Credit Card Transfer Bonuses for October 2026 (Plus Our Famous Alerts)

Despite devaluations, Hilton points can be quite valuable, especially using the 5th night free on awards if you have Silver Elite status or higher as that increases your value both by giving the 5th night free and because resort fees and room tax are waived on award stays.

Data point: We just stayed 5 nights in Lake Como at the Grand Hotel Victoria (SLH). It was 130,000 points a night, 5th night free. 520,000 points total and the room was 1,500 Euro a night. That’s about $8,700 in value (and whatever you think of the cash rate, the hotel is impeccable and perfectly located and that is what it costs!) for 520,000 points. So we got 1.7 cents per Hilton point in value in this case. (Note, I believe that particular hotel is now 170,000 points a night.)

Generally, we value an Amex point at 1.7 cents and a Hilton point at 0.5 cents and while those values are an average, with a 5th night free award you can definitely do well transferring 1,000 Amex points for 2,600 Hilton Honors points as I showed you above.

Our advice is to run some sample searches for potential redemptions to see the value you’re likely to get before transferring. Note that Standard Reward night rates can be as high as 250,000 points / night. That said, at the 30% level is where I personally am comfortable transferring at least some speculatively.

Keep in mind that if you have any Free Reward Night Certificates (valid on any Standard Reward night) which can be earned with a Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card (each anniversary year and after $30,000 and also after $60,000 spent in a calendar year) or the Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card (earned after $15,000 spent in a calendar year), you can add before or after a 5th night free award for a longer stay.

Amtrak points are generally worth about 2.5 to 2.7 cents on railfare, since it’s a revenue-based redemption program, though there can be exceptions when they are more valuable.

Upgrade awards are fixed while the upgrade cost can be widely variable, so they can be a sweet spot where I’ve seen 6 cents per point in value.

For Acela, Amtrak sells a one-class upgrade coupon for 2,500 Amtrak points. That means you can book Business Class and upgrade to First Class, subject to availability, within 12 hours of departure. First Class gets you a better seat, meal and drink service, among other benefits. You can also spend the same to upgrade to Business Class on a non-Acela train.

Amtrak Metropolitan Lounges are also a sweet spot: A single-visit lounge pass costs just 1,500 Amtrak points. Amtrak currently charges $35 for a single visit at most Metropolitan Lounges and $50 at the excellent lounge inside New York’s Moynihan Train Hall.

What makes this one-day transfer bonus extra special is that with any transfer to Hilton on Rent Day, you’ll get an instant status through the end of 2026. Completing a qualifying number of nights upgrades Hilton status even further through March 31, 2028. The details are as follows:

• Bilt Blue: 75% bonus + Instant Silver; 6 nights in 90 days to Gold
• Silver: 100% bonus + Instant Silver; 6 nights in 90 days to Gold
• Gold: 150% bonus + Instant Gold; 12 nights in 90 days to Diamond
• Platinum: 175% bonus + Instant Diamond; 12 nights in 90 days to keep Diamond
• Platinum with Bilt Cash Buy-up: 200% bonus + Instant Diamond; 12 nights in 90 days to keep Diamond
• Status: The challenge must be completed by Dec 31, 2026 to keep or get the noted status through all of 2027.
• Bilt Cash buy-up to the next tier costs $200 in Bilt Cash.
• Maximum number of bonused points: 100,000

For Platinum members that don’t have Diamond status already through a Hilton Aspire credit card, this seems to be an absolute no brainer. Notably, 1,000 points transferred and nothing else gets you 1,750 points and Diamond status for three months.

How does the math work out? Get a 30% transfer bonus when you transfer American Express Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors. making it 2.6 for 1 Amex point. 100,000 Amex equals 260,000 Hilton during this promo.

Bilt’s 175% transfer bonus (Platinum / no buy up) earns a maximum of 275,000 Hilton points from 100,000 Bilt points.

However, if you aren’t in the Amex ecosystem this can make sense depending how you would otherwise use your Bilt points.

Beyond that, if you are Bilt Gold or Bilt Platinum qualifying for Instant Hilton Gold or Hilton Diamond with the transfer, it definitely makes some sense to transfer at least enough for the instant status and status challenge.

I suggest reviewing historical transfer bonuses from Chase and American Express to Air Canada Aeroplan as you might find that bonuses are more common than you think. 20% is the “standard” offer we see the most, though Chase did offer a flat 30% in late 2022.

Aeroplan sweet spots: No fuel surcharges; just a $39CAD booking fee. Lap infant just $25CAD. Can book Star Alliance flights as well as partners like Etihad and Emirates. Add a stopover for just 5,000 miles! Award pricing is not necessarily the best there is, but is consistently fair.

A business class award on a partner (not on Air Canada metal as that is dynamically priced) from the East Coast to Europe would be 70,000 points (as an example), which would be 56,000 Chase points with this promotion.

