If you only have one credit card, stay at a single hotel chain on a regular basis, and fly on a single airline, you can probably keep track of your reward accounts on your own. There are only a few logins to remember it's simple to know when miles or points should be added, and you can instantly see what balances you have to deal with when it's time to book something.
In fact, though, most of us do not fit into this category. Many regular travelers, particularly those who like to use rewards points to reduce their travel costs, end up with accounts with many airlines and hotel programs, as well as multiple credit cards scattered over a variety of institutions.
If your loyalty accounts are more like this, it's generally quicker to utilize a third-party firm to track your rewards rather than going in to each account separately every time you want to check your points balance.
Why Should You Keep Track of Your Rewards?
Let's go over a few reasons why it's a good idea to keep track of your accounts in the first place before we get into the best apps for tracking your points and miles.
See Everything at Once
One of the most compelling reasons to use one of these applications is the ability to view all of your accounts in one location. That means you can use a single login to check your balances and see how many miles and points you have in each account. This not only saves you time when reviewing your entire points portfolio, but it also makes it easier to get an accurate picture of what you have available when it's time to plan a trip.
Monitor Points Expiration Dates
You can expect your bank points to remain active and available as long as you continue to have a card associated with that type of points. Unfortunately, not all airlines and hotels share this sentiment. Depending on the regulations of the specific airline or hotel loyalty program, your points may have a predetermined expiration date from the time they were acquired, they may only expire after a specified period of inactivity on your account, or they may never expire.
Changes in Balance to Be Aware Of
Finally, being able to check all of your balances in a single app in just a few seconds encourages you to do so more regularly. This will make it much easier for you to notice when one of your balances unexpectedly changes, whether it goes down when you haven't made a redemption or doesn't move up after you should have earned points.
Balances might alter for a variety of reasons, but one thing you should look for straight away is probable account fraud. If you're missing points or miles, it's possible that someone else has accessed your account, and the sooner you detect and report it, the faster you'll get your points back.
Now that you know why it's so crucial to keep track of your rewards, here are the top three applications that can help make that task a little easier.
AwardWallet helps you keep track of your rewards.
When it comes to tracking your loyalty rewards, AwardWallet is one of the pioneers, so it's no surprise that their app is one of the best. It has a limited free version and the option to upgrade to AwardWallet Plus for $30 a year.
The AwardWallet program has over 700,000 members and tracks over 650 different reward programs. They are always adding new features to their service in order to make it more beneficial for reward travelers.
Features
The AwardWallet app, on the other hand, offers a lot more than merely keep track of your loyalty account balances. You may manage your travel plans and receive push notifications about changes such as delays or cancellations by linking your email address.
You can use AwardWallet's credit card spend analysis function after linking your bank accounts. This might help you determine if you're earning the most points and miles by using the appropriate credit cards in the right areas.
- Show account expiration dates for an unlimited number of accounts.
- Each loyalty account receives unlimited daily updates.
- Accounts are updated in tandem (for increased speed)
- Extra reward account properties will be displayed (free nights, suite upgrades, regional upgrades, etc.)
- Historical balance changes and transactions are available.
- Exporting award balances to Excel or PDF is possible.
It is up to each individual user to decide whether or not those capabilities are worth the extra expense. One of the main reasons that individuals choose to watch their rewards accounts is to avoid points miles expiration. The display of expiration data for unlimited accounts is surely an important issue to consider.
What You Need to Know
For those who were early supporters and have kept their subscription, AwardWallet Plus is still only $10 per year. At that amount, having access to those services is certainly worth paying, especially since you'll be able to know when all of your accounts expire.
Because several US-based airlines have blocked access to apps that track their rewards accounts, AwardWallet is unable to actively follow Delta, United, Southwest, or American accounts. Instead, forward your account statement emails to AwardWallet, who will adjust your balances as needed.
MaxRewards: Rewards & Cashback
MaxRewards focuses on the credit card side of things, unlike AwardWallet, which can track practically all of your loyalty account balances. They've created an amazingly handy tool for credit card rewards that's hard to better
Over 100 reward programs are supported by MaxRewards, which is compatible with most major banks and over 800 credit cards. They don't track airline or hotel loyalty programs directly, but if you have a credit card that does, they can show you your balance.
Features
MaxRewards keeps you on track to utilize every credit card you have and every transaction you make, with the purpose of helping you earn free money through automated rewards, cashback, and advantages.
