Best Tools To Use When Redeeming Rewards For A Flight

AwardTool is an award search platform that helps users find and book airline award flights at a lightning-fast pace. The free version of the tool lets users conduct a four-day real-time search, plus multi-city and round-trip searches based on their needs. Users also get up to three award alerts, and they can access yearly hotel award data three times per day.

Paid users with the Pro membership unlock additional benefits like 32 real-time searches within a 365-day period, 70 advanced award alerts, unlimited live seat maps and more.

Roame offers a few tiers of membership that let users search for award flights across multiple airlines all in one place. The Friends of Roame membership is an especially good deal since it allows unlimited real-time searches of up to 25 airline loyalty programs in any fare class up to 365 in advance with results in 10 to 15 seconds. Members can also conduct multi-region searches for award fares, and they can set up 10 multi-region super alerts that cover multiple airports and entire regions of the world.

The free version of Rome is also worth checking out considering users get real-time award searches, premium deals emails and access to a seven-day search window for flights departing within 60 days.

Points Path keeps award searches simple by offering an easy-to-understand free version and one paid Pro version of the tool. Users with the free version can search for flight awards with Alaska, American, Delta, JetBlue and United, whereas the paid Pro version of the tool adds additional airlines like Air Canada, Virgin Atlantic, Qantas and Virgin Australia. Both plans offer deal recommendations, bank transfer partners and true round-trip pricing.

With the Pro version of the plan, users get upgraded features like 30 active flight alerts at a time, Delta Amex 15% mileage pricing, a Lufthansa First Class dashboard, user-adjustable points valuations and more.

While the free version of AwardFares is extremely limited, both paid versions of this tool (Gold and Diamond) are pretty useful. The Diamond membership stands out because it offers unlimited flight award searches and alerts, although you can only conduct a maximum of 30 active searches at once. Both paid programs also offer award seat counts, searches with stops and per-program availability.

All versions of the tool (including the free version) also include a certain number of seat maps per month. Note that both paid plans offer a 24-hour free trial.

Award Nexus positions itself as a tool for finding excellent First and Business class awards across all the major frequent flyer programs. There is a free version available, yet members can pay for one of three paid memberships to access more features and benefits.

Overall, Award Nexus stands out for its ability to find awards on obscure routes and search for awards with better connection times. All three paid versions of the tool offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

ExpertFlyer is one of the oldest award-searching tools out there, providing availability for hundreds of different airlines. There’s a bit of a learning curve involved in using ExpertFlyer, but it’s an invaluable tool for finding award flights using a wide range of criteria.

ExpertFlyer has several different membership types, starting at $4.99 per month for the Basic plan, which includes 250 queries. The Premium membership offers unlimited queries for $8.25 per month or $99 per year. Both paid membership options offer a five-day free trial.

Point.me cuts through all the hassles of finding the best award flights, offering a simple interface that’s perfect for beginners who want a user-friendly tool to book flights with points. Think of it like Google Flights for award tickets. You’ll enter your travel dates, departure, destination and cabin type, and Point.me will generate a list of frequent flyer programs with award availability based on those criteria.

While Point.me markets itself as a “search and booking engine,” it doesn’t actually let you book flights with points directly. Point.me offers step-by-step booking instructions once you find the best fit for your points or miles, but you will have to book directly via the airline or award program.

Nevertheless, it’s an incredibly helpful tool that makes redeeming miles for flights easier. You can try out the tool’s free membership if you prefer, or you can opt for a standard annual subscription ($129) and get a 10% discount if you pay for a year upfront. If you’d rather leave the booking process to a pro your first time around, you can take advantage of one free points strategy consultation, which costs $200 per traveler (though you can save 10% by paying $260 per year for a Premium plan).

Award Hacker is a free tool offered by the U.S. Credit Card Guide blog. It works fast and is perfect if you just want to know how many miles you need for a specific flight. You can specify your preferred departure and arrival airport, cabin class and number of stops on the itinerary. Award Hacker also lets you specify a frequent flyer program, though you can proceed without this information.

The results page will then display the mileage rates in ascending order, along with directions on where to transfer miles from and how to search and book your flight. Award Hacker does not provide actual award availability, making it less convenient and comprehensive compared to Point.me. However, it is a good free tool if you want a quick overview of the cheapest award flights before proceeding to the airline’s website for the actual search.

SeatSpy is an award booking tool that lets users search for flight awards across most of the major frequent flyer programs. Both paid versions of the tool offer unlimited searches of all cabin classes and travel alerts. However, the First Class membership makes it possible to set up more active alerts overall.

Both tiers of membership also offer a 14-day free trial, so you can try out SeatSpy before you commit to this tool for the long haul.