Point.me vs AwardLogic. Which award search tool is best?

Earlier this week I updated my post about the SeatSpy award search tool.  That tool is great for finding award availability but only for select airlines and only for nonstop routes.  If you you want your award search to be as simple as a tool like Google Flights where you simply enter your origin, destination and dates of travel, you’ll have to look elsewhere.  And there happen to be two very similar tools that work like that: point.me and AwardLogic.  Both tools search for award availability across all major points programs based on the simple criteria you enter.  Nick has written about both tools individually (Point.me and AwardLogic), but we haven’t previously compared them head to head.  Yesterday morning I decided to do just that.  And by yesterday evening, after nearly nonstop work on the project, I discovered that I had just barely scratched the surface.  As a result, I consider this post to be just a first blush comparison.

Overview

AwardLogic and point.me are web tools that make it easy to search for flight awards. Both tools search across a large number of airline programs, both understand transfer program options (e.g. if you have Chase points, you can filter results to see just the awards that are bookable by transferring points from Chase), and both return results showing only awards that are actually available, along with actual point prices, and estimated taxes and fees.  For this post, I made up a realistic scenario and compared the experience of searching for matching awards without these tools vs. with each individually.  I found that the tools returned similar results and that using either tool was much better than my do-it-myself approach.

Pricing

At the time of this writing, the tools offer the following pricing options…

As you can see, point.me is significantly cheaper than AwardLogic.

Comparison Scenarios

In order to compare these tools adequately, I thought it would make sense to come up with several real world scenarios to see which tool handled each scenario best.  For example, one scenario could be where two people want to travel to Europe in business class in late June.  Another scenario may be a family of four who want to fly economy to Orlando for spring break.  Another might be an individual who wants to fly domestic first class from Boston to Los Angeles on a particular weekend.

For each scenario, I figured that it makes sense to first try to find awards directly with free search tools such as united.com, ba.com, etc.  Then I would try point.me and AwardLogic to see if they turned up equally good or better options.

Great idea huh?  I thought so until I spent all day working on a single scenario.  So rather than make you wait until I’ve fleshed out the others, I decided to write up what I found so far…

Business Class for 2 to Europe Scenario

Here are the scenario details:

• 2 adults want to travel together
• Home airport: St. Louis (I wanted a major city that isn’t an airline hub)
• Desired travel dates: Last two weeks of June 2023
• Desired destination: The couple would like to fly into Milan and then return home from Naples — or vice versa.  The idea is that they will take trains or rent a car to travel through Italy from north to south or from south to north.
• Desired class of service: business class
• Points available: ~200,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points + ~320,000 Amex Membership Rewards points
• Other considerations:
  • The couple would prefer to use only their Amex points for flights so that they can transfer their Chase points to Hyatt to book Hyatt or SLH hotels.
  • The couple would prefer fewer stops (ideally just 1 stop in each direction)

Prep Work

Before doing any award searches, I used FlightConnections.com to see what flights are available from St. Louis.

I found that the only non-stop flight across the Atlantic is Lufthansa to Frankfurt.  I then looked at non-stop flights from Milan, Naples, and Rome (as a back-up) and found that the following eastern-US cities (in addition to Frankfurt) might be good options for 1 stop routes between St. Louis and Italy: Chicago, Newark, Washington Dulles, Boston, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, and Orlando.  JFK isn’t a great option because there are no non-stop flights between JFK and St. Louis, but with a long enough layover it would be possible to transfer between Newark or LaGuardia and JFK.

After doing this initial work, I knew that a 1 stop route was unlikely.  Except for the Lufthansa flight, almost all 1-stop options I could find were with the major U.S. carriers: AA, Delta, and United.  That’s a problem because they’re all extremely stingy about releasing international business class awards at saver prices.  And with Amex points, only Delta miles would be directly available to this couple.  For AA and United flights, they would have to book with partner miles (such as British Airways and Air Canada, respectively).  Without saver awards, though, flights won’t be bookable by partners.  And with Delta… forget it.  To be able to book these flights for less than 320,000 Amex points round-trip for 2 adults, the average one-way award would have to be 80,000 points or less.  The chance of finding a Delta business class award to or from Europe for around 80K miles one way is… zero.