For each of your cards, MaxRewards displays a consolidated view of your rewards, current balance, credit limit and utilization, and any pending invoices. They let you examine the specifics of each transaction, such as the time, category, and number of points gained.
Furthermore, the app keeps track of any dining credits, travel credits, or other perks you have on your cards, and you can see a comprehensive list of card benefits at any time. If your connected banks provide credit scores, they will be displayed in the app as well.
On the earning side, there's a configurable cheat sheet to help you remember which card to use for each category, as well as notifications about which card to use for nearby stores. You can also utilize trackers to make sure you satisfy the spending requirements for your welcome incentives and retention rewards.
- Quarterly category incentives are automatically activated.
- Deals from Amex, Citi, Chase, and others are automatically activated.
- Favorite, sort, and search the bargains that are now available.
- Receive alerts when new and expired discounts become available.
- Limiting the amount of money spent on rewards.
What You Should Know
The basic version of MaxRewards is free to use, and it gives you access to the most of the app's features. There is also a Gold level of membership that unlocks the above-mentioned extra features. MaxRewards Gold is a monthly membership service that lets you pay what the service is worth to you.
You must input your bank login information in order to add your credit cards to MaxRewards and track your spending and earning data. Even if you offer this information to their app, they use bank-level encryption and secure storage to keep your data safe.
The Points Guy: Credit Rewards
TPG Program (The Points Guy App) is a free app that does more than track your credit card earnings. Their claimed goal is to "assist you in navigating the ins and outs of award travel so you may have a once-in-a-lifetime vacation without breaking the bank."
This is one of the more recent additions to our list, but it has the potential to become one of the greatest. It isn't quite there yet, unfortunately. The majority of the Apple App Store reviews so far this year have mentioned crashes, syncing failures, and issues integrating cards and accounts. Nonetheless, we've included the TPG App because of its promise once these flaws are resolved.
Features
You may earn points faster by using the Cards Wallet function. After you've connected your credit cards, the app will analyze your spending and provide you real-time recommendations for the best cards to use. Benefit summaries for each of the cards you've linked are also available.
The Points Wallet is a feature that will help you optimize your rewards while also keeping track of them. You can see your account balances, any status and perks you may have with each program, and even get notifications when your points are ready to expire by linking your airline and loyalty programs to the app.
Because it's tied to TPG, there's also a Curated News Feed where you can choose from a variety of TPG articles. If you want, you may skip visiting their blog or signing up for their newsletter and get everything in the app.
What You Need to Know
The technology and design of this app are backed by Red Ventures because it is administered by The Points Guy. They are a large enough firm to turn this into a terrific app, and we hope that they will continue to grow and improve it over time.
Red Ventures recently sued American Airlines because they informed them that the TPG App could no longer track AA balances. Although the case is still pending, we can see that Red Ventures is eager to fight for their users' rights to monitor their accounts in this app, which is a good evidence of their commitment to making it the best it can be.
CardPointers: Account Management
Despite the fact that it doesn't track your individual rewards, CardPointers is included because it helps you manage your credit cards and the advantages that come with them in a way that no other software can match.
CardPointers accepts over 5,000 different credit cards from over 900 different institutions in 258 different countries. The free version of the software is pretty limited, but CardPointers Pro, which costs only $40 per year, provides sophisticated credit card management options.
- Add as many cards as you want to your wallet, including multiples of each card kind.
- Reminders about where to go
- Pin a card to the category's top.
- Reminders of annual fees
- Keep track of the 5/24 situation.
- When you're on a website where one of your cards has a bonus, you'll get an automatic reminder.
- Offers specific to each card can be found here.
- Keep track of how much money you've spent on offers.
- Customizable retention offers
- Notifications when new offers matching your criteria become available.
- Before the discounts expire, we'll send you a reminder.
- Offers from Snooze
- When you're on a website with an active deal, you'll get an automatic reminder.
- Dashboard that is completely customisable
CardPointers Pro is probably worth the money if you have a lot of cards and want to make sure you're taking advantage of all the offers and collecting as many points as possible with each purchase. It only takes a few offers that you would have missed otherwise to make up for the $40 you spend each year.
All of these points and miles are available through banks, airlines, and hotels. It's up to us to keep track of them and put them to good use. Keeping track of your rewards accounts with an app can help you better understand the points and miles you have available and make you considerably more likely to use them to save money while you travel the world.