It’s worth noting that Blackstone is taking a minority stake in Aeroplan and private equity investments don’t tend to align with what’s best for the customer, so I’d be extra cautious about speculative transfers here.

I absolutely love JAL Mileage Bank. Just two days ago, I had a tweet go pretty viral about how I used just 42,000 JAL miles and paid $285 in tax for an Air France Business Class flight on their newest product from CDG to JFK when Air France Flying Blue wanted over 90,000 miles + $600 in fees. The guide will also point out that you can get great deals on one way flights but *killer* deals on round trip flights. And of course, if you are skilled you can grab First Class or Business Class on JAL itself at 360 days out (you have to be quick, though!)

Importantly, you cannot transfer points into JAL Mileage Bank from Capital One until your Mileage Bank account has been active for 7 days, so create that account right away whether you have a transfer in mind today or not.

Transfers should be instant.

JAL also offers a Round The World award (appealing now that ANA’s RTW is no more), but note that JAL miles “hard expire” 36 months from the date you earn them.

Need more Capital One Miles? We have 5 cards that earn Capital One Miles here.

Remember that with Capital One cards that earn cash back, you can convert the cash back into transferable miles as long as you have any of the Miles-earning cards.

British Airways Avios used to be best for shorthaul flights on Oneworld carriers but recent changes have killed that. Where a flight from New York to Toronto (under 650 miles) used to be as little as 4,500 miles in years past, it’s now 12,000 miles. I mention this as some people may not realize this has all changed.

However, you can still transfer these miles over to Qatar Airways Avios where that same flight would be 6,000 miles as they price those like this: 0–650 miles: 6,000 Avios (Economy) / 12,500 Avios (Business). Note the new restrictions on booking Qatar awards beyond yourself.

And that’s the thing – you can transfer these Avios to any other Avios program airline.

Also – outside of the US, BA still prices flights under 650 miles (i.e. SYD-MEL on Qantas) at 6,000 miles in Economy and only 12,500 miles in Business – hello, sweet spot!

BA does have a very favorable lap infant policy – 10% of the miles paid for the adult fare.

Beware their draconian surcharges on long haul awards.

Advanced Mode: Transfer to Finnair’s Avios program which has sweet spots like 62,500 Avios and less than $200 from the US to Finland on Finnair and, (available only by phone or chat) amazing deals on AA transcons. If you can find JFK-LAX/SFO with an available Saver seat in 3-Cabin First (Z class), it’s yours for just 40,000 Finnair Avios. Traveling within the EU in business class (yes, the standard economy seat with the middle blocked, but premium services) is also a steal on Finnair. Note those AA three cabin transcontinental flights are being phased out.

This is a nearly 2 month long transfer bonus so you have time to decide…

Reminder: We now maintain an incredibly comprehensive Transfer Partner Matrix that tracks not just where every currency transfers but also notes any current transfer bonuses.

This still remains about the only award you would book with Iberia (you may find other instances where Iberia remains cheaper on its own metal) but keep in mind the biggest flaw of the Iberia program:

Award travel on partner airlines booked with Iberia Avios is non-refundable!!

That said, generally you want to move your points to British Airways first for the most flexibility – since you can move from there to Finnair, which has some great redemptions, or Qatar (note new restrictions on booking Qatar awards beyond yourself). I just booked an actual Iberia award and I’ll add that the website is full of glitches that can make booking even an Iberia award on Iberia quite painful.

See this post on the transfer bonus to British Airways Avios for more on the Finnair program.

Reminder: We now maintain an incredibly comprehensive Transfer Partner Matrix that tracks not just where every currency transfers but also notes any current transfer bonuses.

With this bonus, Citi Strata Elite®, Citi Strata Premier®, Prestige®, AT&T Access More Cardmembers get 250 Leaders Club points for 1,000 Citi ThankYou – a 25% bump. Or, put another way, you only need to transfer 4 Citi ThankYou points for 1 Leaders Club point.

Note that transfers from Citi’s No annual fee Thank You cards (like the Citi ThankYou® Preferred, Citi Strata℠ Card, Citi Double Cash® Card, Citi Custom Cash®) transfer at a 1:0.7 rate which would be a rate of 1:0.875 with the 25% bonus – or 175 point per 1,000 ThankYou points transferred.

Using the average of 7.75 cents per Leaders Club point, with the transfer bonus you could expect to extract about 1.90 – 2.0 cents per ThankYou point. That’s not bad at all if you have your eye on a hotel that participates in Leading Hotels of the World.

What’s great about this option is that many LHW hotels are not part of any other loyalty program. However, many are and those could have better redemption options. So check other outlets like any other hotel points programs the hotel may be a part of (i.e. SLH’s own rates vs. Hilton rates) as well as programs like Amex’s Fine Hotels and Resorts before making a decision on this transfer.

This is the 4th Transfer Bonus from Citi ThankYou to LHW Leader’s Club since their transfer partnership began.