How to Redeem Amex Points in 2025
Tl;dr: Amex points can easily be redeemed for 1¢ each at Amex Travel, but try transfers to Hawaiian or Delta for maximum value.
A few people have asked me recently how they should use their stash of Amex points. There’s tons of ways to use them (statement credits, Amazon purchases, transfers to airlines, etc.), but what are the best ways to redeem them?
There’s a lot of lists out there, but it can be hard to understand whether the options listed are easy to book, frequently available, require spending lots of cash to redeem, or provide good value.
The important thing to remember when redeeming Amex points is that they’re worth 1¢ each when used to book flights via Amex Travel. So you won’t want to get less value than that, and you’ll have to decide how much you’re willing to work to get more. Personally, I aim for about 1.3¢ per point in real value, and have generally been able to beat that. But the priority is converting those Amex points into as many flights abroad as possible, not fixating on a redemption value per se.
With that in mind, this is the general order I work from when trying to use my Amex points, and my experience (flying mostly out of the Bay Area) with each option’s value (ratio between cash cost and points required for a flight/hotel stay), cash required (the taxes, fees, and surcharges necessary for a redemption), ease of booking (how much effort it takes to find and book a given redemption), and flexibility (how easy it is to book a specific itinerary). Your mileage may vary depending on your home airport and preferences.
These options include redemptions via Alaska Airlines for as long as the pathway between Amex and Alaska remains available.
Note that Amex charges an obnoxious fee for transfers to US airlines, although it wasn’t significant enough to influence these rankings.
#1: Hawaiian (Alaska Global Getaways)
Value: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥🦥🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐
Every few months, Alaska will drop Global Getaways, discounted award flights on partner airlines to international destinations. They are usually awesome. These only come around a few times a year, and the booking and travel windows are fairly tight. But if you can just hold on until this promotion comes around, you can usually count on a high-value booking opportunity that is fairly easy to identify and redeem.
#2: Hawaiian (from the West Coast)
Value: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥🦥🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Award tickets from the West Coast to East Asia (Japan, Taipei, Hong Kong) typically can be had for 75,000 Alaska miles and under $100 in taxes and fees. Although the cash price of these tickets has been declining recently, these flights still cost $1000+ in main cabin. Even better, with a few months of advance planning availability tends to be quite wide, often including weekend flights.
Alaska also offers solid redemptions from the West Coast to a few cities in South America as well.
#3: Delta, etc. (with Thrifty Traveler)
Value: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥🦥🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐⭐
I’ve said it before: Delta has some incredible mileage sales and Thrifty Traveler is the easiest way to make sure you don’t miss out on them. Some examples:
October 11th: Taipei from most major West Coast cities (plus Denver) for 30,000 miles.
October 8th: 11 European destinations from dozens of US airports for 36-38,000 miles.
October 8th: Brisbane, Australia from dozens of US airports for 56-60,000 miles.
You can’t just pick out a route and expect to find a good price in Skymiles, but if you’re willing to let the deals come to you, this is an easy way to get outstanding value.
Note that these deals are much better with a Delta co-branded Amex card and its 15% discount on redemptions on Delta flights.
Thrifty Traveler will also send you alerts for points deals with all of Amex’s transfer partners as they come up (although they are much rarer in my experience), and this will help you maximize the value of those points.
#4: Delta (brute force)
Value: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Although a service like Thrifty Traveler can catch Delta’s biggest flash sales for you, in my experience you can usually visit Delta’s website and quickly find a good redemption opportunity.
While writing this post I visited the Delta website at 5:22 pm. Here’s what I found by 5:33:
First, I checked their posted deals, finding flights to Dublin for 66k miles + $50, London for 51k + $241, and to Amsterdam and Paris 60k + <$150. Then, I began typing in random destinations for flights from SFO, and quickly found flights to Vietnam for 74k + $66, Taiwan for 60k + $45; and to Shanghai for 90k + $42. These were rates for round-trip flights, before any discount for using a Delta Amex card.
#5: Hawaiian (from the East Coast)
Value: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Alaska miles are much less useful on the East Coast. The distance-based award chart makes redemptions to Asia painful, while the government taxes and tendency of European partner carriers to impose fuel surcharges make good redemptions to Europe somewhat difficult to find as well.
