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Even with just one or two travel credit cards in your wallet, keeping track of all your perks has become a full-time job with an increasing amount of use-them-or-lose-them credits that might reset monthly, quarterly, annually, or twice a year. All the while, annual fees go up and up … which makes maximizing those benefits more important than ever.
So we built something: our Credit Card Benefits Tracker!
This is a massive update to our fan-favorite spreadsheets, bringing it all into an easy-to-use online dashboard that makes tracking and using perks a breeze, helping you (plus a spouse, travel pal, or other “Player 2”) come out ahead on those annual fees. This new system is bigger and better than ever, with new features like:
As always, there’s no personal information required – no bank account logins, no frequent flyer credentials, no credit scores and definitely no Social Security Numbers. And as always, it’s completely free!
Set up your free tracker in under two minutes!
Last year, we created a downloadable spreadsheet with the same goal – to help readers keep tabs on the overwhelming list of benefits on their travel rewards credit cards. We’ve steadily added more cards and additional features.
The response has been genuinely overwhelming.
Tens of thousands of people downloaded it and shared their glowing feedback as well as constructive criticism. That’s what led us to this next chapter, bringing all of that functionality (and much more) into an online dashboard.
This new setup has a few major advantages:
Prefer to use the old spreadsheets? No problem – those aren’t going anywhere. But we won’t be updating them with these additional features or more cards
All told, this new-and-improved tool covers more than 100 travel credit cards across 19 card families: Chase, Amex, Capital One, Citi, Barclays, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and more, giving you color-coded reminders about soon-to-expire benefits and a quick calculation of whether you’ve recouped your annual fee.
Select the cards you hold, and our tool pulls up each and every benefit automatically. As you use a credit, check it off, and the tool tallies the value as you go.
It also logs your card opening and renewal dates. Enter it during setup, and the tracker prompts you when it’s time to start a new tracking year after your annual fee posts.
When a benefit is within 30 days of its reset date, the tracker flags it in orange. Within 14 days, it turns red. Those alerts appear on your individual card tile and on your overview dashboard simultaneously, so you see them without having to look.
I don’t need to remember that a credit resets at the end of the month. The tracker will warn me when time is running out.
Every card has a color-coded progress bar that shows how many credits you’ve used against what you paid in annual fees.
So if you’ve got the Chase Sapphire Reserve® (which now costs $795 a year) and you’ve used $612 in credits so far, that’s what you see – plus exactly how much you have to go. When it hits 100%, the card has paid for itself. Every benefit after that is pure upside.
For anyone trying to make the math work on a high-annual-fee card, this is the most useful view in the tool.
Start tracking your card benefits for free!
Our new dashboard goes beyond just tracking cards and perks. You can now manage your points in the same place, too.
Here’s the honest problem with managing points across multiple programs: there’s no good way to do it: Alaska Atmos lives in one app. Chase Ultimate Rewards is in another. Bilt is somewhere else. Every time I want to know where I actually stand, I log in to four or five places and do mental math.
So we’ve created a place for you to keep tabs on it all inside this very same useful tool. Currently, it supports more than 40 airline, hotel, and transferable points programs.
Again, there’s no personal information required. Unlike automated tools that require account credentials and constantly break when banks push updates, this works differently: you enter your balances manually for each person you’re tracking, and update them as they change. No bank logins, no card numbers, and no broken connections.
Just a clean, reliable snapshot of where you stand.
Start tracking your card benefits (and points!) for free!
Our updated tool supports up to four separate profiles in a single account, allowing you to track both cards and points for the whole family.
You and your travel partner each get your own card list, your own benefit tracking, your own expiration alerts – fully independent, all in one login.
The Chase 5/24 rule is one of the most important guardrails in travel rewards: open five or more credit cards in the past 24 months from any bank, and Chase will decline you for most of its best cards. For many travelers, that rule has quietly shaped their entire card strategy for years.
That’s why our tool now includes a visual 5/24 status bar that shows exactly how many slots you’ve used and how many remain. If you’re building toward a Chase application, this is the fastest way to know when you’re in the clear.
So long as you enter the date you opened each card during setup, the tracker handles all the math and keeps your status up-to-date automatically.
The tracker is built to work well on mobile. And while it isn’t a native smartphone app (at least not yet…), there’s a quick trick that makes it behave like one: add it to your phone’s home screen.
I’ve had it on my home screen since before we launched. It’s the fastest way to log a benefit or check a balance on the go.
Go to cardtracker.thriftytraveler.com and log in with your existing Thrifty Traveler account. Already a Thrifty Traveler Premium or free flight deal alert member? You’re already set – just log in with the same credentials you use today. Not a member yet? Creating a free account takes about 30 seconds and gets you full access to the tracker right away.
And again: There’s no personal or credit card information required.
We’ve put a ton of time and resources into making this the best free tool on the internet, but we’re already working on the next round of upgrades.
A few things in the pipeline for the weeks ahead include:
We built this tool because we needed it ourselves – a single place to track every credit before it expires, know exactly when each card has paid for itself, see your Chase 5/24 status without doing calendar math, and keep all your points and miles balances in one place.
Have any feedback to help us improve this tool? Send us an email at extramile@thriftytraveler(dot)com.
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