How Much a Frequent Flyer Point is Worth: Our Valuations

How much is a frequent flyer point worth?

Answering this question is a bit like calculating the length of a piece of string. There are lots of different ways to redeem your points, and the truth is, the value of a point really depends on how you use it.

Nonetheless, we’ve created a model that estimates an average value of frequent flyer points in Australia. It’s not 100% perfect, but it does provide a useful benchmark for valuing points and comparing airline loyalty programs.

We released our first ever AFF Point Valuations in July 2025. At that time, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club was our best value program and Qantas Points were worth slightly more than Velocity Points.

We’ve just updated our figures for December 2025, and added a new frequent flyer program to our valuations. Things have changed a bit! Velocity Points are now more valuable than Qantas Points, due to Qantas increasing its Classic Reward prices and carrier charges in August 2025. And Atmos Rewards is now the best value program on our updated list.

We’ll continue to update the AFF Point Valuations periodically, so that you can see how point values change over time.

If you just want to see our current valuations, please feel free to skip to the chart below! But for those who are interested, I first want to give a bit of an explanation about how we reached these figures.

Why it’s difficult to accurately value points

If you redeemed 21,810 Qantas Points for a $100 WISH gift card, you’d be getting around 0.46 cents worth of value for each point. But if you used 21,900 points to upgrade a Sydney-Adelaide flight from Economy to Business Class – and the fare difference between the two cabins was $411 – then you would be getting around 1.88 cents of value out of each point. That’s quite a difference, and explains why it’s difficult to put an accurate value on frequent flyer points.

Even then, some AFF members would argue that this doesn’t account for the full picture. For example, they say you also need to consider the extra points and status credits you’d earn by buying the Business Class ticket outright. Others say that you can’t really value the Business Class ticket at the retail price if you wouldn’t have been prepared to pay that amount in the first place.

Of course, you also need to consider how easy it is to earn points. For example, although points in some overseas frequent flyer programs might be worth more than Qantas or Velocity Points, that’s largely theoretical if you don’t have a practical way to earn points in those overseas programs.

Why it’s worth valuing points

It can still be useful to calculate an average value of a frequent flyer point for four main reasons:

1. It’s a good benchmark to use when deciding whether it’s worth incurring an additional cost to earn points. For example, you might have a credit card that earns 1.25 Qantas points per dollar, but incur a 1.5% payment surcharge with a supplier. Is it worth using that card to earn the points?
2. It gives you a benchmark to consider when trying to work out whether a particular redemption is a good use of points in that program. For example, say you’re considering a Velocity Frequent Flyer redemption that’ll get you 1.2 cents per point. Is that above or below average? This will help you to work that out.
3. It helps to compare the value of points across different programs. Of course, there are many other factors you should consider when deciding (for example) which airline program to transfer your bank reward points into – such as reward availability on the routes you actually want to fly. Nonetheless, it’s one of several factors that could aid your decision making.
4. Publishing these figures helps to hold loyalty programs to account, by making it easier for consumers to see how their points stack up. In addition, by regularly updating these values, we can more easily see when frequent flyer programs have made sneaky devaluations.

Our calculation method

I worked with my colleague Wilson McTaggart to come up with the AFF Point Valuation model. We both have economics degrees, and we thought it would make sense to use a similar approach to the way economists calculate inflation.

Just like when valuing points, there’s no single perfect way to calculate inflation because different products increase in price at different rates. So, economists compare price increases across a “basket” of different goods and take the average. This is also similar to how index funds work.

We’ve taken a very similar approach, but with an extra step:

Calculating the “trimmed mean” value

For each program, we first took the average value (calculated on a “cents per point” basis) of 16 redemptions. Our “basket” contains a cross-section of different types of redemptions that Australian travellers might typically make: from gift cards, to domestic Economy flights, to long-haul Business Class flights, to upgrades.

We deliberately chose redemptions which are generally available through most programs, which is why there aren’t any Premium Economy or First Class flights included in our basket.

We have accounted for the actual taxes & carrier charges on all flight redemptions. So, programs with high carrier charges have been “penalised” for that.

We then removed the highest and lowest-value redemption for each program, and took the average value of the remaining ones, giving us a “trimmed mean”. Doing this prevents one random outlier from skewing a program’s point valuation.

You can see a full list of the redemptions in our basket towards the bottom of this article.

Weightings

Finally, we’ve weighted the average redemption values up or down by up to 20% either way – based on a range of relevant qualitative factors that make points more or less valuable to Australian consumers. You can see a full explanation of the criteria used for these weightings at the bottom of this article!

Our logic with the weightings is that if a program has good reward availability and its points are easy to use, Australians are more likely to be able to access some of the higher value rewards. In that case, the points are intrinsically worth a bit more.

Conversely, if points are hard to use, the best value redemptions are rarely available and the points expire easily, this decreases the average value a typical Australian is likely to receive from their points.

