Should you sell your miles?
And what are they worth?

Anyone sitting on a six-figure miles balance eventually asks the same two questions: what are these actually worth, and should I cash them out? As a broker that both sells and buys miles every day, we’re in an unusual position to answer honestly — including telling you when selling is the wrong move.

What miles are worth when you spend them

The value of a mile depends entirely on what you redeem it for, and the spread is enormous. At the top: long-haul business and first class awards, where a mile routinely returns several cents of value — the whole reason people buy airline miles in the first place is that a business class ticket costing $8,000 in cash might be booked for a fraction of that in miles. This is also why our customers buy miles for a specific award they’ve found, whether that’s KrisFlyer for Singapore’s cabins or JAL miles for Emirates first class.

At the bottom: everything else. Merchandise, gift cards, wine catalogues, paying fees with points — these redemptions typically return well under one cent per mile, often far under. It’s the airline quietly buying your miles back at the worst possible rate. The rule of thumb the whole industry knows but rarely says plainly: miles are for flight tickets, ideally premium cabin tickets. Nearly everything else is a bad trade.

What miles are worth when you sell them

Cash value is simpler: as a rough range, accounts sell for somewhere around 0.5¢ to 0.9¢ per mile. Where you land in that range — sometimes outside it — depends on the size of the balance (bigger sells better), how far the miles are from expiring, which programme they’re in, and market demand that week. There’s no universal number, which is why we quote per account: send us the programme and balance on WhatsApp and you get a firm offer in minutes, no obligation.

Put those two sections together and the decision logic writes itself:

If you’ll genuinely fly premium cabins with these miles, keep them. A well-booked business class award beats any cash offer — that’s not us being modest, it’s arithmetic. If you’re short of an award, it can even make sense to buy the missing miles or have us issue the award ticket outright.

If you were going to redeem for anything other than flights, selling almost certainly pays more. Cash at 0.5–0.9¢ beats a merchandise catalogue returning less than that — and you can spend cash anywhere.

If you can’t or won’t fly within the miles’ lifetime — sell. An expired balance is worth exactly nothing.

The timing point almost everyone gets wrong

Here’s something few sellers realise: don’t wait until your miles are about to expire. When we buy a balance, we need enough runway to actually use it — miles are inventory to a broker, and inventory with a short shelf life is worth less. We do buy soon-to-expire balances, but the closer the expiry, the harder they are to place and the less we can pay. Sell six months ahead of an expiry date and you’re selling a healthy asset; sell three weeks before and you’re holding a clearance sale.

So the practical rule: the moment you know you won’t fly within your miles’ lifetime — no trip planned, can’t travel, programme expiry approaching — that’s the time to get a valuation. Not the month the miles die. Every programme’s expiry rules differ (some hard-expire regardless of activity, some reset with any transaction — our sell miles hub covers the major ones), so check yours today rather than discovering the deadline late.

How selling actually works

With us: tell us the programme and balance on WhatsApp, get a firm cash offer in minutes, and if you accept, we arrange the transfer and pay promptly — usually within a day. No fees, no obligation to accept. We’ve been brokering miles since 2010 with a 4.8 Trustpilot rating, and because we’re active on both sides of the market — people buy miles from us for business class awards daily — we can price your balance against real demand, not a guess.

The honest part

Selling miles, like buying them, sits against airline programme terms — the same caveat we publish on every page. We structure transactions sensibly and we’ll tell you plainly if a particular balance carries more risk than it’s worth. And if the maths says you’re better off keeping your miles and booking a flight, we’ll tell you that too — it’s the same honesty that runs our award booking service: sometimes the right answer is the one that doesn’t make us money.