Buy United MileagePlus Miles With up to an 80% Bonus [Ends March 30]

United Airlines MileagePlus members can take advantage of a new promotion when buying miles, but it’s not sticking around very long. Offers vary depending on the number of miles you purchase, but you can purchase them with up to an 80% bonus.

This promotion is valid through March 30, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. CT. Oddly, this promotion has a much lower limit on how many miles you can buy than what we typically see with United — part of a new rule on how many miles you can buy and how often you can purchase them.

Let’s take a closer look at the offer.

United’s MileagePlus Buy Miles Promotion

First, you’ll need to log in to your account with your MileagePlus credentials. Then, you can determine whether the promotional offer will provide value for you in buying miles.

You may be targeted for other offers, but the best offer we’re seeing provides up to an 80% bonus:

• Buy 2,000 without a bonus.
• Buy 3,000 to 19,000 miles with a 60% bonus.
• Buy 20,000 miles with an 80% bonus (2.1 cents per mile).

If you’re eligible for the 80% bonus offer from United, you can buy 48,600 miles for a total of $1,015.88 after taxes if you max out the promotion. That’s a cost of roughly 2.1 cents per mile.

United has instituted a new rule that you can only buy 50,000 miles every 90 days, including any bonuses or discounts, and only buy up to 200,000 miles in a calendar year.

Is Buying United Miles Worth It?

Let’s do the math.

If you were to max out this promotion with the best offer, which offers an 80% bonus, you’ll buy miles at 2.1 cents apiece — instead of the usual 3.5 cents per mile.

However, note that this price is still significantly more expensive than what we value United MileagePlus miles at: 1.2 cents apiece.

Consider this one-way flight in first class with United from Chicago (ORD) to San Francisco (SFO) using miles. This would set you back 66,100 MileagePlus miles.

Normally you could buy this many miles on your own, but in the current offer you’d need to pool miles with someone else to get more than 50,000 miles.

With that understanding, buying the necessary miles (at 2.1 cents each) would cost you approximately $1,388. However, the cash cost of the trip is only $665, meaning purchasing the miles is not a good use case in this scenario.

What does this mean? If you had a zero balance in your MileagePlus account, you’d still want to pay cash for this flight rather than spend far more to purchase miles.

However, there are other instances when buying miles can be a sensible option. Consider award flights to Europe that typically cost 80,000 to 88,000 miles per person in business class.

You could buy those miles (at 2.1 cents each) for $1,680 or $1,848, yet the cash cost of these flights is typically over $3,000 per person. You’d save a lot by buying miles instead of buying the flight outright.

It’s usually not a great idea to buy miles just for the sake of it. If you think it can make sense in your situation, though, check out our current round-up of monthly purchase point promotions.

If you decide to buy United Airlines miles, know that United sells miles through Points.com. This means it won’t count as an airfare or travel purchase on your credit card. You should use a credit card with bonus earnings on everyday spending or a card offering a nice sign-up bonus.

Final Thoughts

United is offering MileagePlus members promotional rates on buying miles, providing up to an 80% bonus until March 30. Unfortunately, the number of miles you can buy from United is now restricted to 50,000 within a 90-day period.

While there are savings to be had, buying points and miles is not always a good idea unless you have a specific trip in mind and the cost of buying miles is less than the cash price of the flight you want to book — or if you need just a few more miles to grab that next great flight redemption.