[Updated 2024.11] AwardWallet emailed users to announce that the annual fee for the more full-featured Plus membership will increase to $49.99. This includes longtime legacy users who have been paying just $10 per year. The standard annual fee had already gone up to $30, so it’s surprising to see another increase. If you don’t need the extra Plus features, the free version is still fine—it just updates more slowly.
We are writing to let you know that the price of AwardWallet Plus will be increasing to $49.99 per year on December 18, 2024. We are truly grateful for your support over the years. As one of our very early customers, we’ve kept your subscription cost at $10 per year—even as the price of AwardWallet Plus increased for new subscribers. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to offer this discount going forward. This change helps us ensure the security and reliability of the product we all love and allows us to invest in improvements and exciting new features. Rest assured that you won’t be paying more for just the same product—we think you’re going to enjoy what’s coming.
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What Is Award Wallet (AW)?
Award Wallet (AW) is a mileage/points and travel itinerary management tool founded in 2004 by Jeff Bianco. It currently supports management for 669 airline, hotel, rental car, bank points, and other loyalty accounts. To date, it has 380,000 active users, tracks 80 billion points, and covers a total value of $1.6 billion. AW’s main functions are showing your membership numbers, points balances, and expiration dates across programs. It can also automatically sync your flight and hotel reservations and provide real-time updates when flight times or hotel bookings change.
The feature I use most is being able to check mileage and points updates for all my accounts directly in AwardWallet. Watching those balances keep going up is pretty satisfying. And with AW, I never have to worry about forgetting a membership number again. Trip management is also very useful: if an airline changes a flight’s departure time, AW will update it promptly and send you an email alert. AW also supports managing other people’s accounts, so you can add your whole family’s account information, monitor everything in real time, and reduce the risk of points expiring or accounts being compromised. There are now apps for both phones and iPad as well, and I’ve downloaded them too—they make it convenient to keep everything updated on the go.
How to Register for Award Wallet
If you register for Award Wallet through our blog referral link or the forum referral link, you can get six months of free premium membership. Premium membership shows expiration dates for all supported programs, and mileage/points updates are faster than on a regular account. After six months, if you don’t renew (premium membership costs $30 per year), your account will be downgraded to the regular free version.
- AwardWallet sign-up link (get six months of premium membership for free when you sign up)
- On step 2 of registration, enter Coupon Code: Uscreditcards101
- You can see the free six-month premium membership here
Basic Award Wallet Usage
Adding a New Account
- Click “add award program” or the “+” shown in the image
- Enter the account you want to add, such as American Airline, or browse the categories it provides
- Select whose account this should be under, then enter the corresponding account information and password
- Once registration is complete, you’ll be able to see the miles in your AA account in AW
Updating Account Points and Miles
Select Update All to refresh all accounts. Click the update button on the far right of an account to refresh just that one, or check several accounts and update only those selected accounts.
Delta and United Accounts
If you want to add Delta SkyMiles or United MileagePlus, you’ll see a page like this:
It seems the legal departments at these two airlines aren’t too happy about services like this. Still, AwardWallet has come up with some clever workarounds:
Method 1: Set Your Mileage Account Email
As described on that page, you can change the email address on your UA/DL account to the email shown in the blue box ([email protected]), then subscribe to Monthly Statement. They will forward all emails sent to that address to the personal email address listed in your profile.
Method 2: Forward Emails
If you don’t want AwardWallet acting as the middleman for receiving your emails (like me), you can use method two: automatically forward statements sent to your own email to xxxx@AwardWallet. Below we’ll use Gmail and UA as examples; setup may vary slightly depending on your email provider.
First, log in to your mileage account and make sure you’re subscribed to Monthly Statement emails.
First, set up a forwarding email address in Gmail Settings => Forwarding and POP/IMAP => Add a forwarding address. Then add the “xxxx@AwardWallet. com” address provided by AwardWallet as your forwarding address and follow the prompts.
Next, go to your Gmail account Settings => Filters => Create a new filter. Set the condition as From: “MileagePlus Statement,” then click “Create filter with this search” in the lower right, and forward matching emails to the email address you just added ([email protected]). That’s it.
After this is set up, all of your MileagePlus Statements will be automatically forwarded so AwardWallet can update your points data, while copies will still remain in your own email inbox.
AwardWallet Trip Management
In addition to tracking and updating points, you can also use AW to manage your flight and hotel reservations. For reservations already associated with accounts you’ve added, AW will automatically pull them in and display them under “Trips.” If there are schedule changes, they’ll be shown here in red text.
