Currencies
Welcome Offer Value Calculator
A welcome offer is usually quoted as one number: the bonus, at one publisher's valuation, gross of everything. This prices the offer in front of you net of the annual fee andof the rewards you give up on the required spend, against every publisher that values the currency — and tells you the price per point you are actually paying.
The points or miles the bonus is paid in. We hold no offers and no cards — read the terms off the offer in front of you.
The headline number in the offer.
What you actually pay in year one. Enter 0 if it is waived.
What you must spend to trigger the bonus.
Not part of the valuation — it sets the pace you would have to keep.
The base rate the new card earns while you meet the requirement.
What the card you would have used returns on that spend, as a cash-back percentage. This is the term the headlines drop.
60,000 + 4,000 earned − $175.00 of cost
0.27¢per point — what this offer costs you
You are buying 64,000 points at 0.27¢ each. Every publisher that values Chase Ultimate Rewards prices them above that, so the offer clears its first-year costs by every published figure — netting between $1,105.00 and $1,297.00.
| Publisher | Values at | Bonus alone | Net of costs | Fee it clears |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upgraded Points1 July 2026 | 2.00¢ | $1,200.00 | $1,105.00$95.00 below the headline | $1,200.00 |
| The Points Guy1 July 2026 | 2.05¢ | $1,230.00 | $1,137.00$93.00 below the headline | $1,232.00 |
| CardRatings10 June 2026 | 2.30¢ | $1,380.00 | $1,297.00$83.00 below the headline | $1,392.00 |
Bonus alone is how the offer is usually quoted: the headline points at that publisher's valuation, gross of everything. Net of costs subtracts the $95.00 fee and the $80.00 of rewards you give up by routing $4,000.00 of spend to this card instead of the one you would have used, and adds back the 4,000 points that spend earns here. The most flattering headline available from these figures is $1,380.00; the least flattering net figure is $1,105.00, a gap of $275.00.
Fee it clears is the annual fee at which this offer would exactly break even at that publisher's valuation. You are paying $95.00. That gap is the useful part: for a welcome offer the fee is rarely the binding constraint — what you eventually redeem at is, and that is what the cents-per-point calculator measures.
Meeting the requirement means $1,333.33 a month for 3 months. If any of that is spending you would not otherwise have done, none of the arithmetic above prices it — see the limitations below.
Every figure here is what the points are worth on paper. They become real only when you redeem, at whatever rate you actually get. Price that with the cents-per-point calculator once you have a booking in front of you.
Informational only, not professional advice. This tool performs arithmetic on terms you enter and on third-party published valuations. It does not recommend a card, hold any offer data, or know whether you would be approved, whether the offer is available to you, or what a new account would do to your credit. It never links to an application.
Methodology
total points = bonus + required spend × points per dollar gross value = total points × cents ÷ 100 first-year cost = annual fee + required spend × baseline reward rate net value = gross value − first-year cost cost per point = first-year cost × 100 ÷ total points
The last line is the output that matters, and it is a cost, not a return. Everything else on this site measures what points gave back; this measures what they cost to acquire. Set the price you are paying per point beside what the publishers say the currency is worth, and the question answers itself.
On the worked example the page opens with — 60,000 points after $4,000.00 of spend, a $95.00 first-year fee, one point per dollar on the spend, against a 2% cash-back baseline — you acquire 64,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points for $175.00, which is 0.27¢ each. Every publisher we track prices that currency between 2.00¢ and 2.30¢. The offer clears its costs on all 3 published figures, netting between $1,105.00 and $1,297.00.
The two terms the headline number drops
A published offer valuation is almost always the bonus alone, multiplied by the publisher's own figure. From the numbers above, the most flattering version of that reads $1,380.00. Two costs sit underneath it, and both cut the same way:
- The annual fee — $95.00 here. Widely discussed, and, as it turns out, the smaller of the two.
- The rewards you forgo on the required spend — $80.00 here, and almost never mentioned. You were going to spend that $4,000.00 somewhere. Wherever it would have gone was earning something, and routing it to the new card gives that up. This is the same forgone-earning term the award vs cash calculator adds on the redemption side, applied to the other end of the ledger.
Because the required spend also earns points on the new card, those 4,000points are counted back in. Counting the earning without the forgoing — or the reverse — flatters whichever side you left out. Between the $1,380.00 headline and the least generous net figure of $1,105.00 there is $275.00 of difference, on one offer, from arithmetic alone.
The annual fee is rarely the binding constraint
“Is the annual fee worth it?” is the question this category of page is usually built around, and on a first-year welcome offer it is mostly the wrong one. At the least generous published valuation, the fee on the worked example would have to reach $1,200.00 — roughly 12 times the $95.00actually charged — before the offer stopped clearing. A term with that much headroom is not what decides the outcome.
Two things do. Whether you would have made the required spend anyway, which this tool asks you about but cannot verify. And what you eventually redeem at, which no valuation can tell you and which the cents-per-point calculator measures once you have a booking. A publisher's figure is what the points are worth if you use them well; it is not a floor.
