When the Chase portal beats transferring points

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When it comes to maximizing flexible rewards for travel, transferring points to airline partners is often considered the smartest move. But before you hit that transfer button, it’s worth checking one other place first: the Chase Travel portal.

Chase Travel can sometimes offer better value than transferring points to an airline. By price shopping here first, you can avoid forking over more points than you have to.

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Take this booking from late last year as an example. My mom was traveling with me to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to enjoy the Day of the Dead festivities and we were looking for the best deal on flights.

My mom had a very small amount of Southwest Rapid Rewards points (less than 5,000) and some Chase Ultimate Rewards points to burn. On my end, I had a stash of Chase Ultimate Rewards from my Chase Sapphire Reserve to help out. My mother's initial thought was flying Southwest, since she had some points to start things off.

Before transferring points to Southwest to book her round-trip flight (or two one-ways), I checked the Chase Travel portal for comparison. And I’m so glad I did.

The absolute "cheapest" flight I could book (other than basic economy) using Southwest Rapid Rewards points for this itinerary came out to 62,000 points plus $155.31 in airline taxes and fees. Since the cash price of this fare showed as $877.61 on the day of this search, that means I would get a redemption value of just over 1.1 cents per point.

However, a quick search showed that the same "Choice" flight on Southwest through Chase Travel would only set me back 53,107 Chase Ultimate Rewards points round-trip.

Not only could I fork over fewer points for the flight through Chase, but those taxes and fees were also effectively covered by the points price when booking through the portal. With the cost of the same flight showing at $797 in the Chase Travel portal, this would mean getting a per-point value of 1.5 cents per point.

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At the time of this booking, I was able to redeem points through the Chase portal at a fixed value of 1.5 cents each thanks to my Chase Sapphire Reserve. That redemption rate has since been replaced by Chase’s newer “Points Boost” system, but the takeaway still holds: It’s always worth checking the portal before transferring points to an airline.

Even with Chase’s newer Points Boost pricing, the portal can still beat airline transfers depending on the route and cash fare. A quick look at Points Boost options showed that I could also book a round-trip flight on United through the portal for 52,554 Ultimate Rewards points. With the cash price of this flight at $789, that still worked out to about 1.5 cents per point.

The exact value you get through the portal can vary depending on the card you hold and which flights qualify for Points Boost, but price-checking both options takes only a minute and can save thousands of points.

As a side note, I also checked whether it made sense to transfer Chase points to my United MileagePlus account for this booking. This same flight through United would have set me back 80,000 miles plus $103.73 in airline taxes and fees, so that was a big "no."

Ultimately, we ended up breaking up the flight and booking two one-ways. I paid for my mom's flight to Puerto Vallarta with Chase points from my account, and she paid with Chase points for her flight home. We ended up going with the Southwest flight, but we booked it via the Chase portal instead of having to pay more miles and airline taxes and fees through Southwest.

This just goes to show that checking flexible travel portals can save you points — or at least give you more options before committing to a transfer.

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