Explore More for Less: Using point.me To Find Award Travel Options

Searching for airline award availability used to be difficult. With only an airline’s website — and hopefully a fare calendar to rely on — looking for flights was a long, arduous process. That was before the wave of airline search tools that has swept through in the last few years.

This all began with point.me, the original award search website allowing you to comb through multiple airline searches at a time. Let’s take a look at how point.me works, its cost, and whether it’s worth it to use.

What Is point.me?

In short, point.me is a website that allows you to search for flights across a variety of airlines at once. This can help you save hours in your search since you don’t need to log in individually to an airline’s website to look for flights.

There are a few things to consider before signing up for point.me. The first is that it isn’t free to use. When it first debuted, it offered the absolute best way to search for award flights and even allowed you to pay for a 24-hour access pass for just $5. That isn’t the case anymore. There’s also no free trial.

The second thing to consider is how point.me holds up against its competitors. While it searches hundreds of airlines at a time and has increased its speed as it develops, it lags behind sites such as Seats.aero, AwardTool, and Roame. It’s both slower and less complex than these sites, which means it’ll take you longer to find the flight you need.

However, it’s also fairly user-friendly compared to say, Seats.aero, which isn’t intuitive. That’s where point.me shines.

How Much Does point.me Cost?

point.me has 3 tiers of membership: basic, standard, and premium.

How To Get point.me for Free

While point.me is fairly useless if you’re a basic member (you can’t do any searches with it), there are ways to access its search functions for free.

American Express Membership Rewards Cardholders

The first is to be an American Express Membership Rewards cardholder. Thanks to a partnership between point.me and Amex, you simply need to start at amex.point.me, log in to your Amex account, and you’ll be redirected to point.me.

Bilt Rewards Members

The second method is to be a Bilt Rewards member. This is the easier option, as Bilt is free to join. Note that Bilt and point.me’s partnership doesn’t appear to work on a web browser, just on the app.

Within the app, however, you can search for flights and use the integrated partnership to complete searches via point.me.

Bottom Line:

Be aware that although both Bilt and Amex allow you to use point.me for free, they’re not giving you the full experience. Each of these programs limits your searches to the loyalty programs with which they partner. This means that if you have Chase Ultimate Rewards points, Citi ThankYou Points, or Capital One miles to use, you won’t be getting any information as to how they can be redeemed. This is in contrast to the paid point.me service, which includes every loyalty program.

What Airlines Does point.me Cover?

You can search point.me for over 100 different airlines for flight award availability:

* Limited support

Though point.me actually has the most comprehensive search function among its competitors, you can see that not all airlines are supported equally. Those that are starred have limited support.

What Credit Card Programs Does point.me Cover?

point.me has support for 6 different credit card rewards programs, including:

• American Express Membership Rewards
• Bilt Rewards
• Brex Rewards
• Capital One Miles
• Chase Ultimate Rewards
• Citi ThankYou Rewards

Notably, point.me doesn’t support searches for Wells Fargo Rewards, which is a shame since it has several good airline transfer partners.

What Airline Loyalty Programs Does point.me Cover?

You can use point.me to search over 30 different airline loyalty programs:

* Limited support

Using point.me To Search for Airline Awards

So, how do you use point.me to actually find flights? It’s actually fairly simple to use.

You first need to head to point.me’s website. You can’t access any portion of the tool without logging in, so make sure to do so.

From here, you just type in your flight details. There are a few different filters you can use, including:

• Number of passengers
• Class of service
• One-way or round-trip

Hot Tip:

It’s almost always a better idea to book one-way awards, as it gives you more flexibility when needing to make changes or cancellations. Most airlines charge you the same price on an award flight whether you’re booking one-way or round-trip.

Then you can see point.me do its magic, bringing back all available award flights from the programs it searches:

As you can see, there are a few different ways to sort your results, including by point.me’s recommendation, the cheapest option, and the fastest option.

You can also filter your flights further:

• By the award programs you’ve registered
• By all airline or credit card programs
• By airline
• By number of stops
• By departure time
• By arrival time

Note that you can register the loyalty programs you belong to so that point.me will remember these and use them as a filter.

As you scroll through point.me’s results, you’ll see a few different pieces of information, including flight times, operating airline, cash price for the flight, how many points you need, the best way to book, and whether there are any stops.

Clicking on a search result brings up additional information on the flight you’ve selected. This is really where the strength of point.me comes in.

As you can see in the screenshot above, point.me doesn’t just tell you that it’s an American Airlines flight and can be booked with American Airlines miles. It also lets you know the cheapest way to book this flight — which happens to be with Alaska Airlines miles — and shows you the prices it costs to book with a variety of airlines.

Beyond this, point.me also shows you which airlines have which credit card transfer partners.

Once you hit Select Deal on a flight, you’ll be prompted to either pay $200 for a live video call coaching you how to book, or you can pick the self-serve option and be directed through a step-by-step booking process.

If you’re unfamiliar with booking award flights, the step-by-step guide is helpful. It explains everything from creating a loyalty program account to transferring rewards points.

If you have any experience at all with the booking process, the step-by-step guide is really annoying.

Also annoying is the fact that point.me doesn’t provide a link to replicate your results. Instead, you have to head directly to the airline’s website and do the search yourself.