We store no offers and no cards, deliberately
There is no card list on this page and no offer database behind it. That is first a brand rule — this site values redemptions and never recommends a card, carries no affiliate links, and earns nothing from an application, which is the only reason to believe its arithmetic isn't shaped by a payout. But it is also the accurate choice. Welcome offers change without notice, are frequently targeted to individual applicants, and routinely differ from the public terms, so any stored table would be wrong for a large share of readers and wrong invisibly. Reading the terms off the offer in front of you takes a moment and is the only version that stays correct. It is the same call the transfer partner calculator makes about transfer ratios, for the same reason.
Each publisher stands alone
One row per publisher that values the currency, each with its name and as-of date, never averaged into a single figure. The valuation reference sets out who covers what and why their numbers differ. The $192.00between the best and worst net figures on the worked example is not noise to be averaged away — it is the honest width of the answer.
What this tool does not do
- It prices the first year only. The bonus arrives once; the fee recurs. Whether to keep the card in year two is a different calculation with none of the same headroom, and this tool does not make it.
- It cannot price spending you would not otherwise have done. If meeting the requirement means buying things you did not need, or paying a fee to convert spend into charges, that cost is real and is nowhere in this arithmetic. The tool shows you the monthly pace so you can judge it; it will not guess.
- It ignores everything that is not points. Credits, lounge access, insurance and elite status are frequently the larger part of a card's value and are deliberately excluded — they are worth what you would have spent on them otherwise, which is not a number we could publish honestly. Value them yourself and add them on.
- It does not know if you can get the offer. Approval, application rules, whether an offer is available to you at all, and what a new account does to your credit are all outside it.
- It treats a published valuation as the value of the points. Those figures assume competent redemption. Points that expire, or that go to a gift card at 1¢, are worth what they were used for — not what a publisher says they could have been worth.
Sources
- The Points Guy — points and miles valuations. Figures as of 1 July 2026. Refreshed monthly.
- CardRatings — points and miles valuations. Figures as of 10 June 2026. Updated periodically; no published schedule.
- Upgraded Points — points and miles valuations. Figures as of 1 July 2026. Refreshed monthly.
- Offer terms are not sourced, by design. Every figure describing the offer itself — bonus, required spend, window, fee, earning rate — is entered by you from the offer in front of you. This site holds no offer data to cite, because welcome offers change without notice and are commonly targeted to individuals, so a stored figure would be wrong for many readers and undetectably stale for the rest.
- The worked example is a shape, not a card. 60,000 points after $4,000.00 of spend in three months with a $95.00 first-year fee is a common structure in this market, used here so the page opens on real arithmetic. It is not quoted from, and does not refer to, any particular product.
Last reviewed: July 2026
Frequently asked questions
Why does this not tell me which card to get?
Because that is the one thing this site will never do, and the reason its numbers are worth trusting. PointCents carries no affiliate links and takes no commission on a card application, which means it has no stake in which offer you take — but the moment a page starts ranking cards, a reader has no way to tell the difference between an honest ranking and a paid one. So this tool values an offer you already have in front of you and stops there. It holds no card list, no offer database, and no application links. What you do with the arithmetic is your business.
What is the “rewards you give up” figure, and why do I have to set it?
It is the term that makes headline offer valuations too generous, and it is the same term the award-vs-cash calculator adds on the redemption side. Meeting a spend requirement means routing spending onto the new card that would otherwise have gone somewhere earning something — so the reward on the new card is not all profit, only the difference. On the worked example, $4,000.00 of required spend against a 2% baseline gives up $80.00, which is most of the $175.00 first-year cost and comfortably more than the $95.00 fee everybody talks about. It is an input because only you know what card that spend would have landed on. Set it to 0 if the honest answer is that the money would have sat in a debit account.
The calculator says my offer clears easily. Is it really that good?
On paper, yes, and that is worth being careful about. A welcome offer is one of the few places in this hobby where the arithmetic is genuinely lopsided: the worked example buys 64,000 points at 0.27¢ each while every publisher prices the currency between 2.00¢ and 2.30¢. But every one of those figures is what the points are worth if you redeem well. Points you never redeem are worth nothing, points redeemed for merchandise or statement credits are usually worth about 1¢, and programs devalue without notice. The offer clearing its costs is a statement about the offer, not a prediction about you.
Should I be worried about the annual fee?
Less than the coverage suggests, and the arithmetic says so plainly. On the worked example the fee would have to reach $1,200.00 — about 12 times the $95.00 actually charged — before the offer stopped clearing at the least generous published valuation. For a first-year welcome offer the fee is almost never the binding constraint. Two things genuinely are: whether you would have made the required spend anyway, and what you eventually redeem at. The second year is a different question entirely, because the fee recurs and the bonus does not — this tool prices the first year only, and says so.
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