Advertiser Disclosure
The short version
PointSmart is free to use. We earn commissions when you click an outbound link to a partner site and complete a booking, or when you apply for and are approved for a credit card via our affiliate links. These commissions do not change which card we recommend or which redemption strategy we suggest. Recommendations are computed from each card's published reward rate and the trip you searched.
Who we partner with
Outbound links on PointSmart may carry an affiliate identifier for any of:
- Hotel and travel meta-search: Booking.com (via Awin or Travelpayouts), Hotels.com, Agoda, Skyscanner, Kayak (most via the Travelpayouts network).
- Credit-card issuers: Chase, American Express, Citi, Capital One — accessed via affiliate networks such as CardRatings, FlexOffers, CJ Affiliate, and Awin where we are approved.
The presence and amount of compensation varies by partner, by card, by product, and by your geography. Some links earn nothing because we have not yet been approved by the relevant network.
How recommendations work
The "best card for this trip" badge on each flight or hotel card is computed by multiplying the trip's spend by each of your selected cards' published flight or hotel earn-rate and picking the card with the highest expected point value. There is no weighting for affiliate revenue. We do not adjust the math, ranking, or labeling based on what we are paid.
The "Use points or pay cash?" verdict per card is computed by comparing the cents-per-point value you'd realize on this trip (assuming an airline-transfer redemption) to the card's baseline and optimal point values. Same: no affiliate weighting.
The "You could have earned more with" section ranks your inactive cards (cards you haven't selected) by expected point value for the trip. The card that appears first is the highest-earning one for the trip, not the one that pays us the most.
The "Top sign-up bonuses right now" section is a hand-picked editorial list refreshed daily from Anthropic's Claude model with the prompt "the strongest current credit-card welcome offers". The result is filtered to a fixed set of card IDs and is the same for everyone — we don't personalize it by what we'd be paid.
Why we built it this way
The travel-rewards information space has a long history of biased "recommendations" that quietly favor the cards that pay the publisher the most. We don't think that's sustainable, and frankly it produces worse recommendations. Anchoring our app on a transparent calculation that the user can audit and verify is both the right thing to do and, we think, the only durable business model in this space.
What we don't do
- Re-order or hide flights, hotels, or cards because of affiliate payments.
- Show "sponsored" cards mixed in with editorial recommendations without labeling them.
- Use dark patterns ("only 2 seats left!", "deal ends in 3 minutes!") to manufacture urgency.
- Sell or share your data with advertisers. See the Privacy Policy.
FTC notice
Per US Federal Trade Commission rules on endorsements and testimonials (16 CFR §255), this site is an "affiliate" and our recommendations may be considered "material endorsements" for which we receive compensation. Now you know.
Questions
contact@pointsmart.app — we read every message.