Earning points is easy. Spending them well is the skill.
Transfers and redemptions are where the information gap lives. These are the tools we actually use — award flight search, hotel availability, trip planning — each with pricing and the scenario it fits best. No affiliations, no commissions.
Award Flight Search
PointsYeah Free + premium The most generous free award search: pick the bank points you hold (MR/UR/C1…) and it searches across airline programs with transfer partners factored in.
point.me Subscription Hand-holding search: it doesn't just find seats, it walks you through exactly how many points to transfer where and how to book.
Roame Free tier + subscription Visual exploration: browse award space on a map. For "where can my points take me" searches with no destination in mind, nothing looks better.
AwardFares Free tier + subscription The availability watcher: monitor award space on a route, wait out waitlists, compare date matrices. Alerts are its superpower.
Hotel Award Search
MaxMyPoint Free basics + $79.99/yr Hotel award calendars across Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt and IHG, with date alerts and hot-hotel notifications. The consensus best hotel-side tool.
Awayz From $8.33/mo Award-stay alerts with a 12-month availability outlook and cash-vs-points pricing side by side. The tool we referenced for Waldorf hunting in our Hilton Free Night guide.
Companion Tools
FlightConnections Free + Pro The global route map: which airline flies where, nonstop. Not strictly a points tool — but the standard first step before any award search.
Points Path Free (Chrome extension) A Chrome extension that shows points prices right inside Google Flights — the cash-vs-points comparison lives in your search results.
Finding space is step one — before transferring, sanity-check the redemption value. Our reviews carry the valuation baselines: