What PointBagel does
Is this annual fee worth it?
Each annual-fee card your plan syncs gets a fee verdict: the fee, how much of it is covered by the rewards you earned, the credits you used and the perks it estimates for you, and what that estimate leans on. A card whose transactions it does not have gets no verdict rather than a guess.
Is a credit about to go unused?
On Plus and Pro, the app puts a reminder in your notifications five days before a monthly, quarterly or semi-annual credit resets with part of it unused, and ten days before an annual one, naming the card and the amount still on the table. It covers the credits that post to your statement; wallet loads and portal credits, which no bank feed can see, are not on it.
Which card should I use for this?
Ask by spending category or by store, in the app or in ChatGPT, and the answer is the card in your own wallet whose rewards are worth the most on that purchase, with any cap you have already used this period counted against it. Once it is connected you can ask from the ChatGPT app on your phone too. Claude works the same way today as a custom connector you add yourself.
Which card to use for any purchase, computed from your own synced spending rather than from a national average. On the cards you sync, the answer already accounts for how much of each bonus category cap you have used this period, which rotating quarter is live, and the grandfathered rates you still hold, and it ranks by the value of what you would earn, not by the biggest multiplier.
Ask by spending category or by store, in the app or through a connected AI assistant. The rest of this page is the whole of it: what each plan includes, what the catalog covers, what arrives automatically, and the jobs we do not do at all.
What each plan includes
Prices and limits are read from the same plan catalog the product enforces, so what you see here is what your account will actually do.
| Capability | Free | Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| PricePrices plus applicable sales tax. | $0 | $39.99/yr (standard $49.99/yr) or $5.99/mo | $79.99/yr (standard $99.99/yr) or $11.99/mo |
| Cards with automatic transaction syncBank connections carry an anti-abuse safeguard, not a plan limit. If you need more, ask and we'll raise it. | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Cards in your portfolio, entered by handThere is no cap on manual entry in the product. Add every card you hold, including the ones no bank feed reaches. | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Saved Trip Plans per monthRedemption Guide searches are unlimited on every plan, including Free. | 1 | 3 | Unlimited |
| Business groups, each with its own set of books | No | No | Unlimited |
| Application Calendar with 30+ issuer eligibility rules | No | No | Yes |
| Household mode, member wallets planned together | No | No | Yes |
Annual pricing for Plus and Pro is the founding-member rate, held for as long as the subscription stays active.
The full plan comparison, with every feature line, is on the pricing page.
What the catalog covers
These are floors, not exact counts. The catalog holds at least this much and usually more, and a floor only moves once the data has cleared it.
| Coverage | What that counts |
|---|---|
| 3,500+ cards tracked | Every consumer credit card and most business cards from 60+ US issuers, plus the community-bank and credit-union products issued through Elan Financial. |
| American Express, Discover, Mastercard, Visa | The card networks represented in the catalog. Store cards that run on no network are tracked too. |
| 45+ rewards programs | Transferable bank currencies, airline programs, hotel programs, and cash back. |
| 115+ transfer paths | Each stored with its exact ratio, the published ceiling on how long a transfer can take where the publisher states one, the publisher's own estimate where it states no bound, and no figure at all where nobody publishes one. |
| 130+ CPP benchmarks | A minimum, typical, and maximum value per program per redemption method, each with a written rationale. Where a program prices off the cash fare or a fixed peg, we publish one value at every setting. |
| 70+ curated award sweet spots | Named redemptions with a dated rationale, reviewed on a schedule rather than once. |
| 250+ welcome offers | With the spend requirement, the window, and an offer history, plus a verified no-bonus list for the cards we have confirmed do not have one. |
| 55+ product-change paths | Which card downgrades or upgrades into which, per issuer. |
| 30+ issuer eligibility rules | Velocity, lifetime-bonus, product-conflict, and cross-issuer rules, carried by 14 issuers. |
| 600+ card benefits tracked, 170+ auto-detected | A benefit is auto-detected when its reimbursement posts to your statement and we can match it. The rest you value and mark yourself. |
Where it runs: any modern browser, on a phone or a desktop, and inside an AI assistant. Connect ChatGPT or Claude to PointBagel over the Model Context Protocol and the assistant answers from your own wallet through a read-only connection, with the calculating still done here. The tool list and the setup steps are on the AI assistant page.
