How Poiiints values credit cards

What “worth to you” means

A card's value is what it earns on your spending, plus its credits and benefits, plus any welcome bonus you'd earn, minus the annual fee. You choose whether to see the first year, which includes welcome bonuses, or every year after, which doesn't.

Your spending

• Connect your bank through Plaid, and Poiiints reads up to two years of transactions, depending on how much history your bank provides.
• Or enter your own spending estimates, with no bank connection.

Each purchase is sorted into a spending category. Issuers classify purchases by merchant codes that banks don't share, so Poiiints works the category out from the transaction's category and merchant name. Now and then a purchase lands in a different category than your issuer would use. Debit-card purchases from your checking account count toward your spending too, since you could put them on a credit card. Rent, bills paid by bank transfer, transfers and cash withdrawals don't.

Where card terms come from

Every card's earn rates, credits, bonuses and fees are taken from the issuer's published terms, and each one records where it came from. Where the terms don't state a figure, the app marks it as unconfirmed. Poiiints covers 156 US credit cards from 17 issuers. An offer or credit with an end date stops counting once that date passes. Most of the details that change a card's real value are modelled: spending caps, rotating categories, bonuses that depend on a condition, and the issuer's own rounding rules. Where a condition can't be checked yet, Poiiints leaves that bonus out rather than guess. Where an issuer's terms are unclear, Poiiints either asks you which reading applies or counts the lower one.

Points and miles

A point is worth different amounts depending on how you redeem it: as cash back, through the issuer's travel portal, or by transferring to airline and hotel partners. By default, Poiiints values each card's points at its best available way to redeem them. You can lower that card by card to match how you actually redeem. Where the issuer publishes what a point is worth, Poiiints uses that figure; otherwise it uses its own estimate.

Credits and benefits

Statement credits and benefits start at full value. You then tell Poiiints which ones you'll actually use, and it recalculates without the rest. A credit that only pays once you spend a set amount on the card isn't counted unless the spending Poiiints would put on that card reaches it, or you say you'll get there.

Welcome bonuses

A welcome bonus counts only if your spending would meet its minimum within the offer window, or you tell Poiiints you'll meet it. For “up to” offers paid in tiers, only the tiers your spending reaches count. Bonuses don't count in the every-year view or on cards you already have. If you tell Poiiints how many cards you've opened recently, it applies Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo's limits on new cards, so it doesn't recommend a card those rules would rule out.

Building a stack

Poiiints searches combinations of up to three cards and puts each purchase on the card in the stack that earns the most on it. You can limit the search by the number of cards, the issuers and the annual fee. Every card is considered unless it's closed to new applicants, has no online way to apply, needs a banking relationship you haven't confirmed, or is another version of a card you already have. A stack never holds two versions of the same card family.

What isn't counted

None of these changes a card's value:

• interest rates and balance transfer offers, because Poiiints values rewards, not borrowing
• elite status a card gives you
• referral bonuses and shopping discounts
• rules on when points expire

Limits

Values are estimates, based on your past spending or your own estimates and on each issuer's terms as of the date shown. Issuers change their terms, so check the issuer's terms and Rates & Fees before you apply. Approval is always the issuer's decision. Poiiints doesn't give financial advice.

Independence

No card issuer pays Poiiints, and nobody can pay to change how a card is valued or ranked. Every card is valued the same way. See our Disclosures.