Ultimate rewards transfer partners

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To redeem your Ultimate Reward points, you'll need to visit UltimateRewardsPoints.Chase.com or click on the Ultimate Rewards button when you are looking at your credit card account.

Before you use your points from your Freedom Unlimited (or other Chase cards), you need to transfer them to the account that belongs to your Sapphire Reserve card. There is no charge and you can transfer points as frequently as you want.

Purchasing travel with your Ultimate Reward points

The easiest way to use your points is to purchase travel through the Chase website. Because the site is powered by Expedia, you can use your points for a wide variety of travel purchases, including tourist activities, cruises, and vacation rentals.

When you book, you can use any combination of points and dollars. Each point you use is worth 1.5 cents (with the Sapphire Reserve Card).

You'll get the same prices on the Chase site as you'd get on the Expedia site, including lower "Expedia member prices". However, you'd often be able to get a better deal elsewhere, particularly for hotels and car rentals. For these categories, always double-check our recommended websites, before using your points. Expedia's prices for airfare and cruises are typically as good as you'd get anywhere, so these are almost always good options.

Transferring your Ultimate Reward points to travel partners

You'll usually get better value per point when you transfer them to partner award programs. You'll get 1 point or mile in each partner program for every Ultimate Reward point you transfer.

• Once you've transferred your points, they are the same as any other frequent flyer mile or hotel point. For example, once you transfer 25,000 Ultimate Rewards to United Airlines, you'll receive 25,000 United frequent flyer miles, that you would redeem, as normal, through the United frequent flyer program.
• You can wait to transfer your Ultimate Reward points until just before you need to use them. That's one of the big advantages of Ultimate Rewards. Rather than locking yourself into points with any particular program, you can transfer them to the program where you need them. Because you can transfer them back, don't transfer them until just before you know you are going to use them.
• You'll need to have an account with the partner's reward program. For example, if you want to transfer your points to the British Airways program, you'll need to set up a British Airways account first. If you haven't transfer points in the past, you'll need to provide your partner account information to the Chase website.
• Besides Hyatt, it is generally not worth transferring your points to Ultimate Reward's other hotel partners. IHG points are typically only worth about .6 cents each, and can be acquired using the cash & points trick for .625 cents each. Marriott and Ritz Carlton points are only worth .7 cents. It will be extremely rare for you to get more than 1.5 cents per point by transferring to these programs. Just use them to make a reservation through the Chase website, or save them for some future redemption. However, if you only need a few more points to book an award night, it might be worthwhile.
• You can only transfer Ultimate Reward points to yourself (plus up to one authorized cardholder). For example, if you haven't paid to make your spouse an authorized cardholder, you can't transfer your points to their United Airlines account. However, most frequent flyer programs will let you purchase tickets for someone else. So, you can still get them a frequent flyer ticket, but you'll have to use your own account.
• Points need to be transferred in units of 1,000.
• Most point transfers happen instantly. However, transfers to Singapore airlines can take up to two days. If you call Singapore, they will usually put the tickets on "hold", while you wait for your points to transfer. Transfers to IHG and Marriott can also take one to two days, but as discussed above, you will generally never want to transfer to these programs anyway.

Booking Hyatt hotel rooms

Southwest and JetBlue: Fixed value airline programs

Southwest and JetBlue operate "fixed-value" frequent flyer programs. That means you can don't have to find award availability—you can use miles, instead of cash, for any flight. While that makes it easy to use your points, it also means that you can never get outsized value from your points, the way you can with other programs.

The value per point is around the same for every flight, but because of the details in the way it is calculated, it will varies within a small range. You'll get about the same 1.5 cents per point you'd get by using your points to purchase travel through Chase.

Since you need to purchase Southwest flights on the Southwest website, the ability to transfer your points, makes it easy to purchase Southwest airline tickets, at about the same value per point as purchasing any other tickets through Chase.

For JetBlue, you might get a small amount of extra value by using your points through their frequent flyer program. But, typically you'd be better off buying them using your Ultimate Reward points through the Chase website, or saving your points for a future redemption. When you purchase your tickets with Ultimate Reward points or cash, you'll receive new JetBlue miles for the flight. When you convert your Ultimate Reward points to JetBlue miles and use them, you won't receive any new miles.

Using your Ultimate Reward Points for frequent flyer tickets

Star Alliance

SkyTeam

Oneworld

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