Juicy Miles has been around for awhile offering one-on-one award booking services and mileage run help. While this service is still available, they recently launched an amazing tool that will help you find award availability on the spot and save you miles on your next flight. I’ve been using this tool for the past few months and have found it incredibly helpful. Sign up here.
For starters, this tool will pull in all available flights for using your points and miles. And while anyone can do that by going directly to the respective loyalty airlines site, it will save you time from searching multiple programs. Think of it as a Google Flights or Kayak site for showing you all options ranging from non-stop to multi-stop itineraries. And of course you can filter based on your preferences.
More importantly though, it will show you which parter programs you can use to book certain flights. This comes in quite handy if you have points with a flexible program which allows you to transfer to partner programs. Such as: Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One, Citi ThankYou, etc. Even for the exact same flight, one program might require you to redeem X number of miles, while another program requires Y miles. This tool will help you figure out which program to transfer your miles to redeem the least number of miles possible. Not only that, many loyalty programs charge various taxes and fees for the exact same itinerary. The tool will also help you compare your out of pocket fees to save you money.
My recent example using Juicy Miles
My parents are taking a cruise in Europe next year and wanted to use their miles earned from credit card welcome offers and everyday spend. Of course, I was called in to help them with their booking. They are flying Boston to Zurich and then home from Amsterdam to Boston. They are perfectly content with economy seats, but a nonstop flight is non-negotiable.
During a quick search with Juicy Miles I found the following options from Zurich to Boston (with a nonstop filter). It is showing 11 different programs I can use to redeem points. Note: Flight results are not sorted by price or alphabetically. Sometimes the cheapest options require you to scroll.
If you were to search Kayak or another tool, you’d easily see that Delta and KLM are the only non-stop carriers for this route. Many folks would then immediately go to their Delta account and redeem their miles for that segment. But the Juicy Miles tool easily shows you that KLM is a Delta partner and their award pricing is significantly less expensive — both in miles and cash.
The KLM FlyingBlue flight costs just 21,500-22,500 miles while Delta costs a whopping 44,000 miles for the exact same flight! While my parents do not have FlyingBlue miles, they do have American Express Membership Reward and Chase Ultimate Reward points. Even if you do not fully understand those program and the transfer options to international airlines, Juicy Miles will assist. The tool shows that you can transfer both of those flexible point currencies to KLM and then redeem your points from that account. Not only are you saving half the number of miles, your also saving about $81 in cash, per passenger. While I know of these transfer options, my parents definitely do not and absolutely would have redeemed more miles if I left them up to them. If you do not have a guru in the family, then this tool can serve as just that!
It pulls in transfer bonuses!
Now, if my parents were open to a flight with a layover, they could have flown for even less on British Airways. By using Chase Ultimate Reward points, a flight with a layover in London would cost just 13,077 points! (British Airways is also a transfer of Chase Ultimate Rewards). Unfortunately though, it looks like Juicy Miles does not have the taxes information, and for those who fly British Airways often, you are already well aware that taxes can be high. I asked Juicy Miles about this and it is unfortunately British Airways will not provide them with this information (so it is not Juicy Miles fault). But a quick search on BA.com showed me taxes of $191, so similar pricing as the Delta flight, but more then KLM. (Note: Taxes and fees are not shown for itineraries booked with American AAdvantage, British Airways Avios, or Turkish Miles&Smiles).
You’ll also notice that right now the Chase Ultimate Reward pricing is less then that of British Airways directly. This is because, the tool takes into consideration any transfer bonuses going on at the time, such as the current 30% bonus from Chase Ultimate Rewards to British Airways.
Even when going to their site, a list of all transfer bonuses automatically appear. Fortunately, the site does all the math for you when comparing pricing.
No tool is 100% perfect
As with any other online tool or computer program, there will be outages and bugs. Juicy Miles is definitely not perfect (no one is!), but they do a good job at fixing issues quickly. The issues are also few and far between, so I wouldn’t let that deter you from the tool. They also have a live chat available where if you find a bug or are having a problem on the site, someone can chat with you to answer a question or get a glitch fixed asap.
Also, with many airline partner programs, phantom availability always seems to occur. It is definitely frustrating, but it is due to award programs having a disconnect in their availability chart and Juicy Miles just pulls in the information that is given from the programs. Because of this, I always suggest looking up the availability directly on the loyalty programs site first. Definitely do not transfer points over without ensuring the flight is 100% bookable. I cannot stress this enough before confirming availability.
There are also some programs that price awards cheaper if you book roundtrip vs. one-way. Delta is an example of this and unfortunately Juicy Miles pulls in one-way pricing. (Note: Juicy Miles is working on fixing this). While availability will show accurately, I always suggest verifying pricing with the program. Juicy Miles is still 99% perfect!
Juicy Miles Pricing
Unfortunately Juicy Miles is not free, but they do have multiple levels. And for just $10 you can try it out yourself (for 5 days) to see if the service is worth for you. I’d probably suggest starting with this membership to see if the tool works and go from there. If you travel a ton then the $29.99/month might work better for you. You can also just purchase the $10 search pass multiples times throughout the year to use every time you are looking to book a trip. This is a low price to pay if it can save you a ton of miles or cash.
Now, if you are looking to use their one-on-one award booking or mileage run service, then the $29.99/month membership is absolutely worth it as it will save you money on those two options. You can also cancel your monthly membership whenever you desire, so you are not locked into something long term.
Overall…
Juicy Miles is a great tool in the points and miles world, especially if you consider yourself a beginner or intermediate. Experts might not need this tool, but for just $10 it could help you save some time and unwrap some tricks you might not already know. In my world time + knowledge = money. The tool also does not support Southwest or JetBlue flights. If those are your two go-to airlines, then this tool is not for you.
I personally do not know of another tool like it. Yes, there is Expert Flyer but it works very differently and probably more for those in the expert category. It is also a great tool to combine with Travel Freely. Travel Freely will help you determine which credit cards you are eligible for and Juicy Miles will help you spend those miles earned!
Adam, the founder of Juicy Miles did give me free access to the tool, but my opinions are the same. I personally would pay $10 for this tool when looking to book an award flight, even though I do consider myself an expert in the points and miles world. Feel free to comment below with your experience if you’ve used this tool in the past. I am happy to pass along any feedback to Adam over at Juicy Miles! Sign up for Juicy Miles here.
Disclosure: Deals We Like has a partnership with Juicy Miles, but that in no way affects my thoughts on the tool. I do get paid a (small) fee for users who sign up to Juicy Miles. I wouldn’t endorse the site though if I didn’t think it was valuable.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
The team at JuicyMiles are friendly. Alex was really great helping me piece together a bit complicated trip to Asia with stopovers both ways.
I tried the trial software subscription when I was hiring them to plan my trip as it was cheaper to book them trying the subscription and it seems pretty good on simple itineraries but I couldn’t duplicate Alex’s help with the stop overs.
I just wish they would make it lower priced. $3o a month is steep. I’d gladly pay $10 a month or even prepay $120 a year (with no refund even if I cancelled before the year). I’m really curious how many people stay on the $30 a month plan. Seems like at that price point there wouldn’t be many people.
Are you able to book a Business/ First class award with the tool you described
Thank you
Burt
Will this tool provide award space for Business/First class travel
Thank you
Burt
@Burt – Absolutely!