PointBagel

How it works

See exactly how PointBagel works

Real screenshots from real portfolios. The math is verifiable in our public catalog - you can audit every number we show. No marketing-speak, no live award searches we can't actually do, no promises we can't keep.

01

Per-card weighted earning rate (the number most apps get wrong)

Most apps say your Amex Gold earns 4x on groceries. We compute your actual weighted-average rate based on the $25K/yr cap and your actual spend. If you spend $30K/yr at U.S. supermarkets, your weighted rate is 3.7x - not 4x. The math is wrong by ~$210/yr if you don't catch it. We show the math, not the marketing copy.

02

Annual fee ROI that you can actually defend

Is your Sapphire Reserve $795 fee worth it? We tell you exactly what you've used so far this card year - credits realized, perks toggled, rewards earned - and what you'd need to use to break even. Each card gets a color-coded bar: green if perks alone cover the fee, amber if you need rewards earnings to cross over, red if you're losing money.

03

Historical view that doesn't lie about old fees

Did your CSR pay for itself in 2024? See the actual fee you paid that year ($550, before the 2025 bump to $795), the credits you actually used, and the realized value you got. Most tools show today's fee retroactively - that's wrong, and it makes ROI look worse than it was. We track fee history per card and use the period-effective number.

04

Transfer paths most apps don't even compute

You have 85K UR + 120K MR + 30K Bilt. None of those alone get you to a Hyatt redemption. Together, with the right transfer route, they do. We map 118 transfer partnerships with verified ratios and CPP benchmarks per redemption type - premium cabin, economy, hotel - so you can see whether it's worth pooling currencies for a target redemption.

05

Which card to use, with the math shown

At Costco gas, a Costco Visa earns 4%. But at Whole Foods? Your Amex Gold earns 4x MR (worth ~7.2¢/$) - up to $25K/yr. After that, your CSR's 3x UR (worth ~6.0¢/$) wins. We tell you where the line is for your spend pattern, not a generic answer that ignores caps.

What we don't do (and why)

Honest constraints make the rest more credible. Here's where we deliberately stop - and where you'll want a different tool for that job.

We don't search live award space

CPP benchmarks are typical-case math, not "this seat is bookable today." For live award seats, point.me and Seats.aero are better tools - and we link directly to them when relevant. Our optimizer is a guide, not a search engine.

We don't auto-activate card-linked offers

That requires storing your bank credentials on our servers. We believe Plaid (a one-way read-only bridge) is the safer trade-off. MaxRewards stores credentials and a measurable share of users report cards unsync each month - we're not going to inherit that pattern.

We don't promise specific redemptions are bookable

Anyone who's tried to book a 1AM Avianca LifeMiles flight knows the difference between "this transfer is generally a good idea" and "this seat exists right now." We do the first; we link out for the second.

Ready to see your own numbers?

Free tier: 1 card with auto-sync, unlimited manual cards, 1 optimization report per month. No credit card required.