Here is the moment this article is about. You are on an airline or hotel booking page, and there are two prices sitting side by side: one in euros, one in points. A voice in your head says use the points — that’s what you collected them for. Another says the cash price isn’t that bad, save the points for something better. You pick one, you book, and you never actually find out whether you made the right call.

I’m Jakke. I built Gast, and for years before that I was the person guessing at that screen. I had EuroBonus points, Flying Blue miles, and a growing Amex balance, and no honest way to know whether spending them was smart or a waste. So mostly I did nothing — which, it turns out, is exactly what the loyalty industry is counting on. As one Head for Points reader put it plainly: “The industry gains from people forgetting their loyalty balances.” The confusion is not an accident. It is the business model.

The good news is that the decision is not a matter of taste, and it is not really that hard. It is arithmetic. There is one repeatable framework that works for any programme — Avios, Flying Blue, Miles & More, Marriott Bonvoy, all of them — and once you know it, you stop guessing.

Points or cash: the decision rule

To decide whether to book with points or cash, compare two numbers. First, the value of this specific redemption in cents per point (CPP) — the cash price of the booking divided by the number of points it costs. Second, your programme’s average CPP across all redemptions. If this redemption’s CPP is higher than your programme’s average, the points are the better value and you should spend them. If it is lower, pay cash and keep the points for a redemption that clears the bar.

Source: Gast curated programme data. Last verified: [FOUNDER: verify date before publishing]

The one number that decides it: cents per point

Every points-or-cash decision comes down to a single number, and it is worth learning its name because you will use it forever: cents per point, usually written CPP. CPP is what one of your points is worth in a specific redemption. You calculate it like this:

CPP = (cash price of the booking ÷ points required) × 100

A hotel night that sells for €200 in cash and costs 25,000 points gives you €200 ÷ 25,000 = €0.008 per point, or 0.8 cents per point. That is the entire piece of maths.

The important thing to understand is that every programme’s points have a range of CPP, not a single fixed value. At the low end are cash-like redemptions — statement credit, gift cards, cheap domestic hotel nights — where a point is worth very little. At the high end are premium-cabin long-haul awards, where the same point can be worth several times more. That gap is exactly why a blanket rule like “always use points” or “always pay cash” is wrong.

Step 1 — Know your programme’s baseline value

Before you can judge any single redemption, you need a yardstick to judge it against: your programme’s average CPP. This is the figure that tells you whether a given booking is a good use of points for that programme.

You do not have to reverse-engineer this yourself. Gast maintains curated cents-per-point data for every programme it covers, published as a low / average / high range — the average being the value of a typical, everyday redemption. For Avios that average sits in its own range; for Flying Blue and Miles & More the baselines are different again, which is precisely why you need the number for your programme, not a generic one. You can see these ranges on the Gast calculator, which converts a balance into its euro value, and read the reasoning behind each verdict in the programme-by-programme worth-it pages.

Write your programme’s average CPP down. It is the line in the sand for every decision that follows.

Step 2 — Price the cash alternative

This is the step almost everyone skips, and skipping it is why so many good points get spent badly.

You cannot judge a redemption without knowing the cash price of the exact same thing — same dates, same route, same cabin, same hotel and room type. Not roughly. The specific fare. If a flight is bookable for €80 in cash and you burn 15,000 miles on it, you valued each mile at half a cent — and you would only know that by looking up the €80.

If you do not check the cash price, you are not making a decision. You are making a wish. Open a second tab, price the cash booking, and note the number.

Step 3 — Compare, and get your verdict

Now you have both numbers you need: this redemption’s CPP (Step 2, divided by the points required) and your programme’s average CPP (Step 1). The rule is simple:

  • This redemption’s CPP is higher than your programme’s average → the points are working hard. Spend them.
  • This redemption’s CPP is lower than your average → pay cash, and save the points for a redemption that clears the bar.

That is the whole framework: three numbers, one comparison, a clear answer — no “it depends.”

A worked example

Take Avios, which is the shared currency across British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, Vueling, Qatar Airways, and Barclays. Suppose you are looking at two very different bookings.

The first is a short-haul economy hop that sells for about €80 in cash or 15,000 Avios plus fees. Run the maths: €80 ÷ 15,000 ≈ 0.5 cents per Avios. The second is a long-haul business-class seat that would cost roughly €3,000 in cash or 120,000 Avios: €3,000 ÷ 120,000 = 2.5 cents per Avios.

Now compare each to the Avios everyday-redemption average. The business-class seat clears that bar comfortably — spend the points. The short economy hop falls well below it — pay the €80 and keep the Avios. Same currency, same wallet, opposite verdicts, and the only thing that changed was the arithmetic. You can see the route-type analysis behind numbers like these on the Avios worth-it guide, and the same logic applied to Air France–KLM on the Flying Blue worth-it guide.

Where it gets hard — and where Gast does it for you

The framework is simple. Running it on every booking is not. For each decision you have to look up the live cash fare, find the award cost including taxes and surcharges, recall your programme’s baseline, and do the division — then repeat it across a portfolio that might span a dozen programmes, each with its own average. For one booking that is a few minutes; across everything you collect, it is the reason people give up and guess.

That is the exact job I built into the app. The deterministic Points-or-Cash verdict (Plus) runs this comparison for you, per programme, using Gast’s curated value data, and returns a straight answer — spend or keep — with no hedging. The AI Advisor (Plus) goes further, letting you ask which of your programmes offers the best value for a specific trip in plain language. Gast Plus is €2.99/mo or €29.99/yr. To be clear about what this article is: it teaches you the framework so you can run it yourself, for free, on any booking — the verdict feature just does the same arithmetic automatically, across your whole wallet.

Stop guessing at the booking page. Gast gives you a per-programme Points-or-Cash verdict — spend or keep, no “it depends.”

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