How we value credit card sign-up bonuses

Every card ranking on this site (/spending, the card finder, and every card review) runs on the same published assumptions below, pulled from the same constants the ranking code reads. Nothing here is tuned per page.

The year-one formula

A card's year-one value is: the sign-up bonus, valued in cash (points × cents-per-point, or the face amount for a true cashback offer), plus first-year statement credits you can actually use, minus the annual fee you pay in year one (zero if the issuer waives it the first year). Ongoing category rewards and card benefits are not part of this headline number. They only enter the math on screens where you've told us your spend or told us which benefits you use, because assuming everyone uses every benefit would overstate every card equally.

Points currencies and the cents-per-point used

Two different cpp numbers are in play, for two different questions. The default ranking ("Cash Mode") asks what you could actually get in cash: currencies with a real cash-out path (cash back, and flexible bank currencies like Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards) are valued at that card's own researched rate, almost always $0.01/point. Currencies with no direct cash redemption, such as airline miles, hotel points, and brand-restricted points, have no honest cash value, so Cash Mode values them at $0 rather than inventing one. Those live in Travel Mode instead.

Travel Mode values every currency at a realistic (not aspirational) redemption rate: what a good business-class transfer or a mid-tier hotel redemption is actually worth per point. This is the one constants table the whole site reads for that number, so it is listed here in full, not summarized:

Travel Mode is labeled "Beta" wherever it appears in the app, because a redemption rate is an estimate by nature: your actual result depends on the specific flight, room, or transfer bonus you land.

How "up to" offers are ranked

A headline like "Up to 100,000 points" describes a ceiling, not a promise. It almost always means a targeted or tiered offer where most applicants get less. Ranking a card at that ceiling would let the biggest marketing number win regardless of what a typical applicant actually receives, so every ranking uses the same three-step fallback instead:

• Researched standard amount. Where we've confirmed the ordinary, non-elevated offer an issuer publishes, the card ranks at that number.
• Lowest published tier. Where the offer is tiered rather than researched as a single standard amount, the card ranks at the lowest tier: the number every qualifying applicant is guaranteed, not the top one only some get.
• Ceiling, flagged unconfirmed. Where neither exists yet, the card ranks at the advertised ceiling as a last resort, and the page says so explicitly: "base offer not confirmed, ranked at the top of the range." That flag is never silent. A card that hasn't had its real base offer researched never gets a ranking boost for the gap.

A firm, non-hedged offer, the ordinary case, simply ranks at its advertised face value.

How statement credits are counted

First-year statement credits count in full toward a card's value in Cash Mode, with one carve-out: credits that only redeem inside a single brand's own product or portal (a hotel-property credit with no cash-out path, for example) are subtracted back out, the same way a non-cashable points currency is valued at $0 in Cash Mode. Multi-year or intro-period credits beyond year one are not counted at all; this is a year-one number. Travel Mode keeps counting brand-locked credits, since that's exactly the redemption they're worth something in.

Values last reviewed

The Travel Mode table above was last reviewed against issuer and transfer-partner redemption charts on September 4, 2026. See our verification methodology for how offer terms themselves (amounts, deadlines, eligibility) are checked, and report a correction if a value here looks wrong.