The question “what is a point worth” is usually answered with one number. One number cannot be right, because the same 60,000 points buy a different amount of travel depending on where they are spent. What follows is the arithmetic, the figures each issuer publishes on its own pages, and an explicit list of the things that could not be verified. All issuer figures below were checked on the issuers’ own pages on August 20, 2026.

The three redemption paths

1. Fixed-rate paths: portal bookings and pay with points

These are the paths where an issuer commits to a number in writing. They are the only cents-per-point figures on this page that come from an issuer.

• Chase Travel. Chase’s Sapphire Reserve product page states points are “worth $0.01 each when redeemed through Chase Travel.” Chase’s Points Boost program can raise that on selected inventory: Chase states Sapphire Reserve points are worth “up to 2x” on hotels in The Edit and on other top-booked hotels and flights with select airlines, and Sapphire Preferred points are worth “up to 1.5x on top-booked hotels and flights with select airlines.” Points Boost applies only to specific offers that Chase selects, so it raises the ceiling, not the base.
• Amex Pay with Points. American Express publishes these values: 1 cent per point for flights booked through Amex Travel, 0.7 cents per point for other travel booked through the portal, such as prepaid hotel bookings (the categories Amex’s explainer names), up to 1 cent per point for gift cards, and 0.7 to 1 cent per point when paying with points at a merchant checkout.
• Capital One’s travel eraser. Capital One publishes the mechanic but not the rate. Its own pages state that miles can be redeemed to cover an eligible recent travel purchase “within 90 days of purchase,” and that miles can be turned into a statement credit or a check. As of August 20, 2026 no cents-per-mile figure appears on the Venture X product page, the miles and travel rewards page, or the redemption explainers. The commonly quoted 1 cent per mile is therefore listed as an open item at the bottom of this page rather than stated here as a fact.

2. Cash back and statement credit paths

These are the honest floor for a points balance. If a redemption path is worth less than cash back, the points are being spent badly.

• Chase: “Each point is worth 1 cent when redeemed” for cash back, statement credit, or gift cards, per Chase’s Ultimate Rewards education page.
• American Express: 0.6 cents per point when used to cover an eligible charge on a statement. That is 40 percent below the flight rate on the same balance, which is why the statement-credit button is the expensive one.
• Capital One: statement credit and check are both offered; the rate is not published (see open items).

The practical consequence: an Amex balance redeemed as a statement credit is worth 0.6 cents per point, and the same balance redeemed against an Amex Travel flight is worth 1.0 cent per point. Same points, same day, a 67 percent difference in purchasing power, entirely from which button gets pressed.

3. Transfer partners: value depends on award pricing

Transferring to an airline or hotel program converts a currency with a published floor into one with no published value at all. A transferred point is worth whatever the partner’s award chart or dynamic pricing charges for the seat or room on the date wanted, divided into the cash price of that same seat or room. That number moves daily and is not something any issuer promises.

Points-media outlets publish monthly estimates to make comparison possible. These are estimates and are labeled as such by the outlets themselves. As of its August 2026 valuations, The Points Guy estimates Chase Ultimate Rewards at 2.05 cents per point, American Express Membership Rewards at 2.0 cents, Capital One miles at 1.85 cents, and World of Hyatt points at 1.6 cents. The Points Guy describes these as “estimates of what a typical traveler can reasonably expect from a currency’s most valuable everyday uses” and notes that actual value “may be higher or lower depending on your goals, flexibility and how effectively you maximize a particular rewards currency.”

Treat those figures as a benchmark for comparison, never as a promise. The only transfer value that is real is the one calculated on an actual booking: cash price of the award, minus taxes and fees paid in cash, divided by points required.

Current major cards, facts only

Every figure in this table was read on the issuer’s own pages on August 20, 2026. Earn lists show the core structure each issuer prints, with the qualifications the issuers state themselves. They are not exhaustive: promotional and limited-time categories, partner-specific bonuses, and welcome offers are excluded, and issuers change these lists without notice. No card in this table is recommended or ranked. Verify on the issuer page before applying.

