At Frequent Miler, we keep a database of point valuations called “Reasonable Redemption Values.” These are estimates of the “worth” of airline miles, hotel points, transferable points, and more. The idea is to identify the point at which it is “reasonable” to get that much value or more from your points.
This information is critical for making informed decisions. In fact, it’s a key component of the First Year Value information shown on our Best Credit Card Offers page, and it’s similarly used to show which cards offer the best value for everyday spend and which offer the best category bonuses.
When we first started looking at the value of airline miles, we used a laborious manual process to create estimates, but we now have a much better way of pinning down the value of American AAdvantage miles.
Points Path, a Google Flights extension, keeps records of both the points and cash prices for all searches conducted on its platform. Points Path founder and former Frequent Miler writer Julian Kheel has made this data available to us to identify rewards program point values.
Thanks to Julian and Points Path, we now have access to results from almost 9 million domestic and international American Airlines searches, showing both the cash and award prices for the same flight (including partner flights). Using this data, we can provide a far better estimate of the “Reasonable Redemption Value” of AAdvantage Miles than we were ever able to obtain by using manual calculations.
Based on an analysis of Points Path’s data, we’ve concluded that the new Reasonable Redemption Value (RRV) for AAdvantage miles = 1.4 Cents Per Mile.
Points Path Data
Listed below is a summary of the raw data from Points Path. There are two values that are important to us. The median is the point at which half of the observed results have better point values, and half have worse. We also have the average value of all the searches, in total and by booking class.
| Cabin | Median Value (cpp) | Average Value (cpp) | Number of data points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economy | 1.37* | 1.51* | 7,680,828 |
| Premium Economy | 1.33 | 1.68 | 137,565 |
| Business | 1.22 | 1.68 | 819,263 |
| First | 1.11 | 1.54 | 217,064 |
| Combined | 1.29 | 1.53 | 8,854,720 |
Calculations
For our airline RRV values, we’ll use the midpoint between the average and the median. The reason is that the difference between the two is an indicator of how often more valuable sweet spots can be found in a given category.
If the median is 1 cent per point, that means half of all searches produced a value below 1 cent per point, and the other half above 1 cent per point. However, if the same data showed an average of 2 cents per point, it would mean that some of the 50% of searches that were above 1 cent per point were so far above that they doubled the result to 2 cents per point. Likely, that would indicate a higher prevalence of available sweet spot awards with outsized redemption value…something we like to see.
That’s indeed what happened with AA, as there’s a 19% increase from the median to the mean (or average). That indicates that, even though only half of the searches Points Path tracked showed redemptions above 1.29 cents per mile, enough of those searches produced outsized value to significantly raise the average redemption to 1.53 cents per mile. To us, this means there’s still ample opportunity to get excellent value when using AA miles.
- Points Path Median Observed Value for American AAdvantage redemptions: 1.29 cents per mile
(based on 365 days of data as of April 7, 2026) - Points Path Mean Observed Value for American AAdvantage redemptions: 1.53 Cents Per Mile
(based on 365 days of data as of April 7, 2026) - Range: 1.11 to 1.68.
- For our RRV, we’ll pick the midpoint between 1.29 and 1.53, then round it to 1 decimal place, or 1.4 Cents Per Mile.
Conclusion
The exercise described above resulted in no change to our Reasonable Redemption Value (RRV) for AAdvantage miles, which remained at 1.4 cents per mile. That’s the point at which most readers are likely to get that much value or more.
Please keep in mind that this does not mean you will always get a 1.4 cents-per-mile value from your AA miles. In practice, you’ll sometimes find better redemptions, and sometimes you’ll find worse. However, we believe that 1.4 cents is a “reasonable” expectation for what your American miles are “worth” when used towards award flights.
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I think the potential value of AA points is higher than UA / DL. But if I get 1.5cpp or greater I am ok. Ideally more of course.
I actually love the thoroughness of the charts above.
