Do You Earn Miles When You Pay With Points?
This guide explains the difference and when paying with points still earns miles.
Pay-with-points through a portal
When you use a card’s pay-with-points or travel-eraser feature to book a flight through the issuer’s travel portal, you are buying a normal revenue ticket and covering the cost with points. Because the airline treats it as a paid fare, you generally earn airline miles and elite credit for the flight, just as if you had paid cash. The catch is that portal redemptions often value your points at only about a cent, the portal trap.
Transferring points to an airline
The other version is transferring points to an airline program and booking an award ticket. That is a redemption, not a purchase, so you earn no airline miles for the flight, though transfers often deliver far more value per point than a portal. You are trading the miles-earning of a paid fare for the higher redemption value.
Which to choose
The tradeoff is value versus earning. Pay-with-points on a portal earns miles but usually gives you a modest cent per point; transferring to a partner earns no miles but can be worth much more per point. For most high-value trips, enthusiasts transfer and accept not earning miles, since the redemption value dwarfs the miles they would have earned. Compare using redemption options ranked.
Stop guessing at point values. Look up the real award price and live availability for a specific trip before you transfer.
Search award flights on seats.aero →- Pay-with-points on a portal books a paid fare.
- A paid fare generally still earns airline miles.
- Transferring points to an airline books an award.
- Award tickets earn no airline miles.
- The method, not the points, decides earning.
Frequently asked questions
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