Two structural notes worth reading off the table rather than any single rate. First, the highest multipliers on four of these five cards are earned only inside the issuer’s own booking channel, which is also the channel where the fixed redemption rate applies. Second, none of these five cards charges a foreign transaction fee, which removes a 3 percent drag that many lower-tier cards still carry.

A known upcoming change: Chase to World of Hyatt moves to 4:3

This is the largest scheduled change to a transfer path in this cluster, and the boundary is easy to get wrong because it turns on application date, not statement date or transfer date.

In a release dated June 15, 2026, Chase stated that Ultimate Rewards points will transfer to World of Hyatt at a rate of 4:3. Per that release:

• Sapphire Preferred cardmembers who applied on or after June 15, 2026: the 4:3 ratio is effective immediately.
• Sapphire Preferred cardmembers who applied before June 15, 2026: transfers stay 1:1 through September 30, 2026, and become 4:3 effective October 1, 2026.
• Ink Business Preferred: effective October 1, 2026, for existing cardmembers and for new cardmembers.

In plain arithmetic, 4:3 means 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points become 30,000 World of Hyatt points, a 25 percent reduction in the Hyatt points received per Ultimate Rewards point transferred. A Hyatt award that costs 30,000 Hyatt points required 30,000 Ultimate Rewards points before the change and requires 40,000 after it.

Labeled as points-media reporting, not a Chase statement: multiple outlets, including The Points Guy in a piece dated June 12, 2026, report that the Chase Sapphire Reserve and Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business continue to transfer to Hyatt at 1:1 and are not subject to the 4:3 change. That exemption does not appear in the June 15 Chase release linked in the sources below. Anyone relying on it should confirm the ratio in the Chase transfer interface before transferring.

How to test whether an annual fee pays for itself

An annual fee is a fixed cost. Rewards are a variable return. The comparison is not “is this card good,” it is “does the spread between this card and the free alternative exceed the fee at the spending level actually reached.” A worked framework, with every assumption stated and no claim that these are typical numbers:

Assumptions for this hypothetical only: the alternative is a no-annual-fee card returning a flat 2 percent, the points earned on the fee-charging card are valued at the issuer’s published fixed rate rather than any transfer estimate, no statement credits or perks are counted, and all spending falls in the category being tested.

A hypothetical with stated inputs: at an assumed 1 cent per point, which is Chase’s published cash and Chase Travel base rate but is only an assumption for a currency whose issuer publishes no fixed rate, a 5x category returns 5 cents per dollar against the alternative’s 2 cents, a spread of 3 cents per dollar. A hypothetical $95 annual fee then needs about $3,167 of annual spending in that category to break even, because 95 divided by 0.03 is roughly 3,167. A hypothetical $395 fee needs about $13,167. A hypothetical $795 fee needs about $26,500. These fee amounts are arithmetic illustrations, not statements about specific cards; Capital One, for one, publishes no cents-per-mile redemption rate, so the first input there is an assumption from the start. Change the assumed point value and every threshold moves: value the same points at a 2 cent transfer estimate and the 5x category returns 10 cents per dollar, the spread becomes 8 cents, and the $395 break-even drops to about $4,938.

That sensitivity is the entire point. The break-even for a premium fee is not a fact about the card, it is a function of an assumed point value, and the assumed point value is the least verifiable number in the calculation. Run it with the lowest issuer-published redemption rate for the currency first, because that number is the one the issuer will honor on the least favorable path. Anything above it is upside, not a plan.

Go deeper on any of these

Start with the tool, then read the piece that matches the question:

• Miles Points vs Cash Calculator runs the cents-per-point formula on a real booking, including cash taxes and fees on the award side. It is the fastest way to answer “transfer or pay cash” for a specific trip.
• Amex Platinum 2026: Is the $895 Fee Still Worth It?
• Credit Cards for European Travel: Fees, Networks, and Points
• Maximize Points for Your Dream Family Trip to Vietnam

Frequently asked questions

What is a travel credit card point actually worth?

