How Fast Do Points and Miles Lose Value? A 10-Year Study
The headline: about three percent a year
The number most people never see is the average. Taken across all 39 programs, award prices have risen about 37 percent since 2015, a median of roughly 35 percent, which annualizes to about 3.2 percent a year. Airlines and hotels land close together, though hotels moved a little faster.
| Segment | Programs | Avg. award-price rise (2015 to 2026) | Annualized |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airline programs | 32 | +36% | about 3.1% a year |
| Hotel programs | 7 | +39% | about 3.3% a year |
| All 39 programs | 39 | +37% | about 3.2% a year |
Flip that from the price of an award to the value of a point and it reads as a slow leak. At this pace a point sheds about 3 percent of its worth each year, so a balance you sat on for a decade is worth a bit more than a quarter less than when you earned it, and that is before any single overnight cut lands on top.
The full ranking, program by program
Averages hide the spread, so here is every program we track, ranked from the steepest devaluation to the mildest. Delta, Hilton, Marriott, and the airlines that went dynamic sit at the top; Accor, Southwest, Singapore, and a few others held closer to flat and pull the average down.
| # | Program | Type | Award-price rise, 2015 to 2026 | Annualized |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delta SkyMiles | Airline | +60% | about 4.8%/yr |
| 2 | Hilton Honors | Hotel | +55% | about 4.5%/yr |
| 3 | United MileagePlus | Airline | +50% | about 4.1%/yr |
| 4 | Alaska Mileage Plan | Airline | +50% | about 4.1%/yr |
| 5 | Aeromexico Rewards | Airline | +50% | about 4.1%/yr |
| 6 | Etihad Guest | Airline | +50% | about 4.1%/yr |
| 7 | Finnair Plus | Airline | +50% | about 4.1%/yr |
| 8 | Korean Air SKYPASS | Airline | +50% | about 4.1%/yr |
| 9 | Marriott Bonvoy | Hotel | +50% | about 4.1%/yr |
| 10 | American AAdvantage | Airline | +45% | about 3.8%/yr |
| 11 | Avianca LifeMiles | Airline | +45% | about 3.8%/yr |
| 12 | JAL Mileage Bank | Airline | +45% | about 3.8%/yr |
| 13 | Turkish Miles and Smiles | Airline | +45% | about 3.8%/yr |
| 14 | IHG One Rewards | Hotel | +45% | about 3.8%/yr |
| 15 | Wyndham Rewards | Hotel | +45% | about 3.8%/yr |
| 16 | Air India Maharaja Club | Airline | +40% | about 3.4%/yr |
| 17 | ANA Mileage Club | Airline | +40% | about 3.4%/yr |
| 18 | Emirates Skywards | Airline | +40% | about 3.4%/yr |
| 19 | Frontier Miles | Airline | +40% | about 3.4%/yr |
| 20 | British Airways Avios | Airline | +35% | about 3.0%/yr |
| 21 | Lufthansa Miles and More | Airline | +35% | about 3.0%/yr |
| 22 | Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | Airline | +35% | about 3.0%/yr |
| 23 | World of Hyatt | Hotel | +35% | about 3.0%/yr |
| 24 | Choice Privileges | Hotel | +35% | about 3.0%/yr |
| 25 | Air Canada Aeroplan | Airline | +30% | about 2.7%/yr |
| 26 | Air France KLM Flying Blue | Airline | +30% | about 2.7%/yr |
| 27 | Hainan Fortune Wings | Airline | +30% | about 2.7%/yr |
| 28 | Qatar Privilege Club | Airline | +30% | about 2.7%/yr |
| 29 | SAS EuroBonus | Airline | +30% | about 2.7%/yr |
| 30 | Cathay Asia Miles | Airline | +25% | about 2.3%/yr |
| 31 | JetBlue TrueBlue | Airline | +25% | about 2.3%/yr |
| 32 | Thai Royal Orchid Plus | Airline | +25% | about 2.3%/yr |
| 33 | Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles | Airline | +25% | about 2.3%/yr |
| 34 | Aer Lingus AerClub | Airline | +25% | about 2.3%/yr |
| 35 | Iberia Avios | Airline | +20% | about 1.8%/yr |
| 36 | Qantas Frequent Flyer | Airline | +20% | about 1.8%/yr |
| 37 | Singapore KrisFlyer | Airline | +20% | about 1.8%/yr |
| 38 | Southwest Rapid Rewards | Airline | +20% | about 1.8%/yr |
| 39 | Accor Live Limitless | Hotel | +5% | about 0.5%/yr |
One note on reading this. Each figure is a representative cumulative rise in the cost of a program’s most-cited redemptions, not the change on every single award. Some routes and room categories rose far more, a few less. What holds up across the whole table is the direction and the pace, which barely waver once you step back.