I know we might not need and additional statistical measurement, but would not the statistical “mode” be a useful data point?
The one referring t your valuation of Bilt?
Are you censoring my comment below?
Nope – it was a pending comment due to the inclusion of a link; we do that to prevent spam comments from automatically being approved. Your comment has been approved now.
The link was in a quote from your web site. But thanks.
Yep, it’s annoying – WordPress doesn’t seem to have a setting to whitelist our own site when that’s the URL in a comment. I’ve reached out to Boarding Area who host our site to see if there’s a different way that links to our own posts can be whitelisted so that they don’t get held in the moderation queue.
cool seeing the data laid out like this. My experience is that AA miles are priceless across all cabins. I’m averaging 2.96cpp and have redeemed 595,000 over the last 5 years. (Yes I calculate 1-way J fairly by taking half of RT price)
I don’t think Points Path data are as valuable for evaluating the value of AA miles, because most good uses of AA miles are for flights on partners’ metals, which Points Path doesn’t capture.
“This information is critical for making informed decisions. In fact, it’s a key component of the First Year Value information shown on our Best Credit Card Offers page,” This page is now valueless as it cannot handle credit cards with internal currencies. Hence, it values Bilt at $600 when a more accurate estimate is $3,000.
The first year value is based on the welcome offer + any card benefits that we’ve calculated a conservative value for + points earned from the minimum spend requirement, minus the annual fee and opportunity cost versus putting the minimum spend on a high cashback earning card.
Your $3K+ valuation was based on all kinds of other factors like putting a ton of spending on the card, redeeming Bilt Cash in various ways, etc. That’s simply not how our first year valuations work.
If your personal expected usage of a card is that you’ll get $3,000 of value from it, that’s great and certainly not incorrect. That’s far from a common first year value for your everyday person though.
“Your $3K+ valuation was based on all kinds of other factors like putting a ton of spending on the card, redeeming Bilt Cash in various ways, etc. That’s simply not how our first year valuations work.”
That’s the point. It is the only first year valuation that makes sense. A card you don’t put spend on is likely worth less than $0. Look at the simplest example, the C1 Venture card. How do you value the $250 travel credit (albeit at $220). Via spend, or its value is zero. This “assumed spend” is inherent, even more visibly, in the case of cards with more “discretionary first year benefits”. Almost all those line items involve spend. Look at your AMEX Platinum valuation (reproduced, using my calculations, since yours are unpublished, below). Which ones are obtainable with no spend?
FIGURE 1FIRST YEAR VALUE OF THE AMEX PLATINUM CARD FM CALCULATION METHODITEM
VALUE ($)
Startup Bonus (175,000 miles)
2625
Airline Incrementals
140
Resy credit
85
Uber credit
100
Uber One credit
48
Saks credit
25
FHR credit
300
Digital entertainment credit
150
Lululemon
150
Cost of Spend
-192
Annual Fee
-895
Fudge factor
94
TOTAL
2630
Note: My total was off by $94 (3.5%) so I assumed the user had a sweet tooth (fudge factor).
In your message, your method of valuation would be more accurately called the “Frequent Miler Sock Drawer Valuation”. It is not what you used for your first year valuation. That simply wasn’t what you told your readers.
FM should admit that its First Year Valuation is broken by any card that uses an internal currency. Currently, the example is Bilt, but you can bet it will be copied, gthe concept is so innovative.
Does anyone, even those who rejected Bilt 2.0, imagine that it was only worth your FYV of $600? That is laughable on its face. Better to fess up in the face of the evidence and come up with a general method of FYV that can accurately value internal currency cards.
Why are you being so weird and aggressive
I guess it’s helpful then that we’ve explicitly explained how we calculate the first year value for every card https://frequentmiler.com/estimated-first-year-value/
The Bilt Cash earned through day-to-day spend isn’t included in that because the first year value estimate is a valuation of the welcome offer and any benefits available in your first year – not whatever amount of day-to-day spending goes on it seeing as there’s a huge variance from person to person.