One interesting one-stop route I found was with Emirates.  Emirates flies non-stop between JFK and Milan.  So, it would be possible to fly from St. Louis to the New York area (Newark or LaGuardia), then JFK to Milan.  It’s far from ideal to transfer between airports, but at least it’s possible.

Do it myself search

I used United.com to search for awards on United and Lufthansa between all of the cities listed above and Milan and Naples.  Nothing was available in mid-June for outbound flights and late June for the return.  I did find some available Lufthansa flights between Detroit and Frankfurt but they were outside of the desired date range.

I next used AA.com to search for awards on AA and its partners.  The only cheap business class points options I found were with British Airways, but I dismissed these because BA imposes very large surcharges on their flights.

I next painstakingly searched for business class partner award availability on Delta using VirginAtlantic.com.  I checked every route in which Delta has non-stop flights between Italy and a city in the eastern U.S. that can be reached non-stop from St. Louis.  I found nothing.

I then used Emirates.com to search for saver level non-stop awards between JFK and Milan.  No dice.

As I mentioned earlier, the only decent option I could find was with dates that didn’t fit the original criteria.  Lufthansa had multiple business class seats available between Detroit and Frankfurt on the following dates:

• Detroit to Frankfurt in business class for 2: June 26, 27
• Frankfurt to Detroit in business class for 2: June 15, 22, 29 and July 13

Awards between Milan and Frankfurt and between Naples and Frankfurt were wide open just about any time, so it was possible to design the trip as follows: Fly Detroit to Milan on June 27th and then Naples to Detroit on July 13th.  These flights could be booked with Avianca LifeMiles (transferred from Amex Membership Rewards) for 63K points per person each way:

The idea here is that the couple would buy separate tickets to position between St. Louis and Detroit in order to take the flights shown above.

By the time I found the above option, I had already eaten several hours of my day.  I imagine that I could have found something better if given more time, but this was good enough for now.  The question then was whether point.me or AwardLogic would help me find better options.  I thought that the option I found was decent, but it didn’t fit within the dates that were originally specified so it wasn’t great.

point.me

point.me outbound flight search

I fired up point.me and searched first for St. Louis to Milan one-way.  I selected 2 passengers and “Business & First” class of service.  Unfortunately point.me only lets you input one date at a time and the results take a long time to load.  Fortunately, it’s possible to fire up different queries on different browser tabs.  So, in addition to the St. Louis to Milan search, I ran searches in different tabs to Milan from Chicago, Newark, JFK, Washington DC (IAD), Boston, and Atlanta.  My original plan was to repeat this process across multiple dates, but I never got that far.

On each tab, I filtered results to 1 stop (except where the origin was St Louis, I filtered it to 2 stops), and sorted points from low to high.  On most tabs, the top results were using AA miles to book British Airways flights.  That wasn’t useful because British Airways imposes very high fuel surcharges on their international business class flights.

Luckily point.me uncovered an option that I hadn’t found on my own.  Egypt Air business class was available from Washington DC to Milan via Cairo for 90,000 Air Canada Aeroplan points (which the couple could get by transferring from Amex or Chase).  Normally I wouldn’t be interested in Egypt Air business class due to very poor reviews, but as our own Nick Reyes found, their 787 from Washington DC is pretty nice.

I decided that this couple might actually like to do a stop-over in Cairo for a couple of nights so that they could stay at the Marriott Mena House and see the pyramids.  Air Canada allows adding a stop-over on a one-way award for only 5,000 extra points.  As it turned out, though, it would be slightly cheaper in points to book two separate awards.  Air Canada charges 90,000 points to fly business class on Egypt Air from DC to Milan via Cairo or 95,000 points if you add a stop-over. Alternatively, you can book DC to Cairo for 70,000 points and then separately book Cairo to Milan for 12,500 points in economy or 20,000 points in business class.  If you wanted to fly business class on both legs, you would save 5,000 points per person by booking the awards separately rather than by adding a stop-over to a single award.  Unfortunately, by stopping over in either way, taxes and fees increase substantially ($57 CAD in fees w/out a stopover vs. $164 CAD with a stopover).  Still, I think it’s worth it for this couple to add in a visit to the pyramids!

point.me return flight search

With the outbound flights settled, I turned my attention to the return.  As before, I opened point.me in multiple tabs and searched for 2 business class seats on June 29th from Naples to each of the following cities: St. Louis, Chicago, Newark, JFK, Washington DC (IAD), Boston, and Atlanta.

