AwardHacker: Once Great, Now Outdated , Here Are the Top Alternatives
Trying to make the most of awardhacker once great now? You are in the right place. Below we break it down in plain English, with practical tips you can actually use.
Key Takeaways
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- AwardHacker used to be a popular tool for comparing award prices across different loyalty programs.
AwardHacker used to be a popular tool for comparing award prices across different loyalty programs. It was simple, fast, and helped you understand which programs in theory offered the lowest award prices on a given route.
But at this point, the site is essentially abandoned.
It has not been updated in years, still shows a COVID-era warning, and most searches no longer work. If you try entering common routes today, you will see quickly that it is not a reliable option.
Even when it was maintained, AwardHacker pulled from published award charts rather than real-time availability.
That meant it could show the “ideal” cost on paper, but not whether seats were actually bookable. With so numerous loyalty programs shifting to dynamic pricing, even the charts it relied on are now outdated.
The good news is that far better tools exist today, and most of them are free or offer free tiers that go well beyond what AwardHacker ever provided.
Two of the strongest options are PointsYeah and Roame.Travel.
Both offer real-time availability, accurate pricing data, and a much smoother user experience. If you want to see how they compare, you can read our PointsYeah review and Roame.Travel review, which explain why these tools outperform older platforms like AwardHacker in every meaningful way.
Award search has also improved thanks to integrations with major credit card programs. American Express Membership Rewards gives eligible cardholders complimentary access to Point.me through its Amex and Point.me partnership, and Bilt Rewards provides a premium version of Point.me through its Bilt and Point.me partnership.
These versions only search each program’s transfer partners, but they still offer a significant upgrade over what AwardHacker provided.
If you want a complete breakdown of the tools that actually work, start with our guide to the best free award search tools.
It covers the most accurate, beginner-friendly, and up-to-date options available right now.
Table of Contents
ToggleHow AwardHacker Worked Before It Was Discontinued
Editing note: AwardHacker is no longer maintained and most searches do not work today. I’m going to age myself here, but after almost two decades of travel hacking, it is wild to look back and see how limited tools like this were. Even so, AwardHacker was genuinely useful in its time and deserves credit as one of the first sites that helped travelers compare award prices. I am keeping the information below so you can see how it worked when it was active, but if you are planning award travel today, start with our guide to the best free award search tools.
AwardHacker is a free website that allows you to compare options for rewards travel.
It aggregates information from various sources, including rewards programs (like Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Citi ThankYou Points) and airline-based programs (such as Air France’s Flying Blue, American Airlines AAdvantage, and Delta’s SkyMiles), to show you the best deal for your desired itinerary.
If you’re new to rewards travel, it might not be immediately apparent how that information is helpful. After all, if you have American Airlines miles, what good does it do you to know about the cost in points to fly on Delta?
The default option for using your points frequently doesn’t return the highest points-to-dollar value.
There are a few different strategies that veteran award travelers use for squeezing the most out of every point, but at a very basic level, you need to understand that points and miles are frequently transferable between programs and providers.
That means you might be able to get a bonus by transferring your points from Program A to Program B, or you might be able to save points by booking your flight one of your program’s partnered airlines.
The point of AwardHacker is to make it as simple as possible for you to see the various options at any given moment, so that you can make an informed decision about how to proceed.
See: Award Travel 101: How to Start Traveling on Points and Miles for more information on getting started.
The AwardHacker Website
Editors note: The description below reflects how AwardHacker worked when the site was active.
You might be surprised by the sparseness of AwardHacker’s main page. The site is surprisingly simple, with a very clean, straightforward interface. It’s easier to navigate than the sites we typically use to book travel, like Expedia and Travelocity.
As noted by the warning, the site’s database isn’t always accurate.In fact, as per the screenshot above, you’ll just see just a handful of input fields for specifying:
- Your desired departure and arrival airports.
- The route type (round trip or one way).
- Your desired class of service (i.e., economy, first-class, etc.).
- The allowable number of stops (e.g., non-stop flights only).
- The rewards programs you want to include in the search.
Once you enter these parameters, you’ll see an simple-to-browse listing of the available options.
Below is what we found at the time this article was written for a round-trip flight from Chicago to Rome in business class.
A list of the lowest-cost awards flights for our chosen itinerary.The results list shows the most key info for each flight. Of particular importance are the “Operated by” and “Transferable from” fields, because these give you insight into whether or not you might have access to each route. We’ll explain more about that later in the article.
Clicking on the white downward-facing arrow , it’s the one inside the blue circle , for any of the flights opens up specific information related to that trip.
For the screenshot below, we zoomed out so that you can see all four of the available information sections fully expanded. They tell you how to search for available award tickets, what the transfer rates between programs are, how to actually redeem your points for a ticket, and details about the route in question.
Note that we say “available” because airlines only make a portion of the seats on a plane open to rewards travel. AwardHacker shows you the cost in points for a given trip, but it doesn’t tell you whether there are any rewards seats left on the plane you want to board. For that information, you’ll have to search on the airline’s website or in your rewards portal.
Expanding each information section provides details about how to book the trip.If you want to see how numerous cents each mile is worth, you can click “Show ¢/mile” on the main results page and enter some additional information that’s required for AwardHacker to m
Final Thoughts
The bottom line: a little research on awardhacker once great now goes a long way. Compare your options, watch for seasonal offers, and never pay full price when a better deal is one click away.
Originally published at thewaystowealth.com.
R.J. Weiss
Our editorial team researches and verifies every money-saving guide before publishing. Editorial policy · About us