Other things to note

Keep in mind that our AFF Points Valuation model is not a comparison of airlines or frequent flyer programs as a complete package. We’re only giving an average value of the points in each loyalty program, from an Australian perspective. Note also that our valuations are in Australian currency (AUD) and rounded to one decimal place.

Our model does not account for other things like status benefits, nor extra things like the ability for Points Club members to earn status credits on Qantas Classic Flight Reward tickets.

So, while no Point Valuation model is perfect, this at least gives you a useful starting point!

Our Frequent Flyer Point Valuations

Without further ado, here are our updated Point Valuations for the 13 frequent flyer programs that we compared, as of December 2025. Click on the chart below to view a larger version:

For each program, the blue bar shows the full range of values for the redemptions in our “basket”. The value in the black box is the weighted average value.

Please note that Air New Zealand Airpoints uses a completely different system, whereby 1 Airpoints Dollar is equivalent to one actual dollar. Because of this, most credit card reward points convert to Airpoints at a rate of 200:1 instead of the usual 2:1. To allow for fair comparisons, we’ve divided the average value of an Airpoint by 100 in the chart above. However, our analysis shows that the average value of 1 Airpoints Dollar is indeed around $1.

Observations

Here are a few things that stand out in the current valuations…

• The value of Qantas Points and Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles both went down due to these programs increasing redemption costs
• The value of points in most other programs went up by around 3-5% due to cash airfares going up by that amount
• Of the 13 programs compared, Atmos Rewards, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points, Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios and Cathay Asia Miles have the highest average redemption values for Australians. Atmos Rewards launched in August 2025, and this is the first time we’ve included it in our Point Valuations.
• Air New Zealand, Etihad and Emirates continue to offer the lowest average value for the redemptions that we looked at
• Most international programs offer significantly better value on gift card redemptions compared to Qantas and Velocity
• The value of a round-trip Business Class redemption to Europe with Qantas Frequent Flyer is “only” 1.57 cents per point. We would have expected this to be higher as it’s such a popular redemption. But the high number of points and carrier charges reduce the redemption value quite a bit, especially on Emirates (which has the most availability).

Why Atmos Rewards is a valuable program

Atmos Rewards is the new combined frequent flyer program of Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. Alaska Airlines is part of the Oneworld alliance, and Hawaiian will soon join too, so you can redeem Atmos Rewards points to fly with any Oneworld airline – including Qantas. The program also has a wide selection of other unique partner airlines, such as Condor, STARLUX Airlines and Icelandair.

Atmos redemptions on Qantas are very well-priced, starting from just 7,500 points one-way to fly Economy on any Qantas route up to 1,500 miles. This even includes most trans-Tasman routes. And Premium Economy on Qantas routes like Sydney-Auckland or Brisbane-Auckland costs just 10,000 Atmos points each way. Plus, Atmos Rewards doesn’t pass on Qantas carrier charges – you just pay any third-party taxes and a small partner award booking fee.

The other top programs

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club continues to offer relatively good value redemptions as well, including on SkyTeam partners like Garuda Indonesia and Vietnam Airlines, with lower points requirements than other programs for similar flights. You can also use Flying Club to book trans-Tasman flights on Air New Zealand, as well as Economy Class flights on Virgin Australia.

One of the reasons for its good value is that Flying Club is a UK-based program. It often awards points for every British pound (GBP) spent, rather than every Australian dollar (AUD) spent… and 1 GBP is worth roughly 2 AUD. So, while the points are more valuable on paper, you might not necessarily be able to earn them at the same rate as with other programs.

Meanwhile, Qatar Airways Privilege Club is a particularly valuable program for redemptions on Qatar Airways, Oneworld airlines and other unique partner airlines.

Cathay is also a great value program for redemptions on Oneworld airlines, and offers very good premium cabin reward availability on Cathay Pacific flights. That includes between Australia and Hong Kong.

Qantas vs Velocity

Our analysis puts Qantas Frequent Flyer and Virgin Australia Velocity in around the middle of the pack. However, it’s worth considering that it’s a lot easier to earn large amounts of Qantas and Velocity Points in Australia – especially through Qantas points-earning credit cards and Velocity credit cards. You can also easily earn Qantas and Velocity Points at Australian supermarkets, petrol stations and when shopping online.

The updated AFF Point Valuations show that Velocity Frequent Flyer redemptions are now – on average – more valuable than Qantas Frequent Flyer redemptions.

This is despite the fact that, on average, Qantas has higher airfares than Virgin Australia. This could make Qantas Points appear to be worth more on some routes, even though Velocity is actually charging fewer points and/or lower taxes & charges for an equivalent redemption on that route. (At the same time, one could argue that Qantas’ flight is worth more because you get access to better lounges, or more inclusions on board…)

What’s in our “basket” of redemptions?

For those who are interested, here’s a bit more information about how we got to our final figures.

