Ultimate Frequent Flyer Mile Award Calculator
Discover the best frequent flyer program to use on your next trip!
Shop around with your hard-earned miles!
This tool looks at 14 different frequent flyer award charts to determine the cheapest way to get from North America to anywhere in the world, one way or round trip, in Economy, Business and First Class.
The tool also calculates, based on the cost to buy miles directly from the airlines, how much it would cost to buy and immediately redeem miles for a ticket, effectively placing a cash price cap to go anywhere.
Check against the cheapest sample fares we've recorded for the 120 busiest airports and save tons of money to many destinations by using airline miles.
File downloads as a .xlsx - Please only purchase if you have a means to open Excel files (Excel 2007 and later)
Check out the pictures and screenshots above!
100% Money Back Guarantee - If you don't like it, return it for a full refund!
Featured in USA TODAY'S: Road Warrior Voices
Features:
- Find the cost in miles across 14 different frequent flyer programs (Round Trip and One Way)
- Easily see which program has the best award redemption cost, including transferable programs (Chase, Amex, Starwood, Citi)
- Find the cost to fly one-way or round trip to every country/airport (Many larger countries broken out into major cities/airports) from the US - Over 300 destinations covered
- See the cost to accrue/buy miles from each airline above - including promotions and third party vendor rates - Not all miles are created equally
- Cost to buy a ticket to over 300 destinations from North America, roundtrip
- Benchmark Sample Fares to over 120 major airports and destinations around the world - see how much you could save by buying miles and redeeming them immediately for an award ticket.
- Easy to use control panel - just select the destination and see the best and second-best program to use to get there.
- Program rules and contact info at your fingertips
- Fuel Surcharge tips and guidelines specific to each airline program
- Support for user-input cost to accrue miles (for manufactured spend)
- Lastly, we've included a "How-To User Guide" to help you get started!
Supported Programs:
- United Mileage Plus (United and Partner Charts)
- American AAdvantage (Including Buy Miles Promotion Costs)
- Delta Skymiles (Unofficial charts removed from website Feb 2015)
- Alaska Mileage Plan (All partner charts)
- TACA/Avianca Lifemiles (Including Buy and Transfer Miles Promotion Costs)
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- ANA Mileage Bank
- Singapore Krisflyer Miles
- Korean SKYPASS (Korean and Skyteam Charts)
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club (Delta only)
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue
- Lufthansa Miles & More
- Alitalia MilleMiglia
- Aeromexico Club Premier
- British Airways (Peak and Off-peak Charts only)
Limited Support:
- Chase Ultimate Rewards Costs (Across UA, KE, VS, BA, SQ)
- Amex Membership Rewards (Across AC, DL, AA, SQ, NH, VS, BA)
- Starwood Preferred Guest (includes 5k bonus for every 20k transferred)
- Citi Thank You Points (SQ, VS only)
Future Updates:
- Europe-Asia, Europe-South America and Asia-Oceania Support
- Avios and Distance-based Calculator
- More Revenue Fare Benchmarks
- "Where can my miles take me?" map
- Web Interface
Guarantees and Support
If you buy this version now, we'll send subsequent versions via email for free, forever. Don't worry that a devaluation is going to render this useless. The next update is due out in late October!
100% Money Back Guarantee - If you're not happy with your purchase, send an email to boromisa [at] gmail [dot] com about what didn't work for you and we'll refund your card completely. Help us get better!
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is a frequent flyer program?
A frequent flyer program is a loyalty program used by airlines to convince you to fly them over a competitor. You fly, earn miles for your flight and can use your miles to redeem for a free flight down the road.
An award ticket is a (nearly) free flight that you can "buy" by redeeming miles you've earned or bought.
It depends on where you want to go! Closer destinations are typically cheaper than farther ones. This tool helps you figure out with one click how much a trip will cost without having to visit several websites
No, some miles are easier to obtain and others are much harder, so having 40,000 miles in one program may not be the same value as having 40,000 miles in another?
Some carriers have fuel charges when you redeem miles with them, which are route and carrier specific. We provide a table and heuristic for each airline covered (when they charge and when they don't) with example costs. We're working on developing a more accurate model for future versions.
You can, but many destinations are priced extraordinarily high ($7,000 or more). Buying miles and redeeming can often act as a "cap" on the cost of a routing. We provide a "typical" (14 days out) and "low" fare (30 days out) for over 100 destinations so you can get a ballpark idea if buying and redeeming miles will save you a lot (in most cases it will!)
No, airlines only make award seats available on flights that are unlikely to sell out, so you have to be flexible. However, seats are often available to many destinations during shoulder and off-peak seasons (say May and September to Europe)
Most calculators just compare the number of miles required by each program for a destination, but this ignores whether a mile is cheap to buy or difficult to obtain. An ANA mile is worth more than a Singapore Airlines mile because there are fewer ways to earn them (or buy them).
The calculator also caters to people who place a monetary value on their AMEX or Chase points or have a lot of frequent flyer miles through flying or manufactured spend, since they can compare the cost of a ticket on each program with a sample “low” and “regular” business class fare to the same region. It’s often hundreds of dollars cheaper to buy miles outright and redeem, and this tells you how.On average, this tool can save you several hundred dollars by identifying the right program to buy miles and redeem on, bringing many business class prices into the realm of economy. It also saves you a lot of time trying to find and understand the complicated award charts of many programs. We feel that if you use this tool even once to buy a flight, it has more than paid for itself.
Yes, almost all airlines in this tool sell miles directly to customers on their websites. A few others can be obtained by purchasing transferable currencies (Starwood Hotels Starpoints, Citi Thank You Points and American Express Membership Rewards Points) and transferring them into their affiliate programs. If airlines and banks are selling miles directly, we feel they must have considered it to be in their financial interest to do so.