PointsYeah Review: A Great Award Search Tool

Credit card spending is the most efficient way to earn a stash of miles and points. But figuring out ways to redeem those rewards can be a chore.

PointsYeah, a travel planning and award search engine, aims to make things easier. It’s my go-to tool for finding ways to redeem airline miles. Recently, they also added the ability to search for hotel awards.

The user interface is straightforward, and you can set alerts to get notified when specific award space becomes available. For people with more imprecise wanderlust, the “Daydream Explorer” tool lets you find award availability without setting an exact destination.

There are both free and paid versions of PointsYeah. According to the company, the free version offers 80% of the functionality as the $89.99 per year premium version, which provides multi-day and multi-airport search capabilities and the ability to set more alerts.

While the premium version is cheaper than competitor award search tool Point.me ($129 annually), PointsYeah has access to the award availability from fewer airlines. PointsYeah also only offers an annual subscription, whereas similar services may offer daily or monthly plans.

You’ll need to create a login to access both the free and paid version of PointsYeah. Here’s an overview of some of the differences between PointsYeah Basic and PointsYeah Premium:

Both the free and paid versions offer access to the same number of airline and hotel loyalty programs. However, PointsYeah Premium can search over an eight-day window versus four-days with the free version; complete multi-airport searches; and let you set more flights and hotel price alerts.

The website takes about 20 seconds to return a search query. Once the search is complete, you can filter by cabin type, number of stops and the maximum number of points you want to spend or fees and taxes you want to pay.

If you’re looking for business or first class seats on a multi-leg itinerary, the search tool will often return mixed-cabin results, where one flight may be in economy and another flight in the premium cabin. If you only want premium cabin tickets, it’s as easy as filtering the “premium cabin percent” to 100.

A feature I really like is the ability to see the cash price next to the redemption cost. In the example below from Newark (EWR) to Dublin (DUB), PointsYeah found 3,737 flight options. Of those, 74 are nonstop flights. The cheapest option is to use 22,500 Alaska Mileage Plan miles (which can be transferred from Bilt Rewards) to fly on their partner airline Aer Lingus, which otherwise would cost $730. With this redemption, you’d effectively get a value of 3.2 cents per mile. Clicking on either the “cash price” or the “mile price” will take you directly to the airline’s website.

Unlike some other award search tools, you can also search for hotel award space with PointsYeah. Simply enter your travel details and dates and select the loyalty program and parameters you want. Results can be shown in either list or map view.

Have the travel bug but not sure where you want to go? The Daydream Explorer feature lets you select up to three airports, continents, regions or countries at a time. You can even choose “anywhere” as a destination, or select an activity like scuba diving, skiing or golf. The tool is available in both the free and paid versions.

In this example, PointsYeah came up with almost 50,000 ideas within our selected dates to go from New York to anywhere, including economy, premium economy and business class flights to Italy, Morocco and Mexico.

Creating alerts to get notified when award space opens for flights and hotels is easy. The free version of the tool lets you set alerts for specific routes and date ranges on up to four airline and four hotel redemptions at a time. If you need more than four alerts, consider the Premium version, which offers 32 active flight alerts and 15 active hotel alerts.

For more novice travel hackers, PointsYeah offers step-by-step guides on how to link your loyalty accounts and transfer points from all the major credit card rewards programs, including AmEx Membership Rewards, Capital One Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards® and Citi ThankYou points.

Multi-city airlines searches are limited to two flight segments, which could be restrictive if you’re looking for a more detailed itinerary. You also won’t be able to search for airline-specific multi-city benefits, such as the United Excursionist perk, which offers a free one-way flight on a multi-city award ticket.

Another drawback is that annual membership is the only subscription level currently available for PointsYeah Premium. Other award search tools, like Points.me and SeatSpy, offer shorter duration memberships. If you only use the PointsYeah once or twice a year, it might be hard to justify the annual cost.

Similar to other award search tools, PointsYeah can struggle with showing award seats that appear online but aren’t actually bookable. This “phantom award space” occurs when partner airlines show the wrong inventory, or when award space gets booked and the website doesn’t update in real time. This primarily impacts people who plan to transfer points to a specific airline, so be sure to check the availability with that airline before your transfer.

You should give PointsYeah a try if you have two or more credit cards that earn transferrable points, use multiple airline and hotel loyalty programs, or take at least a couple of trips per year on miles and points.

The free version of PointsYeah is a game-changer among award search tools. The interface is user friendly and searches are very fast. The Daydream Explorer tool can give you new ideas for how to use your miles and points. If you don’t want to learn the nuances of award travel, this is a good way to quickly see what you can do with your rewards.

The premium version of PointsYeah is built primarily for people who want to set up more alerts or search for more complex itineraries. Being able to search for award availability over eight days instead of four can save a lot of time. But before you splurge, give the free version a try, then upgrade if you decide the additional features would be worthwhile.