This post was submitted by reader Way. Submissions are welcome. Part of the hands-on experience came from 无卡不下 CX, and their referral links are included.

My takeaway is that for card-management apps, what most people want to build toward is basically the current level of MaxRewards.

【2022.9 Update】MaxRewards has been upgraded and now supports linking almost all U.S. credit cards, including Apple Card and store cards.

If you want to link an Apple Card, search for "g" and you’ll see it. You’ll need to verify your Apple ID.

Register MaxRewards

Use one of these referral codes to get one month of free Gold membership:

  • KUKU101 (from the blog)
  • 101USCC (from the blog)
  • USCC101 (from the blog)
  • nickw8134
  • MaxVIP (from contributor Way)

About MaxRewards

If you’re active in churning, you know managing cards is one of the most painful parts. The blog has reviewed a few card-management and spend-tracking apps, but MaxRewards is in a different league.

This is a paid app, but generally speaking, if a paid app or website can sustain itself for a while, it’s usually worth using. Think of examples like OnlyFans, for instance.

MaxRewards was founded in 2019. The founders are David Gao, Anik Khan, and Ibrahim Saberi. The company has grown fast, and user counts have risen year over year.

MaxRewards works on both Android and iOS, and can sync bank accounts (most banks are supported; when you open a new card, it auto-loads so you don’t need to enter it manually). MaxRewards’ biggest strength is that it helps you manage all offers and benefits, including force-adding all AMEX Offers and bypassing the one-off-per-account limit.

How to use MaxRewards

The biggest use case for MaxRewards is managing all credit cards in a single app, including major issuers like Chase, AMEX, Discover, Citi, and more (plus some smaller ones, such as Synchrony’s Venmo CC). It supports real-time balance display, bill reminders, bonus tracker, annual-fee reminders, automatic activation of offers (AMEX support is part of the paid features), rewards-balance rollup, and cashback category recognition.

Core features

MaxRewards first connects to your existing credit card accounts. The app extracts your transaction history and estimates your spending pattern. In one screen, you can clearly see:

  • Total cash value already earned in rewards
  • Total credit limits
  • Total spending amount
  • All transactions
  • And the same set of details on each card individually

MaxRewards also reminds you of:

  • Which card bill is due
  • Sign-up bonuses and expiration dates on newly opened cards

You can set a points value and customize the ratio yourself. It also supports overspending alerts. For BofA 123, spending above 2500 is recognized as 0.01, which makes it easier to stop before over-spending.

The feature set is quite comprehensive, and it can use the card open date to help with the 5/24 check (a few cards may be slightly inaccurate, so your credit report is still the final reference).

Paid features

If you join MaxRewards Gold, it can manage all Offers and Benefits. The most well-known feature is force-adding all AMEX offers (automatically activate all offers, with the option to turn off automation).

For example, in the past few months many people got the Verizon $75-$75 $0 purchase offer on AMEX. AMEX allows only one active offer per account; once you redeem it on one card, it’s gone from the others. If you use MaxRewards, when you open the app and re-sync your AMEX account, it will automatically and simultaneously redeem the Verizon offer on every one of your AMEX cards. A friend of mine has 8 AMEX cards and got 8 x $75.

And when you’re about to make a purchase, MaxRewards can also recommend which card is the best value based on reward maximization and existing offers.

MaxRewards is constantly improving and adding features, and it is especially suitable for dedicated rewards chasers. It also reminds you of offers about to expire (last chance):

MaxRewards also sends benefit reminders, including return benefit alerts. I suspect the founder is a seasoned card-chasing pro themselves:

Is there risk?

The paid version’s “force add all offers” function, which bypasses bank restrictions, is likely not in line with card-issuer policies in principle. So far, no AMEX warning or enforcement action against MaxRewards has been found. The cat-and-mouse game keeps escalating, but the app is very useful after all. It’s especially suitable for people with lots of cards and accounts.

If you’re uncomfortable with this feature, you can turn off force adding and only enable it when needed. The location is here:

The editor’s advice is: use the paid version, but think it through first. The free version, by itself, is already quite solid.

My experience: great.

Pricing

Basic features are free. Gold membership is paid. MaxRewards Gold is currently self-priced (annual purchase: at least $5 per month; monthly purchase: $9 per month). One successful AMEX offer is usually enough to cover the cost.

Register MaxRewards

Use one of these referral codes to get one month of free Gold membership:

  • KUKU101 (from the blog)
  • 101USCC (from the blog)
  • USCC101 (from the blog)
  • nickw8134
  • MaxVIP (from contributor Way)