As expected, I didn’t find anything useful that would take me all the way to St. Louis.  With flights to Chicago, though, I found something unexpected.  With Alaska miles, flying Naples to Chicago via London, Alaska charges only $220 in fees (vs. closer to $400 normally) as long as the first leg is in economy.  I verified this by searching various routes directly on Alaska.com.  Here’s an example:

Unfortunately, I couldn’t replicate this with BA’s own points.  Also unfortunately, in the scenario I laid out, this couple doesn’t have Alaska miles and Alaska isn’t a transfer partner with Amex or Chase.  So, this was just an interesting finding to keep in my pocket for future award bookings.

Another interesting option that point.me dug up was to fly British Airways first class Naples to Newark via London for 88,000 points plus $371 per person.  Even though British Airways isn’t known to have the best international first class in the sky, it would still be a really nice way to travel.  Those prices are slightly higher than the couple would want to pay, but it’s still a good option.

Another good option that point.me found was to fly Iberia from Naples to JFK via Madrid for 67K points per person using Iberia points (which can be transferred from Amex or Chase).

The primary downside to this option is that the couple would need to transfer from JFK to Newark or LaGuardia to get back to St. Louis with only one more flight since there are no nonstops between JFK and St. Louis.

Another decent option found through point.me was to fly Air France from Naples to JFK via Paris for 62K points + $294 per person.

point.me results

After about an hour and a half of working with point.me I decided that the best option for this couple is as follows:

• The couple would separately book a positioning flight to Washington DC.
• June 17th: Fly Washington DC (IAD) to Cairo nonstop business class for 70,000 Air Canada Aeroplan points per person + $50 CAD (~$38 USD).  Stay over in Cairo for a night or two.
• June 19th (for example): Fly Cairo to Milan nonstop business class for 20,000 Air Canada Aeroplan points per person + $114 CAD (~$85 USD)
• June 29th: Fly Iberia business class from Naples to JFK via Madrid for 66,500 Iberia Avios + $171 per person.
• The couple would separately book a positioning flight home from New York to St. Louis.

Not counting the positioning flights, and assuming that no transfer bonuses were available at the time, the couple would pay the following in points and cash:

• Transfer 180,000 Amex points to Air Canada Aeroplan to book the Egypt Air flights
• Transfer 133,000 Amex points to Avios to book the Iberia flights.
• Pay a total of $588 in taxes and fees (~$294 per person)

AwardLogic

AwardLogic wouldn’t let me run multiple searches at the same time as I could with point.me, but it does allow searching for 3 days at a time and it completes its searches much more quickly than point.me.  I really love that the 3 days of search results are all mixed together on the results page so that it’s easy to find the best options if you’re slightly flexible with dates.

AwardLogic outbound flight search

I started up AwardLogic and searched first for St. Louis to Milan one-way on June 16th + 2 days (i.e. it searched also for June 17th and June 18th).  I selected 2 passengers, “Business” class of service.  After that search completed, I searched again to Milan from Chicago, Washington (all airports), NYC (all airports), Boston, and Atlanta.

As with point.me, I didn’t find any useful results from St. Louis.  And I found flights flying British Airways where the points price was good but the cash rate was crazy high thanks to BA’s surcharges.

AwardLogic dug up the same EgyptAir option as I found with point.me:

For a few minutes I thought that AwardLogic had found an option to fly Air Serbia business class, but then I noticed that it said that only 17% of the flight was in business class.  No thank you.

Overall, for the outbound flights, I found the same best option with AwardLogic as I had found with point.me: EgyptAir.  AwardLogic, though, had the edge in that it searched multiple dates at once and so I found even more EgyptAir flights than I had found with point.me.

AwardLogic return flight search

To search for a return flight, I searched for business class for 2 on June 28th plus 2 days from Naples to St. Louis, Chicago, Washington (all airports), NYC (all airports), Boston, and Atlanta (Each destination was run as a separate search).

AwardLogic found the same interesting price anomaly using Alaska miles to fly BA that I had previously found with point.me (only $220 in taxes/fees when the first segment is economy):

AwardLogic also found the same Air France option that I found with point.me, but significantly it also found some options with better arrival times on a different day (with point.me I only searched one date whereas AwardLogic let me search 3 dates at a time).

