Why PointsYeah Is My Favorite Award Travel Search Tool
If why pointsyeah favorite award is on your radar, this short guide cuts through the noise. Here is what is worth knowing, and how to put it to work today.
Key Takeaways
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- PointsYeah has quickly become my go-to award travel search tool, saving me countless hours and a significant number of points.
PointsYeah has quickly become my go-to award travel search tool, saving me countless hours and a significant number of points.
For example, on a recent trip to Costa Rica, my family and I were initially set to depart from Chicago at 5:30 a.m., with a brief stopover in Charlotte before heading to Liberia. However, two weeks prior to our trip, PointsYeah’s alert system found a non-stop route in the mid-morning that shaved off hours of travel time and cost fewer points.
In fact, we were able to switch from paying 19,500 points per ticket to 12,500. While I did pay $250 total in change fees to switch all five of our tickets, we saved 35,000 points and a few hours of travel time.
In this review, I’ll explain why PointsYeah’s free plan is better than numerous paid alternatives, as well as how I’m using its paid features to save more time and money.
4.8/5PointsYeah lets you search award flights across 25 loyalty programs for any given 4-day window (on the free plan) or any given 8-day window (on the paid plan), and up to 365 days in advance. It also offers cost alerts on both plans (4 on free and 32 on paid), allowing you to track changes in award availability and pricing for specific routes.
Both the free and paid plans also include a discovery tool that allows you to see possible award fares leaving certain airports. You can then use PointsYeah's best-in-class filters to narrow your search and plan the perfect trip according to your points budget.
Verdict: The free version offers plenty of functionality for award searches, and if you’re just planning a single trip, there’s little reason to upgrade. However, the paid plans give you more active alerts, which could justify the subscription fee for frequent travelers.
Pros:- Fast search results across multiple loyalty programs.
- Comprehensive filters, including max flight duration and airline surcharges.
- Cost alerts are available on both free and paid plans.
- Free hotel award search feature.
- Promo code "Wealth" gets you 25% off your first year.
- Alert limits can be reached quickly, because each day and each airport counts as a separate alert. (i.e., searching across eight days and two airports would utilize 16 of the 32 credits on the paid plan.)
- Doesn’t search Southwest flights.
- Points.yeah is fast because it uses pre-stored data, but this speed comes at a cost to accuracy.
What’s Possible with the PointsYeah Free Version?
Once you enter your desired destination to begin your search, the first thing that stands out about PointsYeah is its speed.
Since the results are cached , meaning that PointsYeah runs searches constantly and shows you what they have stored in the backend , the results frequently populate in 15 seconds or less, even for multi-day and multi-airport searches.
While this is a benefit compared to other sites that search in real time and are thus much slower, it also means that the platform’s results can’t be considered as accurate as award search tools like Point.me, which runs searches on demand.
That said, I haven’t personally encountered a situation where PointsYeah displayed inaccurate results, although other team members at The Ways to Wealth have.
Another thing that stands out about PointsYeah is the ability to filter awards. You can narrow results by:
- Arrival airports
- Departure airports
- Connecting airports
- Airline programs
- Aircraft (airplane model)
- Bank programs
- Max flight duration
- Max points
- Max taxes
- Number of stops
- Premium cabin % (Allows you to filter award flights where a significant portion is in business/first class, which is helpful for international flights with layovers.)
- Specific airlines
- Departure time
As someone who flies with young kids, there are certain things I’m not willing to do, such as schedule an exhausting two-stop layover. Furthermore, there are certain things I don’t have, like a lot of AAdvantage miles.
Filters allow me to eliminate options that are not a good fit quickly. While this seems basic, it isn’t something every award tool has.
Your Guide to Free Flights: TRAVEL How To Book Flights With Reward Points: Step-By-Step Read MoreList of Loyalty Programs on PointsYeah
The list of programs PointsYeah searches is the same whether you’re searching on the free paid or paid plan. These include:
- Aeromexico Club Premier
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue
- Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
- American Airlines AAdvantage
- Avianca LifeMiles
- Delta SkyMiles
- Emirates Skywards
- JetBlue TrueBlue
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- Spirit Airlines Free Spirit
- TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go
- Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles
- United MileagePlus
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Finnair Plus Avios
Southwest and British Airways Avios are the notable loyalty programs that are missing from that list.
I always check British Airways separately anyway, as I’ve found that most award search tools fail to work reliably with Avios. However, something to remember is that if you find award space on Iberia, there’s a good chance the flight is also available on British Airways, as they share a single currency (Avios).
PointsYeah Daydream Explorer
The PointsYeah free plan also includes access to “Daydream Explorer,” a feature that shows you all the possible destinations you could reach with the amount of points or miles you currently have.
How I like to use this tool is to start very broad, then use the filters to narrow down my searches.
While the award search tool allows you to search from two airports at a time, with Daydream Explorer, you can do things like enter “United States” in the departure field and another broad category, like Asia, in the destination field.
Pro tip: While entering your home airport is a good starting point, a positioning flight to a major airport will give you more options. For example, someone in the northeast might consider entering JFK as their home airport, even though it’s not the closest airport.
Where this tool shines above alternatives is all the filters you can use.
For instance, you could have it look for a beach destination, fly business class, pay less than $500 in fees, fly less than one stop, and not have to pay more than 60,000 points. (See the screenshot below for an example.)
Combining Deal Alerts with Daydream Explorer
PointsYeah has a feature called Deal Alerts (which is separate from Cost Alerts). These alerts notify you any time a new deal that fits your criteria pops up in Daydream Explorer.
For example, you can tell the service to alert you any time there’s business-class award to a new beach destination, leaving on specific dates from a particular airport.
Notably, Deal Alerts are free and unlimited on both the free and paid plans.
PointsYeah Hotel Search
PointsYeah’s hotel search has significantly improved since its launch. It’s now an excellent starting point for determining which loyalty programs offer options at your potential destination.
Here’s what you get:
- Unlimited hotel points cost alerts, allowing users to set their own cost thresholds. These will let you know if prices, either cash or award, drop below a certain rate.
- Up to 15 active hotel alerts for paid members, four on the free plan. These alerts are for finding availability when award s
Final Thoughts
Before you check out, double-check why pointsyeah favorite award against current offers and any coupons you can stack. Small habits like this add up to real savings over a year.
Originally published at thewaystowealth.com.
R.J. Weiss
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