It depends on the redemption path, and only some paths have a published value. Chase states each Ultimate Rewards point is worth 1 cent for cash back or gift cards and $0.01 each through Chase Travel before Points Boost. American Express publishes 1.0 cent per point for flights through Amex Travel, 0.7 cents for other Amex Travel bookings, and 0.6 cents as a statement credit. Transfer-partner values are not published by any issuer and vary with award pricing, so any cents-per-point figure quoted for transfers is an estimate.

Should I transfer points to an airline or hotel, or book through the issuer portal?

Compare the two on the specific booking rather than in general. Divide the cash price of the exact award, minus any cash taxes and fees charged on the award booking, by the points required, and compare that to the issuer’s published fixed rate. If the transfer math comes out below the fixed rate, the portal is the better path for that booking. Transfers are usually irreversible, so the calculation belongs before the transfer, not after.

Are the cents-per-point valuations published by points websites reliable?

They are useful benchmarks and they are explicitly estimates. The Points Guy describes its monthly figures as estimates of what a typical traveler can reasonably expect from a currency’s most valuable everyday uses, and states that actual value may be higher or lower depending on goals, flexibility, and how effectively a currency is maximized. They are not rates any issuer will honor, and they should never be used as the basis for a break-even calculation without also running the issuer’s published fixed rate.

Does the Chase to Hyatt 4:3 change affect everyone on October 1, 2026?

No. Per Chase’s June 15, 2026 release, the boundary turns on application date. Sapphire Preferred cardmembers who applied on or after June 15, 2026 are at 4:3 immediately. Those who applied before June 15, 2026 keep 1:1 through September 30, 2026 and move to 4:3 on October 1, 2026. Ink Business Preferred moves to 4:3 on October 1, 2026 for both existing and new cardmembers. Points-media outlets report that Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Reserve for Business remain at 1:1, but that exemption is not stated in the Chase release and should be confirmed in the Chase transfer interface.

Do these premium travel cards charge foreign transaction fees?

As of August 20, 2026, the issuer pages for Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Capital One Venture X, Amex Platinum, and Amex Gold all state no foreign transaction fee. Against a card charging a typical 3 percent foreign transaction fee, that is a real 3 percent difference, and it applies to every purchase made abroad, not only travel purchases; the exact difference depends on the comparison card’s fee schedule.

How do I know whether an annual fee pays for itself?

Calculate the spread between the card’s earn rate and a no-annual-fee alternative, value the points at the lowest redemption rate the issuer publishes for that currency rather than a media estimate (for Amex that floor is the 0.6 cent statement-credit rate, for Chase the 1 cent cash rate; Capital One publishes no fixed rate, so any value used there is an assumption), then divide the fee by the spread to get the spending required to break even. Using the lowest published rate is what makes the threshold conservative. Adding statement credits or perks to the calculation is only honest for credits that would have been spent anyway at full value.

Open items: what could not be verified

These figures are commonly repeated elsewhere and could not be confirmed on an issuer page on August 20, 2026. They are listed here rather than stated above as facts.

• Capital One cents-per-mile. The Venture X product page, the miles and travel rewards hub, and Capital One’s redemption explainers describe covering a travel purchase within 90 days and redeeming for a statement credit or check, but none of them publishes a cents-per-mile rate. The widely quoted 1 cent per mile for the travel eraser is unverified against a Capital One page here.
• Amex Pay with Points rates come from an Amex editorial page. The 1.0, 0.7, and 0.6 cent figures appear on American Express’s Credit Intel article, which is issuer-owned, and not on the Pay with Points booking pages, which direct readers to a points value calculator instead. The figures are issuer-published, but on an explainer rather than in card terms.
• Chase Sapphire Preferred base portal rate. The $0.01 base value through Chase Travel is stated on the Sapphire Reserve product page and on Chase’s Ultimate Rewards education page. The Sapphire Preferred product page itself states that redemption values vary by option without printing a base rate.
• Sapphire Reserve exemption from the Hyatt 4:3 change. Reported by points media, not present in Chase’s June 15, 2026 release.
• Points Boost coverage. Chase publishes the multipliers, up to 2x for Sapphire Reserve and up to 1.5x for Sapphire Preferred, but not a fixed list of qualifying hotels and flights. Eligible inventory rotates, so the boosted rate cannot be treated as a dependable value.

