallet is something of a holy grail. This tool monitors nearly 700 loyalty programs and has well over half a million users. From the big names like Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards to hotel chains, cruise lines, rental car companies and even retailers like Sephora, this service covers every angle of the rewards game.

Pros:

• Tracks travel plans and sends email alerts about flight delays or other interruptions
• Analyzes spending to make sure you're using the right cards to earn the most points
• Award concierge service can help find your best redemption offer and save you searching and comparison time
• Has approximately 700,000 users and high marks in both the App Store and the Play Store

Cons:

• Premium version costs $30/year
• Concierge service costs $50 search fee per traveler and a $100 booking fee per traveler

CardPointers

Cost: Freemium — Free version works for most. Premium is $6.99/month, $59.99/year, or $199.99 lifetime

CardPointers is a relatively new app that helps you track, manage, and maximize every credit card you own — as long as you take the time to fully set up your account, of course.

This tool's standout feature is its ability to integrate with Amex and Chase to help you add special offers to specific credit cards in your account. Amex Offers, for example, can be legendary for generous cash back rewards with certain merchants. But you have to add individual offers to your targeted credit card, then make the required purchase on that specific card in order to earn your offer bonus.

CardPointers eliminates the need for all of that tapping and pecking: When you link this app to your credit card accounts, paid members can bulk-add all offers to their credit cards, while free-version members can add them more efficiently than they would on the issuers' websites or apps. If you install the browser extension, CardPointers will suggest which card to use when you visit various retailer websites.

CardPointers is highly customizable, with a sleek, clean interface that's easy to use. You can manually add each card you own, or sync the app to your accounts and let it suggest cards for you to include.

If you use the correct name for each credit card, CardPointers will automatically input its bonus categories, earn rates, and offer suggestions on which card to use for your next purchase. It even includes sections to input your card anniversary so it can remind you when anticipate a bonus or consider closing the card, and helps you track your progress toward welcome offer requirements.

Pros:

• Clean, simple app interface with customizable fields
• Tracks annual fee due dates, progress toward welcome offers, bonus categories, and far more
• Free version provides plenty of benefits and features

Cons:

• Default browser extension card suggestions can feel intrusive at times, although you can personalize these settings in your account preferences.

Travel Freely

Cost: Free for everyone

As the name suggests, Travel Freely is all about traveling without spending any money on the actual trip. The app's bold promise is that you can get more than $2,000 every year by using it, and the big differentiating point with this tool is the ability to track up to two users. So if you and your "Player 2" are both racking up points and miles to put toward big vacations each year, this is a good way to collaborate.

The main feature of this app is the ability to track when credit card annual feesare approaching, when a bonus deadline is near, and when you're close to exceeding the Chase 5/24 rule (opening five new cards in 24 months). It's a relatively simple app, and it comes with a CardGenie tool that helps recommend the next card to add to your wallet.

Pros:

• Ability to track two users' credit card reward activity
• Helps stay on top of deadlines and offers suggestions for downgrading cards to avoid annual fees
• Good way to keep track of the potential of applying for too many credit cards in a certain timeframe

Cons:

• Only focused on travel — so not a great pick if you're looking for cash back

MaxRewards

Cost: Freemium — Free version works for most. MaxRewards Gold $7/month or $84/year (with sliding scale discounts)

Most credit card rewards tracking apps are solely geared to monitor how your points are piling up. However, MaxRewards sets itself apart with a running progress bar of the credit card balance you're carrying, and your credit utilization ratio. This can be especially valuable in avoiding the temptation to focus on growing your rewards balance, rather than on paying your outstanding balances in full each month, which keeps your credit score healthy.

You'll also benefit from the company's auto-recommendation tool when you're deciding what card to use at certain merchants. For example, if your card currently has a 5x bonus at grocery stores, the app will tell you when you're ready to pay to make sure you don't use a different — and less-rewarding — card.

MaxRewards also comes up big in one of the small, often-overlooked elements of today's credit card landscape: opt-in offers. Programs like Chase Offers and Amex Offers typically require cardholders to manually activate a new discount opportunity, but the company will automatically activate all those savings for MaxRewards Gold members.

Pros:

• Recommends the most rewarding card to use based on bonus categories
• Monitors your card balances and your credit utilization ratio
• Will automatically activate limited-time offers for cardholders

Cons:

• Many negative user reviews indicate the app has struggled with card issuer syncs for years

Read more: What are points and miles worth? Our complete valuations

How to maximize your credit card rewards

Tracking apps are helpful for managing your rewards, but redeeming them effectively is another matter. You know best what matters to you in terms of benefits, whether that's cruising the Caribbean or flying first-class to Japan. Keep these considerations in mind when it comes to using your rewards.

Regularly monitor your rewards

Your rewards are essentially another form of currency, and deserve to be monitored the same way. Check your points balances from time to time, just like you would track cash in your bank account. Are you earning what you should from recent transactions? Are you suddenly missing some points? Do any of them have expiration dates coming up that require some attention? Rewards tracking apps should help you simplify this chore, but it's still up to you to protect what's yours.

Keep track of credit card bonus categories and limited-time offers

Your tracking app can be one of the best ways to maximize rewards. But if you prefer to keep things old-school, many people stick labels or stickers onto their credit cards to help themselves — and their families — remember which card is for groceries, which one is for dining out, which is for travel, and so on. Whatever system you choose, find one that works for you and stick with it.