What syncs, and what you enter yourself
Bank connections run read-only through Plaid. We receive transactions; we never see your bank login and we cannot move money.
Arrives automatically, on a card you sync
- Every purchase, with the points it earned and what those points are worth, computed against that card's verified earning rates and caps.
- How much of each capped bonus category you have already spent this period, which is what makes a recommendation change once a cap runs out.
- Statement credits that actually post to your statement, matched to the benefit they belong to.
- The annual fee when it posts, and the card-year Scorecard that measures the year against it.
You enter, and no bank connection is needed
- Any card you hold, including every card no bank feed reaches. There is no cap on that, on any plan.
- Your own spending, if you would rather type it than connect anything.
- Credits no bank feed can see: in-app wallet loads like Uber Cash, and credits that apply at an issuer's travel portal. We count each one once a year at the value you set, and we never claim to have watched it land.
- Confirmed point balances, and the redemptions you log.
- The date you opened a card, which is what lets the grandfathered rates you still hold apply even to a card you entered by hand.
How often it refreshes
When your bank posts a new transaction, Plaid notifies us and the card syncs on the next background pass, which comes around every five minutes. A daily sweep re-queues any connection that has not synced in twenty-four hours, so a notification that never arrives cannot leave a card sitting stale. You can also sync on demand from the app.
What PointBagel does not do
No award search, and no booking
We tell you what your points are worth, which transfer path gets you there, and what a redemption should cost. We do not check whether a seat or a room is actually open on your dates, and we do not book anything. That is a different product and we are not building it. point.me, Seats.aero and PointsYeah each search live award inventory across programs, and the airline or hotel is the final word on what is bookable. They start where we stop: bring our valuation and the transfer path to one of them, then book with the program.
No credential scraping
Bank connections run through Plaid, read-only. You enter your bank login at your bank, never here, and the connection cannot move money or change anything at your bank. If you would rather not connect at all, manual entry covers the whole product except the parts that need real transactions.
No native app yet
PointBagel is a web app and it works on a phone. Native iOS and Android apps are on the roadmap.
No per-business points pools
Business groups keep each business's cards, transactions, and annual fees in their own set of books, and a past welcome bonus tags to the business that earned it. Points are the exception, and deliberately: points live in your personal loyalty programs, not in any one business, so we show one balance per program rather than inventing a split that does not exist.
Common questions
Does PointBagel tell me whether my annual fee is worth it?
Yes. Each annual-fee card your plan syncs gets a fee verdict: the fee, how much of it is covered by the rewards you earned, the credits you used and the perks it estimates for you, and what that estimate leans on. Which plan syncs how many cards is on the pricing page.
Will it warn me before a credit expires?
On Plus and Pro, the app puts a reminder in your notifications five days before a monthly, quarterly or semi-annual credit resets with part of it unused, and ten days before an annual one, naming the card and the amount still on the table. It covers the credits that post to your statement; wallet loads and portal credits, which no bank feed can see, are not on it.
Can I ask ChatGPT which of my cards to use?
Yes. PointBagel has been in the ChatGPT app directory since August 27, 2026. Install it, approve read-only access and ask in your own words, and once it is connected you can ask from the ChatGPT app on your phone too. Claude works the same way today as a custom connector you add yourself, and the steps for both are on the AI assistant page.
Do I have to connect my bank?
No. Any card can be entered by hand on every plan, with no cap on how many. A bank connection through Plaid is read-only: it brings in the transactions that the fee verdict, the cap-aware answers, the benefit and credit trackers and your welcome-bonus progress run on, we never see your bank login, and it cannot move money.
Who makes PointBagel?
PointBagel is independent and founder-built: the founder holds the cards, designed the product and the engine behind every number, checks the data against the issuers' pages where they publish one, answers support, and uses it on those same cards every day.
How do I know the numbers are right?
We verify every ratio, award chart, and earning rule we cite, and when a value changes we date the change, so a past period keeps the value that was true then. Point values are estimates and are labeled as estimates. How we source and maintain each number is on the methodology page.
How every one of these numbers is sourced, computed, and checked is set out on our methodology page, and the short answer to what this product is lives on what is PointBagel.