Sources

Issuer pages, accessed August 20, 2026

• Chase, Sapphire Preferred product page: creditcards.chase.com/rewards-credit-cards/sapphire/preferred (annual fee, earn rates, FROSCH and Valerie Wilson exclusion, no foreign transaction fee)
• Chase, Sapphire Reserve product page: creditcards.chase.com/rewards-credit-cards/sapphire/reserve (annual fee, authorized user fee, earn rates, $0.01 per point through Chase Travel, no foreign transaction fee)
• Chase, How Chase Ultimate Rewards works: chase.com/personal/credit-cards/education/basics/how-chase-ultimate-rewards-works (1 cent per point for cash back and gift cards)
• Chase Travel, How Points Boost works: chase.com/travel/guide/trips/chase-sapphire-points-boost-benefits-guide (up to 2x for Sapphire Reserve, up to 1.5x for Sapphire Preferred)
• Chase press release, June 15, 2026, Meet the New Chase Sapphire Preferred: media.chase.com/news/Meet-the-New-Chase-Sapphire-Preferred (4:3 World of Hyatt transfer ratio, application-date boundary, Ink Business Preferred October 1, 2026 effective date)
• Capital One, Venture X product page: capitalone.com/credit-cards/venture-x (annual fee, 10X hotels and rental cars, 5X flights and vacation rentals, 2X other, no foreign transaction fee)
• American Express, Additional Platinum Card terms and conditions: americanexpress.com Additional Platinum Card terms (legacy $175 pricing for accounts opened before August 17, 2023, including the after-three rule)
• Capital One, how to earn and redeem miles: capitalone.com/learn-grow/money-management/ways-to-redeem-venture-miles (90-day window to cover a travel purchase, statement credit and check options)
• American Express, Platinum Card product page: americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/card/platinum (5X flights with $500,000 per calendar year cap, 5X prepaid hotels, no foreign transaction fees)
• American Express, Platinum Card annual fee explainer: americanexpress.com/en-us/credit-cards/credit-intel/platinum-fee ($895 annual fee, $195 per Additional Platinum Card)
• American Express, Gold Card product page: americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/card/gold-card (annual fee, 4X and 5X and 3X and 2X earn rates with stated caps, no foreign transaction fees)
• American Express, Membership Rewards points value explainer: americanexpress.com/en-us/credit-cards/credit-intel/american-express-points-value (1.0 cent flights, 0.7 cents other travel, 0.6 cents statement credit, up to 1 cent gift cards)

Points-media sources, labeled as estimates or reporting

• The Points Guy, monthly points and miles valuations, August 2026: thepointsguy.com/loyalty-programs/monthly-valuations (Chase Ultimate Rewards 2.05 cents, Amex Membership Rewards 2.0 cents, Capital One miles 1.85 cents, World of Hyatt 1.6 cents; described by TPG as estimates)
• The Points Guy, June 12, 2026, on the Hyatt transfer change and Sapphire Reserve: thepointsguy.com/credit-cards/hyatt-transfer-changes-sapphire-reserve-or-sapphire-preferred (reports that Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Reserve for Business continue at 1:1; not stated in the Chase release)

This page contains no affiliate links and no apply-now links. eTravelogs has no card affiliate relationships, by choice. Nothing here is a recommendation to apply for any card. Checked against the sources above on August 20, 2026.