Some businesses spend $25K per year, others spend millions. Does that mean out business card valuations should account for millions of dollar of spend?
“I guess it’s helpful then that we’ve explicitly explained how we calculate the first year value for every card….”
That is utter fiction. What is explicit about
“+ Estimated value of select perks”
The estimates are interpersonal and subjective mush. The “select perks” involve a judgement call regarding their inclusion.
And “ not whatever amount of day-to-day spending goes on as there’s a huge variance from person to person”
you actually do this later on
“With these enhanced earning bonuses, we guess how much a cardholder is likely to spend on the card while the enhanced earnings are in place.”
Right now, you assume a premium card other than Bilt has money spent on it, whereas Bilt spending is zero. That is not how the card is used in the first year and not remotely representative of its value.
Two better ways of calculating spend:
1) Use average/median annual spending of the card’s users;
2) Estimate the budget necessary to use the card’s benefits. For example, if a card gives $300 for two nights hotel benefits, estimate the cost of the whole two-day trip.
Either gets at a better estimate of the scope of spend. Certainly, for AMEX, Sapphire Reserve, and Bilt you are in the level of spending that I assumed (mid $30,000s), but any holder of those cards can easily manage that. The difference is that Bilt gives more back ($3149) than either of the former leaders ($2,630 and $1544).
I am surprised you are defending a valuation method that is so subjective as apodictic truth. The results you get are absurd (Bilt $600!). I expected you to announce a wholesale methodolgical review.
Your current outfit as Emporer will satisfy your current crowd of obsequious fan-boys as sensible warm weather wear, but newcomers can recognize an arse when they see one. .
You have to consider the foregone value of the spend, the opportunity cost of putting it elsewhere. Often that’s essentially trivial- putting a $300 ish flight on the Venture X means I’m not getting the 5x Amex points on the flight I’d have otherwise gotten.
A $300 credit+ 600 Cap1 points minus the 1500 Amex points I’d have otherwise gotten is basically a $280-$290 something value, really not moving the needle here.
But if something is going to require umpteen amounts of spend and offer only a couple points a dollar that really has to be compared vs a 2%, 3% etc card. And that’s where just pulling out an enormous value for the Bilt card is silly, as the MARGINAL value over using a standard card in your stable is limited to negative.
Are you drip feeding the Points Path data? You had Choice Points a couple of weeks ago, now AA. Why not drop the full list of values so that people can use it?
Based on your prior comments, the FM team has decided to only write articles that you are interested in. In the case of RRV articles, they wouldn’t want to publish an article about a program that you wouldn’t be interested in. So, they’re performing analysis as to which programs you would like to read about. Sadly, this takes time. But, they are committed to conforming to your tough standards. Because, they have nothing else to be reporting on.
This massive data set clearly shows that any calculation of the value of AA miles depends on the class of service. Viz:
CLASS OF
SERVICE Midpoint
Economy 1.44
Premium Economy 1.51
Business 1.45
First 1.33
Combined 1.41
DP: I’m averaging 1.35 cpp on AA and Delta.
I went on the AAadvantage site to redeem my miles toward a rental car for an upcoming Florida vacation. For 13K miles plus $324.59 I could get the Mustang convertible I wanted from either Alamo or Enterprise. However I could get the same vehicle directly from Enterprise with a 5 % discount with my Plus membership for $363.35
Doesn’t look like 10k miles equals $160 to me!
Any chance you can share domestic vs international Points Path CPP values like you have for Alaska and Aeroplan?
It’s hard to reconcile these RRVs with my real-world use case. I see points as a tool to get into The Front. J and F travel are too expensive to pay cash for, so I use points for J/F. Therefore I have a rule never to redeem points for Y travel. Add to that: though I often fly through a USA gateway city like ORD, PHL, CLT, NYC, nearly all my travel is longhaul, not to Europe. I use points only for competitively priced J/F seats from YYZ (or a US gateway like NYC, ORD, PHL, CLT) to wherever.