Firstly, we based our average Point Valuations on the following 16 redemptions:

• Gift card
• Hotel booking
• Points+Pay booking (i.e. using points as cash to offset the cost of a commercial airfare)
• Economy reward flight from Brisbane (BNE) to Mackay (MKY)
• Business reward flight from Brisbane (BNE) to Sydney (SYD)
• Economy reward flight from Perth (PER) to Melbourne (MEL)
• Economy reward flight from Sydney (SYD) to Queenstown (ZQN)
• Business reward flight from Sydney (SYD) to Queenstown (ZQN)
• Economy reward flight from Melbourne (MEL) to Bali (DPS)
• Economy reward flight from New York (JFK) to London (LHR)
• Business reward flight from Sydney (SYD) to Singapore (SIN)
• Business reward flight from Sydney (SYD) to Tokyo (HND)
• Economy reward flight from Sydney (SYD) to Los Angeles (LAX)
• Economy reward flight from Perth (PER) to London (LHR)
• Business reward flight from Sydney (SYD) to Frankfurt (FRA)
• A long-haul upgrade on a popular long-haul route flown by that airline from flexible Economy or (if available) Premium Economy to Business Class

We looked at the cost of one-way tickets on the domestic routes that we included, and round-trip tickets on the international routes.

On average, across all the programs we looked at, the least valuable redemptions were for gift cards. The most valuable redemptions were Business Class flights between Australia and Asia.

Note that we weren’t able to find a value for a few specific redemptions with certain programs, for the following reasons:

• Air New Zealand Airpoints doesn’t offer hotel redemptions
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club doesn’t let you redeem points for domestic Business Class redemptions on Virgin Australia, but you can book Economy
• There’s no longer any way to redeem Etihad Guest miles on domestic Australian routes
• The only way to use Aeroplan points to upgrade is to bid using points, giving you a value of around 1 Canadian cent per point

In some cases, where a route wasn’t available to book through a particular program (e.g. because no partner airline flies that route), we’ve used a comparable route instead. For example, Sydney-Auckland instead of Sydney-Queenstown.

What goes into our weightings

Finally, here’s a deeper explanation of the weightings we applied to our valuations of frequent flyer points and credit card reward points.

These weightings increase or decrease a program’s point valuation by up to 20% (if very good in all areas) or down by up to -20% (if very poor in all areas). There is no change to the value if the grade is “average”.

Frequent flyer program weighting criteria

The weightings for our frequent flyer point valuations are based on the following five criteria, which each individually have an impact between 15-35% on the final weighting:

Rating	Network & reward flight availability (35%)	Redemption experience (20%)	Consistent redemption pricing (15%)	Points expiration policy (15%)	Ease of earning points in Australia (15%)
Very good	Great network of flights bookable as awards and great award availability in Economy & premium cabins	Can book most/all awards online, good call centre, limited booking issues	Consistent award chart pricing + gives notice before making changes	Points never expire	Lots of ways to earn points from everyday activities and credit cards
Good	Large network of flights bookable as awards and you can often find seats in multiple cabins	Can book many awards online, call centre is generally fine	Has award charts and is reasonable with changes	Long expiration date (more than 2 years), activity based	Lots of ways to earn points from credit cards, moderate range of options from other activities
Average	Large network with moderate award availability, or a moderate network with good availability	Can book many awards online but call centre has issues, or many bookings require a call but call centre is generally good	Gives notice before making major changes	Expiration period of 1.5-2 years, activity based	3+ credit card transfer partners and some options from other activities
Poor	Difficult to find award seats to many destinations, but there are some awards	Many awards cannot be booked online and the call centre is OK, but not great	Does not have award charts (full dynamic pricing) or T&Cs allow the program to make changes without notice	Activity-based expiration under 1.5 years	Can transfer from 2+ credit card programs and buy points at a reasonable rate, but limited other options
Very poor	Very little award availability and partner airlines don’t make up for this	Most bookings require a phone call, the call centre is poor and there are often booking issues	Does not have award charts (full dynamic pricing) and a history of changing prices without notice	Time stamping and/or specific activity types required to prevent expiry	Difficult to earn points in Australia

This is how each of the ranked airline programs fared in each category:

Program	Network & reward flight availability	Redemption experience	Consistent redemption pricing	Points expiration policy	Ease of earning points in Australia
Qantas Frequent Flyer	Average	Good	Very good	Average	Very good
Virgin Australia Velocity	Average	Average	Very good	Average	Very good
Cathay	Good	Average	Average	Average	Average
Qatar Airways Privilege Club	Good	Average	Very poor	Good	Average
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer	Very good	Good	Good	Very poor	Average
Air New Zealand Airpoints	Average	Average	Poor	Very poor	Average
Etihad Guest	Poor	Poor	Very poor	Very poor	Average
Emirates Skywards	Poor	Poor	Very poor	Very poor	Poor
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club	Good	Average	Poor	Very good	Poor
Air Canada Aeroplan	Good	Very good	Very good	Average	Poor
Air France/KLM Flying Blue	Good	Average	Very poor	Very poor	Very poor
United MileagePlus	Average	Good	Very poor	Very good	Poor
Atmos Rewards	Good	Good	Poor	Good	Very poor