AwardLogic found a few options that point.me didn’t find (again probably due to the dates being different):

• Brussels Airlines business class from Naples to NYC with an overnight layover in Brussels (BRU) for 70K Air Canada Aeroplan miles + ~$105.
• Swiss business class from Naples to NYC with an overnight layover in Zurich for 70K Air Canada Aeroplan miles + ~$89.
• Aer Lingus economy from Naples to Dublin then Aer Lingus business class to Washington Dulles for 80,000 points plus ~$335 per person.

AwardLogic didn’t find the same Iberia flights as I had found with point.me, but when I reran the search on point.me (and on Iberia.com) I couldn’t find those flights anymore so I think they had been snatched up between the time I found them originally and when I ran the search on AwardLogic.

Another option that AwardLogic didn’t find is the BA first class award that I found with point.me.  I’m sure AwardLogic would have found this if I had selected to search for first class awards, but I only searched for business class.  point.me has a big edge here because it lumps business and first class awards together into a single search.

Ultimately I decided that the best choice for the return flight was Air France to JFK for 62K miles per person plus ~$284 in fees.  This one doesn’t require an overnight layover as with Brussels or Swiss and it costs less than the Aer Lingus option.

AwardLogic results

After about an hour of working with AwardLogic I decided that the best option for this couple is to do the same as previously described for the outbound but to return via Air France:

• The couple would separately book a positioning flight to Washington DC.
• June 17th: Fly Washington DC (IAD) to Cairo nonstop business class for 70,000 Air Canada Aeroplan points per person + $50 CAD (~$38 USD).  Stay over in Cairo for a night or two.
• June 19th (for example): Fly Cairo to Milan nonstop business class for 20,000 Air Canada Aeroplan points per person + $114 CAD (~$85 USD)
• June 28th: Fly Air France business class from Naples to JFK via Paris for 62K Air France miles plus ~$284 in fees per person.
• The couple would separately book a positioning flight home from New York to St. Louis.

Not counting the positioning flights, and assuming that no transfer bonuses were available at the time, the couple would pay the following in points and cash:

• Transfer 180,000 Amex points to Air Canada Aeroplan to book the Egypt Air flights
• Transfer 124,000 Amex points to Air France to book the Air France flights.
• Pay a total of ~$814 in taxes and fees (~$407 per person)

Comparison

Both tools helped me find much better award flight options than I found on my own without these tools.  Neither tool proved to be remarkably better than the other for the scenario I examined, but each tool has its own strengths.  Overall, thanks to its relative quickness and ability to search 3 days at a time, I preferred the experience of using AwardLogic over point.me, but both tools proved to be waaaaaaay better than my do-it-myself approach!

point.me advantages

• Significantly less expensive than AwardLogic
• Allows running multiple queries at once in different tabs
• Searches for both business and first class awards together in a single search. This is huge because 1) you might find a first class award when you weren’t expecting to (as I did with a BA award); and 2) with domestic flights using AwardLogic its unclear whether to select business or first class in order to find domestic first class awards.
• Appears to offer more help for actually booking awards once they’re found (I haven’t actually looked into this part yet!)
• I believe that point.me searches many more airlines than does AwardLogic

AwardLogic advantages

• AwardLogic offers award alerts!  I haven’t tested this yet but it could be a huge differentiator.
• Allows searching for 3 days at a time. I love that.
• In many cases AwardLogic allows selecting all airports in a city at once (NYC, Washington DC, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, etc.)
• Results complete much more quickly than with point.me

Conclusion

I consider this post in its current form to be just the first step towards comparing point.me to AwardLogic.  I intend to revisit these tools with additional made-up scenarios as well as with my own real-world award searches.  As I do so, I’ll update and republish this post with my new findings.

With the above caveat aside, my 10,000 foot summary is that both tools are awesome for finding award flights.  I like using AwardLogic better, but I like point.me’s cheaper price much better.  If I wasn’t a blogger I think I’d subscribe only to point.me because I wouldn’t want to pay AwardLogic’s steeper price.

If you’re considering signing up for either tool, the following links are our affiliate links.  That means that Frequent Miler will earn a small commission if you click through and sign up (thank you!):

• point.me
• AwardLogic

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