DL points are worth near-zero (not “slightly below AA”), because Delta offers no reasonable J/F redemptions from North America to anywhere.
AA points are very valuable because they actually sell something I want to buy.
UA points are worth a third less than AA points, because awards on UA’s program cost more.
Longhaul Business Class cash prices are irrelevant, since I would never pay them. Saying my AA points are “worth” $0.05 because the J fare to London is $6k is silly, because I would never pay that. I would pay $1,500 oneway for BA J to London but not more, which is why I need points. The fact that someone else, whom I don’t know, would pay $3k for that ticket doesn’t affect my valuation of my AA points.
My point, simply, is that the value of one’s points is entirely subjective. Greg would use them differently from me, partly because he has a different level of abundance than me. This is a big factor in valuation of points.
I know Nick and Greg (and presumably the FM whole team) don’t agree with my “philosophy” on this and I respect them highly as thought leaders in this field. I hope my input offers something to think about. Beware objectification of points values; it’s not objective, at all.
There’s a reason they’re called reasonable redemption values and not peak redemption values. RRVs are purposely conservative to reflect what the average user with little experience can expect.
@Ace
I fully understand the rationale behind RRV. You might think I’m a troll or an idiot who’s failed to understand. I’m not; I do understand.
It appears to me that the “average user” is:
resident of USA
nontrivial amount of domestic USA travel
willing to consider redeeming points for economy
Here are some assumptions which inevitably skew values for a user:
resident of a AA, UA or DL hub city
very high earn/balances
very low earn/balances
A user living in an AA hub city will experience the value of UA points very differently from a user in a UA hub city, no? A user with enough points for one J trip a year will (or should) value their points very differently from someone with abundant MR, ThankYou, UR, CapOne, Bilt points etc.
I know some will see my posts as snark or trolling but I beg you to believe I’m sincere and hoping to remind my fellows to do your homework before assuming RRV is close to your own valuation.
I didn’t think that you were trolling, but as you pointed out, there’s no one size fits all number that can possibly account for all scenarios, so the most conservative thing to do is to use some kind of objective average. Even the value that you can get from cash in everyday life will vary wildly depending on a whole range of circumstances. A gallon of gas is going to cost more in California than in Texas, so how much value are you going to assign to $1 of gas for the average American across the entire nation?
That’s my point. If I’m advising a consumer how much to pay for gas, I’d ask him a number of questions first, including those you’re suggesting. I wouldn’t give Texan advice to a Californian, no matter the size of his hat.
The whole point of RRVs is that they reflect the value that you can reasonably expect without asking any questions. From the RRVs page:
It’s like playing darts. The RRV is what you can expect from being able to hit the board, not what you can expect by hitting repeated bullseyes. Most people will never reach the stage of hitting bulleyes, even in this community.
To a different article, a reader equated a redemption to a particle’s position in quantum mechanics. Prior to being observed (redeemed), its position is a probabilistic fuzzball. It’s only when a specific observer looks at it (redeems) that its position is known.
The FM team is doing all of the math and showing us the fuzzball.
AA has been my go-to for close-in bookings for quite some time, and I have reliably gotten over 2cpm. For me, it’s the most valuable airline currency by far. Closest runner up is Alaska, but that’s mostly because I can use those miles to fly AA.
I have the same experience. Starting with these prejudices: never redeem for Y, never fly domestic USA, all trips longhaul. I value AA points at least 50% higher than UA and perhaps 17x DL LOL. I’m AC hub captive with AC status and I still value AA points higher than AC.
Alaska miles flying AA is pretty insane, especially since you can earn status through those award flights.
This is an interesting analysis. As others have pointed out there are many other more lucrative uses for AA miles, on premium cabins and international travel. Recently I have been seeing many “web special” flights around 10k OW economy. Some of these routes can easily be 4cpm such as two I booked this year (ORD-EGE, ORD-LIR).