The devaluation these averages hide: dynamic pricing
There is a bigger cut the percentages understate. More than a dozen of these programs threw out their fixed award charts and moved to dynamic or revenue-based pricing, Delta first in 2015, then United, American on its own flights, Marriott, Hilton, and the low-cost carriers. A chart at least gives you a ceiling and a target to plan around. Dynamic pricing removes the reference point and lets award costs float up with cash fares, so the real erosion is not only the higher numbers, it is losing the ability to plan at all. Our award charts versus dynamic pricing guide covers why that shift matters more than any one price hike.
The newer layer: transfer ratios starting to crack
There is one more erosion the program-by-program table does not capture, and it is aimed squarely at people who earn transferable bank points. For most of the past decade the ratio when you moved points from Chase, Amex, Citi, or Capital One to an airline or hotel partner held steady at one to one. That stability was the quiet strength of those programs: the award charts got worse, but at least your points converted cleanly into the partner currency. That is now changing.
In 2025 and 2026 the base ratios started to slip, and they came for the crown jewel first. Chase cut its Ultimate Rewards to World of Hyatt ratio from one to one down to four to three on the Sapphire Preferred and Ink Business Preferred, so 10,000 points now become 7,500 Hyatt points instead of 10,000. Amex quietly worsened its Emirates and Cathay Pacific ratios, and Capital One did the same on Emirates. A four-to-three ratio is a 25 percent haircut in one step, taken off the top before the destination program has even priced your award.
The reason this matters so much is that it stacks. Take a Hyatt night booked through the Sapphire Preferred. Hyatt already raised its own award chart over the decade, and now each point you transfer buys fewer Hyatt points on the way in. Run the two together and a category four night that cost about 15,000 Ultimate Rewards points a decade ago runs closer to 27,000 today, once you apply both the chart increase and the new four-to-three ratio. That is roughly a 78 percent rise, about 6 percent a year, nearly double the 3 percent program-level figure, and it lands entirely on the person paying with transferred points. Because these cuts are recent and lumpy rather than a smooth annual bleed, we keep them out of the per-program averages above and treat them as the separate, stacking layer they are. See the Hyatt devaluation history and transferable points explained.
Does inflation double the hit?
A fair question comes up here: if the dollar itself is losing value to inflation at roughly the same 3 percent a year, are points getting devalued twice, or does it wash out? The honest answer is that it mostly washes out, and it helps to see why.
Two things push the points price of an award up. The first is that the cash fare went up, because much of modern pricing is revenue-based, so the points cost is tied to the dollar cost. If a seat went from 1,200 to 1,800 dollars and its mileage price went from 60,000 to 90,000, you are still getting 2 cents a point. The points price rose only because the ticket got more expensive in dollars too, and a pile of cash would have lost the exact same ground against it. The second is that the program simply got stingier, raising a fixed chart or cutting a transfer ratio, which hands you fewer cents per point no matter what the dollar does. Only that second part is a loss on top of inflation.
Over this same decade the dollar lost roughly 3 percent a year to inflation, cumulatively about 35 to 40 percent, which is strikingly close to the 37 percent we measured for points. So a hoard of points and a hoard of idle cash bled purchasing power at about the same pace. You should not stack the two into a 6 percent double hit, because a big share of the points number is the very same cost increase that drives inflation in the first place. The real lesson does not change: a static balance of either points or cash loses to inflation, and the only thing that beats it is not hoarding either, burning points promptly and investing cash instead of parking it, which is the whole case behind our cash-back study.
What a three percent drag means for you
Three percent a year sounds small until you set it against the alternative. Cash back does not devalue, and invested it tends to grow, which is the whole point of our cash-back study: while a bank of points quietly loses about 3 percent a year, the same value taken as cash and invested moves the other way. So the playbook our tracker keeps pointing to is the sensible one. Earn toward a specific trip and burn promptly instead of hoarding a balance. Favor transferable bank points so you can move to whichever program has not yet devalued your route. And value every currency at a flat cent as a baseline, so the day a program raises its prices, the hit is obvious instead of hidden. See why you earn and burn and what points are really worth.
How we calculated this
Full transparency on the method, because a single average can hide a lot. We started from our per-program devaluation histories, which track dated award-price changes across 39 major airline and hotel programs from 2015 to 2026. For each program we took a representative cumulative increase in the cost of its most-cited award redemptions over that window, classified it as airline or hotel, and annualized it over ten years. Programs that moved to fully dynamic pricing, where there is no chart to read a clean before-and-after from, are estimated from their documented peak and standard award increases. These are representative figures for flagship redemptions, not a precise index of every award, and individual awards vary widely. We value all points at a flat one cent, so a rise in the points price of an award maps directly to a drop in the value of a point. One scope note: these figures measure devaluation within each program, the rising points price of its own awards. They do not fold in the separate transfer-ratio erosion covered above, which lands on top for anyone redeeming through a bank transfer program and is a newer, lumpier trend rather than a smooth annual rate.
Stop guessing at point values. Look up the real award price and live availability for a specific trip before you transfer.
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