Learn how to effectively book award travel for the best value

Most of us aren't world-class experts on airline transfer partners and open-jaw tickets, but these new tools we review below can help everyday people get better returns on travel rewards.

• point.me: Best for great deals on last-minute award flights
• Roame: Best for helping newbies find award flights on specific routes
• seats.aero: Best for finding premium redemptions across a wide range of dates and locations
• Points Path: Best for comparing cash vs. points on Google Flights

Award travel search tool reviews

point.me

Cost: Freemium — $5 for one-day pass, standard plan for $12/month or $129/year, premium plan for $260/year. Concierge services available for an additional fee. Certain Amex cardholders get free access.

Point.mecan reduce many of the hassles of comparing options, and introduce you to opportunities you didn't even know existed.

Rather than going through the maze of manually comparing different transfer options for your points, this tool syncs with all of the major card programsto help you easily see how you'll be able to get the best deal. point.me regularly finds economy redemptions worth 6 to 8 cents per mile, and first- and business-class deals top out with some serious value in the neighborhood of 24 cents per mile.

If you aren't used to paying for award search assistance, you'll have to acclimate to this platform's price tag. You can buy a day pass with unlimited searches for $5, or subscribe on a monthly basis for $12 (or get a 10% discount if you opt for an annual bill of $129). But if you're sitting on hundreds of thousands of points, that investment can help you maximize your rewards before they expire or devalue.

Pros:

• Saves time by eliminating the need to search different airline sites
• Offers step-by-step instructions on how to transfer points and book available redemptions
• Helpful tips for booking flights on a preferred airline via another airline's site for fewer points (example: booking a Delta flight through Aeromexico)
• Free for many American Express cardholders as of March 2024
• Paid concierge booking services available for complex trips

Cons:

• Subscription plans ranges from $129 to $260 per year
• Solely focused on flights, so you're on your own for searching for hotel deals

Roame

Cost: Freemium — Free version works for most. Basic version $109.99/year, business version $3,499.99/year.

Award travel search tools have proliferated since revenge travel boomed post-pandemic. Roame was initially designed for award travelers who didn't want to pay a monthly subscription fee for point.me. (Of course, Roame now offers a premium subscription plan, and some cardholders can now access point.me for free.)

Roame is great for coaxing friends and family to expand their points and miles travel, since the clean, simple layout is all but fool-proof. Simply pop in your departure and arrival cities, desired departure date, and choose whether you're flying in economy or business/first class. The algorithm spits out a list of options, and you can filter or sort your search results by travel length, price, and departure time.

Roame even helps you figure out which loyalty program is a transfer partner for the airline operating each flight, so you can quickly see if you can book that redemption or not.

Pros:

• User-friendly interface is easy to use
• Can search for multiple seats on the same flight
• Compares more than one dozen airline programs to find you the best rate
• Premium version can show availability within a seven-day date range

Cons:

• Free account requires sign-up, and offers slightly limited search capabilities
• Primarily focuses on direct or one-stop routes
• Can't search round-trip or multi-stop itineraries
• Defaults to business/first class seats, which can throw off first-timers

seats.aero

Cost: Freemium — Pro version is $9.99/month or $99/year

Deal hunters and regular travelers travel differently: Most people book flights based on their availability, while sale-seekers plan their trips around great travel deals.

Seats.aero isn't as sleek-looking as Roame, but it's far more powerful in other ways. This tool allows you to search award flights by city, region, country, and even continent to find the best, elusive deals on award travel sweet spots in economy, premium economy, business class, and even first class.

Business Insider experts have flown in first-class cabins from Asia to North America for less than 100,000 points, and spent nearly 24 hours in Singapore business class for the cost of a single welcome bonus.

Seats.aero offers a paid version with access to premium search capabilities such as looking up flights more than 90 days in advance. But the free version will be more than sufficient for most beginner and advanced award travelers.

Pros:

• Powerful search capability can search a broad range of departure and arrival opportunities across multiple dates
• You can look up flights for a specific date, or find more options using the ±1, ±3, and ±7 day search function

Cons:

• Layout isn't as beginner-friendly as some of the other tools reviewed in this guide
• Searching 90+ days in advance or filtering out flights with high award taxes and fees requires a paid subscription

Points Path: Best for Google Flights price comparisons

Points Path requires the least amount of work out of every tool listed in this guide. Simply download this nifty little Chrome browser extension, then open Google Flights and run a flight search as usual. A new field will pop up in your search results, showing you how much each flight costs in miles or points and pointing an arrow toward the better deal.

Points Path has some limitations — it doesn't search all major airlines or work well with alliance partners yet, so you'll have to manage those redemptions independently. But it's fantastic for quickly evaluating your next trip budget, eliminating the cash vs. points dilemma of calculating the value of your rewards. You can also use Points Path to help you understand which rewards program or welcome offer you should target next.

Pros:

• Google Chrome plug-in is incredibly easy to use and doesn't require future maintenance
• Helps you compare the cash vs. award redemption price of specific flights

Cons:

• Doesn't cover all airline award programs

FAQs about reward tracking apps