This is in contrast to other search tools, such as Seats.aero, which provide a direct link to the results.

So, once you’ve found a flight you like, you need to head directly to the airline’s website, then redo the search. In this case, we’re looking for a flight from New York (JFK) to London (LHR) in business class on January 29, 2025.

Since point.me has already told us that you can find this flight for 45,000 miles on Alaska’s website, off we go.

Once you hit Find Flights, Alaska completes its own search:

And just as point.me said, there are seats available for 45,000 miles on American Airlines, bookable with Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles.

Bottom Line:

All in all, point.me’s search function is simple, intuitive, and accurate, though it doesn’t provide a direct booking link for flights.

Other point.me Services

point.me doesn’t just offer flight searches. It also provides a page to get flight ideas and has concierge services.

Explore

The Explore page is good for inspiration, especially since it shows you recently found deals that others have searched.

You can choose from all kinds of customizations, including the type of vacation you’re looking for, searching round-trip or one-way, searching from your destination to anywhere in the world, selecting your cabin class, and looking up to a year at a time.

However, the Explore page serves best solely as inspiration because the results aren’t actually giving you live award availability. And with no way to tell how recently these deals were found, it would be silly to get your hopes up for a flight.

If a flight does catch your eye, you can select one on the search result page and complete a live search.

This can then tell you if the deal is still available or has been all snatched up.

As you can see in the example above, the flight is still available, but pricing has somehow gone from “about” 40,000 points to 70,000 points. For what it’s worth, 70,000 points would be the normal going rate for a business class flight with Star Alliance from the U.S. to Europe (using Aeroplan points).

We don’t know where the 40,000-point figure came from, but maybe it was referencing this flight booked with Turkish Airlines miles? It’s unclear.

Bottom Line:

Though point.me’s Explore page is nice for getting ideas, without live search results it doesn’t provide a lot of useful information.

Concierge

If you’re interested, point.me also offers concierge services. There are 4 available:

• Complete booking package
• Elite status and mileage run packages
• Points strategy consultations
• Customized packages

The only published pricing for concierge services is for the complete booking package, which costs $200. Otherwise, you need to contact point.me for a quote on the services you’d like done.

Pros and Cons of point.me

We’ve gone through everything point.me offers and the cost to do so. If you’re still on the fence, here’s a distinct list of pros and cons to consider:

Pros

• Easy To Use: It’s designed for those who aren’t experts at points and miles.
• Makes Searching Awards Easy: It provides a simple search and comprehensive results.
• Saves Time: It searches 34 airline programs at once.
• Offers Concierge Services: It charges a flat $200 fee for bookings.
• Has Partners: It offers free access for Amex and Bilt members.

Cons

• Expensive: It’s more expensive than competitors.
• Limited: It doesn’t support multiple-date searches.
• Only Paid: There are no free services offered for most users.

Comparing point.me to Competitors

In 2022, point.me really shook up the points and miles world when it became the first major points-and-miles aggregation website around. But it’s been a few years now, and there are a lot of competitors. How does it stack up?

Hot Tip:

We haven’t included every airline award search tool here, including others such as Awayz and Pointsyeah, both of which offer hotel searches.

How much do these things matter? Not all are equally important, no matter how it may appear on the table.

Roame

For example, Roame easily beats out the entire competition — point.me included — by offering the ability to search for flights for free. This applies to all cabin classes and includes the ability to search an entire year in advance. That is the entirety of point.me’s capability, and it costs absolutely nothing to use.

Seats.aero

However, Roame lacks a hotel search tool, which both Seats.aero and AwardTool offer. These are included free with your membership and allow you to search for hotel award availability across a variety of programs. It’s a nice bonus to have along with your airline award searches and is something that point.me also lacks.

But while Seats.aero is incredibly powerful, but it has an ugly design and is not intuitive to use. It also lacks the ability to book a concierge service, which is something point.me, alone among these competitors, features.

AwardTool

While point.me beats out the competition when it comes to searching airline loyalty programs, this doesn’t necessarily mean it returns better results. Each of these sites covers all the major airline alliances, which means you’ll nearly always be covered on award availability, even with fewer airlines being searched.

These search partners make the biggest difference when it comes to those who aren’t familiar with redeeming miles and airline award charts. Why?

Here’s a look at what AwardTool brings back when searching the same example we outlined above, the one where you could use Alaska Airlines miles to book your flight for just 45,000 miles.

The same flight shows up on AwardTool, but for a much more expensive 57,000 miles.

This is problematic because AwardTool is supposed to show results for Alaska, but it just doesn’t. And if you don’t know that Alaska’s award chart means you can book this flight for less, you’ll think your best bet is to book with Qantas.

Bottom Line:

Though point.me used to be the gold standard for airline award searches, these days it offers less than its competitors while costing more.

Final Thoughts

Simply put, point.me is an airline award search tool that helps you find flights without the stress. It’s aimed at those who aren’t super familiar with points and miles and want a simple, easy experience. To that end, it includes step-by-step guides and limited search features in an intuitive design.

However, those who want a more comprehensive experience with more control over their searches will likely find point.me frustrating to use. Coupled with the fact that it’s more expensive than competitors, point.me isn’t going to be a good fit for many. Consider instead relying on sites such as Roame or Seats.aero.