If AW doesn’t pull the trip automatically, you can also manually add your itinerary using the confirmation code. Select “+,” choose an airline account you’ve already added, then enter your confirmation code and passenger information. Of course, if AW doesn’t support the relevant account, you can also enter your itinerary manually by choosing “manual entry.”
New Feature Overview
Award Wallet has added quite a few useful features, so let’s go through them.
- Lists reimbursable benefits: remaining amounts and expiration dates for airline incidental fee credits, Saks credits, Clear credits, entertainment credits, monthly dining credit, Equinox credits, etc. (For AMEX, it seems the item disappears after the credit is used up.)
- Lists how much spending has already been completed toward large-spending bonuses
- Shows the balance on added cards: this is a nice feature that can remind you not to forget to pay your bill
- Point values: On this page, you can check the approximate value of your points, and you can also adjust the average value based on your own redemption habits. This provides a more accurate basis for the spending analysis later on. You can also see the total value of all the points you own from the summary page; seeing that total reach tens of thousands of dollars is pretty satisfying.
- Spending analysis: Tracks spending on your current cards and the points earned, and recommends other cards that could earn you more points. You can set your own value for each type of point, then compare cards based on equivalent cash back earned, which makes the comparison more accurate.
- Hotel award search: You can search hotel redemption values for a given destination, whether the redemption is worth it, how many points are required, and more. It also provides search links. There’s no flashy interface, but it looks very clean and is easy to use.
Every airline and hotel group has its own miles or points program. So how do you manage so many accounts? How do you keep your miles and points from expiring? Here I want to introduce a miles, points, and itinerary management tool that I’ve used for a long time—Award Wallet.
Other AwardWallet Features
AwardWallet Plus Membership
AwardWallet Plus is a paid membership. Compared with the basic membership, Plus offers the following additional features:
- Extra rewards info: for example, it can show free night certificates in certain hotel accounts and their expiration dates
- Points balance charts: shows changes in your points balances, which is actually pretty fun to look at
- All expiration dates: if you have a lot of accounts, it’s very useful to see all expiration dates in one place. AwardWallet will also estimate your expiration dates based on account activity and each program’s rules.
Overall, if you have a lot of airline and hotel points, a paid membership is worth considering. At $30 per year, the price is pretty reasonable.
Earn Miles by Commenting on the Blog
You can earn AA miles by commenting on the Awardwallet blog, up to 5mile per day. If your AA miles are about to expire, this can be a way to extend their validity.
Useful Information
In addition, AW added a page that shows how long point transfers take, which I think is quite useful.
Award Wallet Security
Overall, AW’s security is fairly reassuring. So far, I haven’t heard of anyone having an account stolen because they used AW. That said, if you naturally distrust these kinds of account-management tools, then it’s probably better not to add your accounts, since this tool exists mainly for convenience. Personally, I like this clean and simple app, and I’m not too worried about its security. In fact, if your account balances are updated in real time, that can also help prevent theft. After all, if you notice your points suddenly drop, you can immediately contact the relevant company.
If you want to improve security, when adding an account you can choose to store the password only locally instead of on AW’s servers. The tradeoff is that you’ll only be able to update points on your own computer, not through the AW APP on an ipad or phone.
Founder Membership
Award Wallet members can now sign up for founder card and get 3 months of free membership (using code: VIPAWARD). Founder Card has a $395 annual fee and is designed for business professionals, offering many travel-related discounts, elite status with Hilton and total rewards, as well as business-related discounts from AT&T, Apple, and others. You can cancel online before the free membership ends, so you can try the free membership for 3 months at no cost.
The free membership only comes with the following benefits:
- 5% JetBlue discount portal
- 20% silvercar discount
- 10% Getaround discount
- British Airways discount portal
- Cathay Pacific discount portal
- Qantas discount portal
- Singapore Air discount portal
- Dell portal discount
- Rackspace discount
- “Apple loyalty pricing” (You have to request a quote. 5,000 min. P) .
- ShopRunner
The free membership does not include the benefits below. If you upgrade to the paid membership, you will get these benefits. When you cancel, founder card will offer $200 off, which means you can pay $195 per year for both the benefits above and the ones below:
- Hilton Gold
- AT&T discount
- BMW/Mini discount
- Caesars Rewards Diamond Status/Discount（which can in turn be used to match to Hyatt explorist）
- Equinox discount
- Trip-It Pro
- Shopify discount
Summary
If you have lots of airline and hotel accounts, my recommendation is to use AW for centralized management. It can not only update your points balances in real time, but also manage your itinerary information.
Finally, here’s a picture to celebrate both me and LD reaching Million Mile ~
If you include the points already spent and the ones still on the way, the total is probably over 3 million. Earning points in the U.S. is just too easy~