Depending on your home airport, though, you will likely be able to find some decent redemption rates, especially on flights to Western Europe and South America.
#6: Amex Travel
Value: ⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Although you won’t get exceptional value by booking your flight through Amex, you won’t have to pay anything out of pocket, and you can book any itinerary at anytime. And because you can always fly to Europe for $500, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a way to make your way over there for around 50k points or less.
Just be careful, as Amex’s prices on international flights are sometimes more expensive than direct booking.
#7: Choice Privileges
Value: ⭐⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥🦥🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐
Although not generally useful in the US, I like Choice points for travel in Japan, where tons of Choice-branded hotels all over the country can be booked for just 8,000 points per night—even in Tokyo. Choice hotels can also be booked for under 20k in some major European cities, as can some luxury options. Choice’s stable award rates makes redemptions fairly predictable, but Choice only allows points bookings within 100 days of the stay, so advance planning can be challenging.
#8: Avianca LifeMiles
Value: ⭐⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐⭐⭐
Avianca’s website has long been a bit of a buggy mess, but it has been improving. While many tout the option to use LifeMiles to book Star Alliance flights to Europe and Asia, I’ve never actually seen that work. If you spend 10-20 minutes running test searches, though, you’ll probably find a decent option to use LifeMiles to get to South America, especially Peru or Colombia.
In a 10-minute search of the website, I found flights from SFO to Lima for 41k miles + $120, to Medellin for 26k + $140, and to Buenos Aires for 59k + $79.
Although the availability was decent, the value isn’t remarkable. These were basic economy tickets, without even a carry-on; upgrades add several thousand miles each way.
#9: FlyingBlue (promo awards)
Value: ⭐⭐⭐
Cash required: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease: 🦥🦥
Flexibility: ⭐
On the first of each month, FlyingBlue offers discounted redemptions on a limited set of routes within its vast network. While these almost always include travel between the US and Europe, the odds that the discounted route will include your airport in any given month are somewhat low. Still, when you hit that jackpot the redemptions the value can be excellent.
I have had decent luck in the past brute force searching for award deals on KLM or Air France, but on my most recent attempts I’ve come up empty after plugging in dozens of potential itineraries.
The rest
It’s worth checking Singapore Airline’s Spontaneous Escapes if you’ve got an urgent travel bug and a flexible schedule. It’s theoretically possible to find good redemptions on Qantas, Cathay Pacific, and Virgin Atlantic, although I’ve never personally been able to find one myself. If you want to fly Business Class, Air Canada’s Aeroplan is usually a good way to do that—expect to spend about 140k points, but the availability is often solid and the cash cost minimal. I’m not keen to spend $2000 worth of points for a single ticket, but considering the cash prices of these flights are usually $5000+, it can represent decent value for the right person.
Ones to avoid
Non-travel redemptions (statement credits, Amazon purchases, etc.) almost always provide poor value with Amex. Marriott and Hilton points are worth much less than airline points, and should almost always be avoided. Although ANA’s award chart is decent, it is currently charging such exorbitant fuel surcharges that it’s virtually impossible to find a decent redemption. And it is generally quite difficult to find any redemptions at a decent value with the remainder of Amex’s transfer partners: the Avios airlines (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, and Qatar), Aeromexico, Emirates, Eithad, and JetBlue.
Iberia Avios are great for flying between JFK and Madrid, at least.
Conclusion
If you want to get the most out of your Amex miles, your best bests is probably to convert them to Alaska miles (via Hawaiian Airlines) and either take advantage of Alaska’s frequent promotions or book travel to South America, Asia (from the West Coast), or Europe (from the East Coast). Next best is sending the points over to Delta and either waiting for a flash sale or just searching through Delta’s site until you find a decent booking. Beyond these two fairly simple options, you will have a choice: take the easy and convenient route and simply book your travel via Amex at a respectable 1¢ per point value, or spend your time searching Amex’s more user-unfriendly partners for a better deal. No points for guessing where we land on that debate. 🦥