Which Rakuten Rewards are Best?
Tl;dr: Bilt points are Rakuten’s most powerful reward option—but not if you only earn them at 0.5x.
Rakuten is my go-to shopping portal to earn extra points for online shopping. Rakuten offers three options for redeeming those rewards: cash, American Express Membership Rewards, or Bilt points. But which option should you choose?
What is Rakuten?
Rakuten is a shopping portal, which means that if you make a purchase through them, you can earn extra rewards (on top of whatever you might earn through the merchant or your credit card, for example). You can earn these rewards by navigating to a merchant from Rakuten.com, or by activating offers through Rakuten’s browser extension while shopping online.
If you’re not already a member, you can typically earn $30-50 after spending the same amount of money via Rakuten in the first 90 days after signing up. I generally recommend waiting for at least a $40 sign-up offer, although $50 has been common recently. You can sign up via a referral from a friend (or me) and usually get the same offer, while also rewarding your friend (or your friendly neighborhood points sloth 🦥).
Once you have a balance full of “cash back,” you can actually choose to redeem it for points instead.
If you have an Amex Green, Gold, or Platinum card, you can earn Membership Rewards points: 1 point for each 1% in cash back.
If you have a Bilt account (no credit card needed), you can earn Bilt points, but only Bilt elite (Silver, Gold, and Platinum) members earn 1 point for each 1% in cash back. Non-elite (Blue) members earn only 0.5 points.
Which reward option is best?
| Best For | Downsides | |
|---|---|---|
| Cash | Lazy, guaranteed value | Lower upside |
| Amex Points | Delta deals and premium travel | Complicated redemptions |
| Bilt Points | Maximum value | Weak for non-elites |
Bilt points offer the highest upside of the three options. You can redeem them in the Bilt travel portal for 1.25¢ each toward travel, or transfer them to elite transfer partners like Alaska Atmos Rewards, United MileagePlus, Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, or World of Hyatt. And Bilt often offers transfer bonuses that can multiply the value of those points.
But choosing Bilt is also the riskiest: although Bilt points are the best, they’re probably not so good that half of one is worth a cent of cash or a full Amex point. So I wouldn’t choose Bilt unless I had Bilt status, and I would set a calendar reminder each January to switch my rewards if I didn’t keep Bilt status that year.
Amex points can be better than cash, and most estimates put their value well over 1¢ per point. But they can also be tricky to redeem. I use mine for cheap Delta flights, but that can be a complicated strategy that works best with a Delta co-branded card. If you earn a lot of Amex points, they can also be valuable for premium travel through partners like Air Canada, although Bilt also has almost all of Amex’s best partners for premium travel.
And when in doubt, cash is great—no transfer partnerships to keep track of or program devaluations to worry about. Rakuten will send cash back via check, PayPal, or gift card.
What are the alternatives to Rakuten?
Although I usually default to Rakuten because I’m lazy, there are many shopping portals, and Rakuten might not offer the best deal at any given time. For larger purchases, I usually go to Cashback Monitor to see which portal offers the best deal. Rove is another strong option, as is Capital One Shopping. And if you are interested in earning airline status, Alaska Atmos and American AAdvantage both offer progress toward status through their shopping portals.
Lazy take 🦥
Bilt points are the easy choice for me as long as I have Bilt status given their outstanding redemption options, but they aren’t so powerful that I’d willingly choose 0.5x instead of taking guaranteed cash or full Amex points.