Complete Guide to Capital One Miles

Capital One may not be the biggest player in the game, but it’s come a long way since its humble beginnings.

It has certainly leveled the playing field when it comes to offering valuable travel credit cards, and using Capital One miles to redeem for various travel options has increased in popularity in recent years.

If you’re looking to up your travel game, consider joining the Capital One family!

What are Capital One Miles?

Capital One Miles are the flexible rewards currency earned through select qualifying Capital One credit cards.

You can typically earn Capital One miles by spending on a credit card, taking advantage of a welcome offer, and using its in-house shopping portal.

When you’re ready to redeem your miles, you have many options, including:

• Travel (through Capital One Travel or via transfer partners)

• Offset any travel purchase (even retroactively) within the last 90 days of the purchase

• Statement credit or cash back

• Gift cards

• Amazon purchases or PayPal wallet

• Capital One Entertainment

This uber flexibility makes Capital One one of the most user-friendly rewards programs.

What are Capital One Miles Worth? 

This valuation ebbs and flows like many other things in the miles and points world, but most sources will tell you that Capital One miles are valued around 1.7 to 2 cent a piece.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

Remember, redeeming miles and points at all is a win… because that is a travel experience you didn’t have to pay for.

But if you want your miles to be worth closer to the two-cent mark (or even much higher), there are ways to optimize how you redeem points, and we’ll touch on that later.

But for starters, if you want to know whether you are getting a good deal by using miles on your next travel purchase, we have a simple calculation that we swear by:

(cash price) - (taxes and fees) / (points cost) = value per point

This holds up across all point programs, not just Capital One. If we want to put it to use, let’s look at an example of debating whether to use miles or pay cash for an airline ticket 👇

If we plug our numbers in, it’ll look like this:

($1,017) - ($86.50) / 12,750) = .073 

With this example, you are getting a fantastic deal at 7.3 cents per Capital One mile. This is more than three times the standard two cents per mile valuation, so it significantly exceeds the cash price.

However, to make this deal happen, you need to have some Capital One miles in the first place…

How to Earn Capital One Miles

We’re so glad you asked, because this stuff is important.

Take a peek at some of our most tried and true methods for earning Capital One miles 👇

1. Apply for a Capital One Credit Card

If you feel like you can use a credit card responsibly, this is going to be your fastest means of getting a tasty stack of Capital One miles.

Most travel credit cards will come with a welcome offer worth thousands of miles, and this is an excellent way to kickstart your earnings.

These are a couple of Daily Drop’s personal favorites:

• The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card consistently remains high on our Best Travel Credit Cards list month after month.

• The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is an excellent starter card that also holds its spot on that same list

The Venture X may have a higher annual fee of $395, but it’s a premium card with tons of premium perks — like bonus anniversary miles, travel credits, and lounge access.

The Venture Card comes in at a lower annual fee of just $95, but you’re still getting a coveted 2x miles per dollar earned on all purchases.

2. Strategize your purchases with card pairing

Not all spend categories are created equally. The two Capital One cards mentioned above may be able to get you 2x miles on all purchases (which is great), but the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card could get you 3% cash back (e.g. 3x miles if paired with either of those cards) on dining and grocery stores.

If you build a portfolio of cards that maximize certain spending categories, you can allocate your spending to certain cards to best accelerate your earnings. 

Why settle for earning 2x miles on groceries when you could earn 3x?

If you want to learn how you can maximize and accelerate your earnings by holding more than one card, check out our resource on the power of a credit card trifecta or duo.

4. Use Capital One Offers to earn bonus miles

If you’d like to earn additional miles for purchases, consider shopping through Capital One Offers — it’s an online portal that lets cardholders earn bonus rewards or statement credits by shopping at thousands of retailers through the portal.

You can easily accelerate the miles you earn when making online purchases in this way.

3. Refer a friend

From time to time, Capital One will run a “Refer a Friend” promotion that rewards you with additional miles if your referral is approved for the card upon signing up.

In general, if you refer a credit card that earns Capital One miles, you will get your referral bonus in the form of Capital One miles.

If that referral is for a cash-back card, you will earn a cash-back referral bonus.

Sometimes, these offers are targeted, meaning that if you are a cardholder in good standing, you may receive an email with a specific invitation to refer someone and earn a substantial bonus.

To check for this, navigate to Capital One’s Refer a Friend page to sign in and see how much you could be rewarded with if you divvied out your unique link to someone else.

4. Add an authorized user

If the person you have in mind is not eligible for their own card (perhaps they are a minor, have poor credit, or simply do not want a card), you can add them as an authorized user on your card.

They would receive their own card, but all of their spending would be charged to your account. This means you would earn miles not only for your own spending but also for theirs, which is a significant perk.

However, a potential risk is that person is going to be spending with your card, and you will be responsible if they do not pay it off.

So, choose wisely who you want to grant this access to. If they’re a trustworthy person, you'll easily double your miles earned by having two people swipe your card.

How to Redeem Capital One Miles

Alright, folks. You’ve spent months strategizing your spends, analyzing your progress in a spreadsheet, and pacing your living room, waiting for those miles to hit your account.

Maybe you weren’t that aggressive about the whole process (or maybe you were).

Either way, you’ve made it. You’re here. You’re ready to travel!

Here are the basic ways you can redeem your miles for travel:

• Offset any travel purchase within the last 90 days

• Fixed-value via Capital One Travel or statement credit

• Transfer miles to airline or hotel partners

1. Offset any travel purchase

This is by far the most straightforward way to redeem Capital One miles.

It’s true — you can use miles to offset any travel purchase made within the last 90 days. Travel can be defined as an airline ticket, a hotel stay, an Uber ride, or an Airbnb stay, among others.

When you make a travel purchase, such as booking an Airbnb, you can opt to use your Capital One miles within your account to pay for that purchase as a statement credit at a rate of one cent per mile.

Did you book a hotel night for $200 and want to offset that purchase? You could choose to use 20,000 Capital One miles from your account to do so.

To actually do this, select Cover travel purchases from your dashboard and follow the steps to select the required number of miles to cover your travel purchase.

This is an exciting feature that is unique to Capital One!

2. Redeem for a statement credit or through the Capital One Travel portal

You could also redeem miles at the same rate of one cent per mile by booking flights, hotels, vacation rentals, and even car rentals through the Capital One Travel portal.

These methods are quite popular due to their convenience, as they eliminate the need to transfer your miles and coordinate with an airline’s program.

But, we can do much better than one cent per mile by utilizing Capital One’s transfer partners 👇

3. Utilize transfer partners to book travel

If you want to increase the value you get for each Capital One mile, then transferring to an airline (and sometimes a hotel) partner is your best option.

As you saw in my earlier example of calculating the point value for a flight, we were able to earn over seven cents for each mile. That’s incredible!

Point redemptions may not always be that high, but they will typically be higher than the one cent per mile you will get by keeping your miles within your Capital One account.

Here are Capital One’s current airline transfer partners:

And here are Capital One’s hotel transfer partners:

Transfers are typically instant, but remember, once you transfer your miles, you can’t undo it.

If you’d like a step-by-step guide on how to actually transfer your points, you can reference our Go-To-Guide for Credit Card Transfer Partners.

Bottom Line

Capital One miles are easy to earn and easy to use. It is also one of the few rewards programs that allows you to retroactively cover nearly any travel expense with miles — no hoops to jump through.

With a strong lineup of travel credit cards and a growing roster of high-value transfer partners, Capital One has become a serious contender in the points and miles world. If you're looking for a rewards program that’s simple, flexible, and packed with value, Capital One is well worth getting into.