Point.me is a useful online tool to assist with booking award flights costs money normally, but there are free versions that do the same thing.

What is point.me?

Official link to site: https://www.point.me/

Point.me is a pretty useful tool made available to help people search many award programs all at one time. The premise is quite simple: you want to travel on a certain date, in a desired cabin, between two airports. Rather than wasting your time searching each program’s rates on your own, you’d rather have a website handle the hard work for you. That’s where point.me offers some help, as it searches practically all award programs at once.

The downside of the tool is that it’s only as good as the query you run. You must input a given city pair that you want to investigate and a date. The point.me tool isn’t going to tell you what the absolute best possible rate is between the locations. It’s not going to tell you if adding on a connecting flight might significantly reduce the price. And it will only show you results for one date at a time. Since it’s searching every award program, the query can be slow.

How much does point.me cost?

What does it cost to run award travel searches on point.me? There are several plans to consider:

• A single month of standard award searches for $12/month
• A year of standard award searches for $129/year
• Standard award searches plus a points strategy consultation, discounts on live assistance, and multi-city searches for $260/year

The charge for concierge services, where you can get live assistance from someone for an award booking, costs $200/passenger.

The free point.me options

Here is where we ask if you know the free versions of the point.me award search tool. Both American Express and Bilt Rewards have a free online tool. With both tools, the award programs you can search are limited to its points transfer partners.

Full disclosure: in this section are refer-a-friend links where I may earn some points for referring. There is no requirement to use the below referral links to apply but note your offer may differ when going directly to the card issuer.

American Express Membership Rewards

Official link to site: https://amex.point.me/

The default place I like to go is using the amex.point.me website. Why? Because American Express makes a version of the search tool available for free for all cardholders. There are just two “catches” with this:

1. You need to have a credit card that earns Membership Rewards points. Most cards that earn these points have hefty fees aside from the fee-free Amex Blue Business Plus card (my refer-a-friend link).
   
2. The only programs that are included in this free tool are the transfer options available to Amex members. You’re not going to find, say, options bookable with United Airlines miles because United is not a transfer partner for Amex cardholders. But you still might find United Airlines flights that are bookable with their partners (like Air Canada Aeroplan).

While the second restriction is easy to understand (why would Amex want to show availability that you can’t get as a cardholder), the first one is a deal-breaker for some. Not everyone has an eligible Amex card, especially if you are just getting started in the hobby.

Bilt Rewards

Official link to site: https://www.biltrewards.com/

This one will require following a string of menus to get to the actual award search.

First, go to the website and sign up for a Bilt Rewards account. While Bilt is intended for renters to earn points for paying off their rent, it’s freely available for anyone to sign up. If you don’t have an account yet, you can easily sign up in the upper right corner.

Once you have an account, you’ll find this screen. What we’re interested in checking out is the Rewards section found along the top.

Next, you’ll want to Book Travel, specify Flights, and select “Transfer Partners”. Then enter in the details of what award travel you’re searching for. Be sure to include the passenger count and class of service. Note that while it does ask for the number of passengers, it doesn’t ask about number of children. Some programs (like Air France) offer a discount for booking awards for children and that won’t be reflected in these results.

You’ll know you did it correctly if you see this pop-up that references the point.me terms and conditions.

How do you use the point.me award search?

Let’s try out an example of searching for a flight from Munich to Boston. Simply enter your details in the site above and choose your date (here we’ll search for July 17).

Give the site a minute or so and it will return some results for you. If you need to make any revisions or choose another date +/- 1 day, it’s simple enough to edit.

If you like what you see, click it and you’ll see the price of the flight under various points programs. In this example, Air Canada comes out on top for what Bilt is recommending, which isn’t a surprise to me. If you don’t have Aeroplan miles, they provide alternatives like using United miles (88,000) or TAP miles (100,000).

And that’s it. All you have to do from there is transfer points over to your award account as needed and then go book it.

What does the concierge service get you on top of this?

With the process as intuitive as this, you might wonder what the concierge service gets you? There are a few reasons why you might the assistance of a live human being:

• Creative routings that the tool might not display
• A more efficient routing (such as seeing destinations in a different order)
• Assistance with mileage run planning to maintain or earn elite status
• Help booking awards, especially with problematic programs with convoluted rules (such as Turkish Miles & Smiles)

Having live help could make things easier, especially if this is your first time booking awards. That said, we’d only consider this if you’re looking to book business or first class international flights and if you’ve got enough points to reasonably cover all passengers).

What programs are covered by the free point.me tools?

Both free versions of the point.me award tool only show the programs bookable under their currency. But quite honestly, that’s a small price to pay for free access for all for a useful tool.

I have a brief summary of award programs searchable on points.me and which ones are available from each major bank program. Both Amex and Bilt have free versions of the points.me tool and despite the other banks not having a version of the tool, you’re pretty well covered by each of them.

^ Certain Citi ThankYou credit cards have a transfer rate that is 30% less efficient

Identifying the gaps

What if you want to use these free tools but intend to book with some other bank’s currency? You could get pretty close to fully covering yourself:

• Capital One:
  • Bilt is missing Aeromexico, Etihad, Qantas, and Singapore, but those are covered by the Amex version
  • Amex is missing TAP and Turkish, but those are covered by the Bilt version
  • The only other missing airline is Finnair, which isn’t searchable on point.me at all
    
• Chase Ultimate Rewards:
  • Bilt is missing JetBlue, Singapore, and Southwest, but only Southwest is also missing from Amex
  • Amex is additionally missing United but that’s available via the Bilt version
    
• Citi ThankYou:
  • Bilt is missing Aeromexico, Etihad, JetBlue, Qantas, Qatar, and Singapore, of which all are available on Amex’s tool
  • Amex is also missing Turkish but that one is covered by Bilt
  • The missing programs are EVA Air and Thai, which aren’t covered by either program
    
• Rove Miles:
  • Bilt is missing Aeromexico and Etihad, but those are covered by the Amex version
  • Amex is missing JAL and Turkish, but those are covered by the Bilt version
  • The missing programs are Lufthansa, SAS, and Thai, which aren’t covered by either program but are on point.me
  • And then there are Air India, Finnair, Hainan, and Vietnam Airlines that aren’t on point.me
    
• Wells Fargo:
  • This one is easy, since Amex covers all the same Wells Fargo programs
  • Bilt almost covers all, but is missing JetBlue

With either free version, you’re missing a decent number of award programs, but without a way to transfer points into those programs, I’d argue you’re not missing much except for perhaps American Airlines and the underrated Miles and More program.

If you’re just thinking of the completely free Bilt version, it actually aligns pretty closely with Chase. So if you’re looking for help booking something with your Chase points, the Bilt version is a pretty good substitute for paying for the full thing.

Have fun searching for your awards!

Suggested reading:

• Seats.Aero Review: An Excellent Free Tool For All
• What is SeatSpy and Why We Love It
• Earning Points From Taxes: Easy Money?