How we value points
Every verdict in Wanderpoints compares your redemption against a number. This page says what that number is for, where it came from, and how old it is.
The number is a bar, not a balance
Our figure for a program is never multiplied by your points to tell you what you are sitting on. That calculation flatters everybody and helps nobody. Its only job is to be a line to clear: when you log a redemption, we ask whether it beat the line.
The figure is also never nudged, in either direction. It is an average of what other people publish, and quietly moving somebody else's number while keeping their name on it would stop it being their number.
Where the number comes from
It is a consensus of published valuations. Five outlets put a cents-per-point figure on each program, we average them, and the average is what you see. We do not maintain a valuation table of our own, and we do not reproduce anybody else's.
The sources are The Points Guy, NerdWallet, Frequent Miler, Upgraded Points and AwardWallet. Every program shows which of them contributed, what each one said, and the date on the oldest of those figures.
They are counted once per underlying dataset rather than once per masthead, which matters more than it sounds. The Points Guy and Frequent Miler both publish an American, Delta, United and JetBlue number, and both derive it from the same source of search data. Two published figures, one piece of evidence. On hotels the same two outlets are genuinely independent, because Frequent Miler uses different data there. So a program with three sources may have only two votes behind it, and the app shows the smaller number.
Where they disagree, and with us
The sources often disagree, sometimes by a lot. On 29 August 2026 Hilton ran from 0.35 to 0.62 cents depending on who you asked. So each program shows the range as well as the average, because a number assembled out of a spread that wide should not be read as a fact.
They also disagree with our own measurement, and on hotels always in the same direction. In August 2026 we spent eight days pairing 99 award prices against the cash price of the same room or seat. Reading both on 29 August 2026, the published consensus sat well below what we had measured: Hyatt 1.77 against our 2.20, Hilton 0.46 against our 0.80. The figures in this paragraph are a snapshot of that day; the live ones are in the app.
We think that gap is about method rather than about who is right. The one source that values points from redemptions people actually booked lands within half a percent of our Hyatt figure. The ones sitting lower are reading search results or convening a panel. Rather than quietly split the difference, the app shows our measurement next to the consensus wherever the two meaningfully differ, and you can decide.
The full working of that measurement is published, including the parts that did not work and one finding we later had to correct: what points were worth, August 2026.
How old these numbers are
Every figure carries the date its source published it, and each program shows the oldest one behind its average, because a consensus is only as fresh as the outlet that has not moved in a year.
We do not promise a review schedule. A cadence announced and then missed is worth less than a date you can read for yourself. A number that carries its own age tells you what you need to decide how much weight to give it.
What this is deliberately not
It is not a copy of anybody else's published table. It is not a figure to multiply your balance by. And it is not a claim that a redemption below the line was a mistake: a trip you took beats a trip you optimized into never happening.
It is not the whole cost, either. An award night does not earn the points that paying cash would have, and that is a real cost of using points. None of the published figures behind the average subtract it, so neither do we: a rate that did would sit below every number it is compared against and read as a fault rather than as honesty. Keep it in mind when a verdict is close, and more so the closer you are to a status tier.
And on revenue-based programs, Southwest and JetBlue among the ones we carry, the rate barely moves from one redemption to the next, so the verdict there tells you less than it does elsewhere. The interesting question on those programs is usually on the earning side, whether a promotion made paying cash the better move, and that is a question this page does not answer.
The August 2026 measurement in full · Back to Wanderpoints
