How to track your credit card points

Your credit card points aren't real money, but they might as well be. You have thousands of them, scattered across a half-dozen cards and a handful of airline and hotel accounts. But you probably don't know what they're worth, when they expire, or how to use them.

That's by design. Card issuers love it when your points expire or go unused—the industry calls it "breakage."

The only way to stop that from happening is to get organized. Doing it by hand in a spreadsheet is a nightmare. You need an app that puts all your points in one place and shows you what they're actually worth.

The Main Options: AwardWallet, MaxRewards, and CardPointers

These are the big names in points tracking, and they all work a little differently.

AwardWallet is like a librarian for your points. It’s built to catalog everything. It connects to over 600 loyalty programs—not just credit cards, but airlines, hotels, rental cars, and even Sephora. Its main job is to show you all your balances and warn you about expiring points. The free version is solid, but the paid tier ($30/year) is worth it if you have a lot of accounts to track.

MaxRewards wants you to earn more. Its best feature is how it automatically activates all those merchant offers and quarterly bonus categories that are easy to forget. It also tells you the best card to use for a purchase wherever you are. The app is free, but the "Gold" membership unlocks the best features. It has a pay-what-you-want model that starts at $9/month.

CardPointers is the minimalist. It’s clean and simple. You tell it what cards you have, and it tells you which one to use to get the most back. It's a great choice if you're new to the rewards game or just want a simple tool. It also helps manage Amex and Chase offers, which can be a pain to track on your own.

The Human Element

I once lost a business-class flight to Japan because 50,000 of my points expired. I hadn't checked that specific airline account in months. I was standing in my kitchen at 4:17 PM, staring at a bag of stale tortilla chips, when I realized the points were gone. That's about the value of a 2011 Honda Civic. I downloaded AwardWallet right then.

Never again.

Other Tools

Beyond those three, a few others are worth knowing about.

Travel Freely is for people focused on welcome bonuses. It tells you which cards to apply for and when, helping you stay under rules like Chase's 5/24. It’s free and is more about earning strategy than just tracking.

PointsYeah, seats.aero, and Roame are search engines for award travel. Once you know what points you have, these tools help you find flights to book with them, which is often the hardest part.

Which one should you use?

If your biggest fear is points expiring across a dozen different programs, start with AwardWallet. It’s the best for just keeping track of everything. But if you want an app that pushes you to earn more cash back and handles all the offer activations for you, get MaxRewards.

And if you don't care about any of that and just want a simple way to know the best card for every purchase, CardPointers is the answer.

The point is to use what you've earned. These rewards are part of your compensation. Don't let them disappear.