Should You Transfer Ultimate Rewards Points or Book Through Chase?

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• Chase Ultimate Rewards points give you lots of options for booking award travel.
• You can redeem for travel through the Chase Travel Portal or transfer to partners like United, Hyatt, and more.
• You’ll usually get more value by transferring to travel partners — but booking via the travel portal is simpler.
• Read Insider’s guide to the best rewards credit cards.

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Chase Ultimate Rewards® points are one of the most valuable rewards currencies out there. One reason for this is how incredibly flexible they are.

There are two main ways to redeem Chase points for travel:

Chase points are easy to earn, too. For example, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® currently offers an increased bonus of 80,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That’s worth $1,440, per Insider’s points valuations.

This flexibility helps to insulate you from miles and points devaluations — if one program updates its award chart in a way that decreases the value of its miles, you still have many other options for using your Ultimate Rewards. But how do you know when to use your points directly with Chase’s travel portal and when to transfer them to an airline or hotel program?

Find the right Chase credit card for you

Best for everyday spending

1.5% cash back in addition to regular earning on everything you buy up to $20,000 spent in the first year (worth up to $300 cash back)

Earn 5% cash back on Chase travel purchased through Ultimate Rewards®, 3% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and unlimited 1.5% cash back on all other purchases.

Best overall for travel rewards

60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening

Earn 5x points on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards. Earn 3x points on dining, including eligible delivery services, takeout, and dining out. Earn 3x points on select streaming services. Earn 3x points on online grocery purchases (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs). Earn 2x points on other travel. Earn 1x point per dollar on everything else.

80,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening

Earn 5x points on flights and 10x total points on hotels and car rentals when you purchase travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards® immediately after the first $300 is spent on travel purchases annually. Earn 3x points on other travel and dining & 1 point per $1 spent on all other purchases.

Best for bonus categories

$200 after spending $500 on purchases in the first three months from account opening

5% cash back on up to $1,500 in combined purchases in bonus categories each quarter you activate. 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards®. 3% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases.

$50 Bonus after first purchase made within the first 3 months from account opening

Earn 1% cash back on all purchases

Best small-business travel rewards card

100,000 points after spending $15,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening

Earn 3 points per $1 on the first $150,000 spent on travel and select business categories each account anniversary year. Earn 1 point per $1 on all other purchases.

Best for small-business bonus categories

$750 bonus cash back after you spend $7,500 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening

Earn 5% cash back on the first $25,000 spent in combined purchases at office supply stores and on internet, cable and phone services each account anniversary year. Earn 2% cash back on the first $25,000 spent in combined purchases at gas stations and restaurants each account anniversary year. Earn 1% cash back on all other purchases.

Best small-business card for flat-rate rewards

$750 bonus cash back after you spend $7,500 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening

Earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase made for your business.

The best cards for earning Chase Ultimate Rewards points

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

Intro offer

60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening

Rewards

Earn 5x points on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards. Earn 3x points on dining, including eligible delivery services, takeout, and dining out. Earn 3x points on select streaming services. Earn 3x points on online grocery purchases (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs). Earn 2x points on other travel. Earn 1x point per dollar on everything else.

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

Intro offer

60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening

Rewards

Earn 5x points on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards. Earn 3x points on dining, including eligible delivery services, takeout, and dining out. Earn 3x points on select streaming services. Earn 3x points on online grocery purchases (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs). Earn 2x points on other travel. Earn 1x point per dollar on everything else.

Booking travel through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal

The simplest way to use your Ultimate Rewards points is by logging into your account at the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal. The Chase Ultimate Rewards portal will show a variety of flights, hotels, car rentals, and even travel experiences. Each choice will show the price in cash and then the number of Ultimate Rewards points that it will cost. You can also pay partially in points and partially in cash.

The amount that you pay in points is completely dependent on the cash price at a fixed rate, depending on which Chase card you have:

1 cent per point:

1.25 cents per point:

1.5 cents per point:

If you have multiple Chase credit cards with Ultimate Rewards, you’ll want to transfer your points to the card that has the highest redemption value.

One note is that you may occasionally be able to get a lower price elsewhere (especially when booking hotels directly through the hotel site itself), so be sure to investigate your options before booking.

Transferring Chase points to airline and hotel partners

The other option for using your Ultimate Rewards is by transferring them to one of Chase’s 14 airline or hotel transfer partners.

You’ll need a premium Chase card (i.e., one with an annual fee) in order to be able to transfer your Ultimate Rewards to transfer partners. Chase points transfer to every travel partner at a 1:1 rate.

You can transfer to the following 11 airlines:

And these three hotel programs:

Once you transfer your Ultimate Rewards points to an airline or hotel loyalty program, you can’t transfer them back to Chase. Once your points are transferred, you can redeem them according to the relevant award chart of the hotel or airline.

Booking with Chase vs. transferring points: Which is best?

Unless you’re a master of the many rules of all of the various airline and hotel loyalty programs, it can be difficult to figure out when you should transfer your points and when you should use them through the travel portal. Let’s look at a few scenarios.

The portal is a better option for hotel stays — with Hyatt as the exception

First, let’s look at a stay at the Crowne Plaza Chicago West Loop, an IHG hotel. Here are the cash and points rates for a random upcoming date. First, booking through the Ultimate Rewards portal:

Chase

With my Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, which gets me 1.25 cents per point in value for booking through Ultimate Rewards, a night here would be less than 25,000 points. Compare that to paying the points rate via IHG:

IHG

33,000 points? I don’t think so. This is common with IHG and Marriott — you’ll almost always be better off using your Chase points through the travel portal instead of transferring to the hotel loyalty programs.

However, there can be value in transferring Chase points to the World of Hyatt program, because Hyatt points are consistently worth double and even triple the value of IHG and Marriott points.

For award flights, transferring points makes the most sense for first or business-class seats

With airlines, things get a bit trickier. The best course of action is to check the cost in miles on the airline’s website and then compare it to the cash cost divided by either 1.25 cents per mile or 1.5 cents per mile depending on which Chase credit card you have.

The best value for transferring Chase points to airlines will be for premium international airline flights in first or business class, where you can often get upwards of 5 to 10 cents per mile. Let’s look at an example.

A fancy lie-flat one-way business class seat from Chicago to Frankfurt costs $3,925 through the Chase Travel Portal. If you’ve got the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, you’ll receive a value of 1.25 cents per point when booking travel through the Chase Travel Portal. You’ll pay 314,000 Chase points for this flight.

Chase

However, you can book the exact same seat by transferring just 60,000 Chase points to United Airlines. You’ll pay $5.60 in taxes and fees. That’s less than 20% of the price you’ll pay had you booked through the Chase Travel Portal — a value of 6.54 cents per point.

United Airlines

Conversely, for many cheap sale fares, you can get much better value by using your points through the travel portal. I’ve booked round-trip flights from the US to Barcelona on TAP Portugal on a ~$300 cash fare. Booking through the Chase Travel Portal cost me about 20,000 points thanks to my Chase Sapphire Reserve®. Transferring to an airline like United or Singapore Airlines would have cost me around 60,000 miles round-trip. In that case, using the travel portal was a clear winner.

Bottom line

I hope that this guide has helped discuss the different options for maximizing redemptions for your Chase Ultimate Rewards, and when it might be better to transfer your points vs when to book through the travel portal. When in doubt, it’s always worth taking the time to compare the value you’ll get from your points with each option for redeeming your points.

Joseph Hostetler, CEPF

Credit cards reporter