IHG One Rewards Points vs. Cash Calculator

Cash Currency

Select the currency used by the hotel e.g. if you are staying at a hotel in Paris, France, the currency will be Euros (EUR). The currency will be converted to USD for the points calculation. The actual exchange rate used by IHG to calculate the points may vary, resulting in a slightly different amount of points earned compared to the calculator result.

Total Cash (excl. Tax)

Enter the total stay cost excluding taxes and fees - as shown on the hotel booking site or final invoice. IHG One Rewards base points are earned on the pre-tax cost only — taxes and fees are excluded.

Total Cash (incl. Tax)

Enter the room rate including taxes and fees - as shown on the hotel booking site (at the final stage of the booking process) or final invoice. This field is used for credit card points earning and for the return-on-spend calculation.

Points Required

Enter the number of IHG One Rewards points needed to book your stay as a reward night. You can find this on IHG.com by searching for your hotel and dates and selecting “Use Reward Nights.” IHG uses dynamic pricing — award costs vary by hotel, room type, and demand, and there is no fixed award chart.

Check the price while signed in to your IHG account. Several award discounts are applied by IHG at the time of booking rather than afterwards, so the figure a signed-in member sees is already the discounted one:

Fourth Night Free — holders of the Premier, Premier Select, Premier Business, or Traveler card get the 4th night free on a 4-night reward booking, so a 4-night stay costs the price of 3 nights. Because IHG uses dynamic pricing, the free night is whichever night you book — including an expensive peak night.
15% reward night discounts — IHG runs periodic 15% off promotions on 1–3 night reward stays for cardholders and Platinum/Diamond members, and offers 15% off year-round at newly opened hotels.

Leave this blank if you only want to calculate points earned on a cash stay.

Resort/Destination Fee

Enter any cash charges you still have to pay on a reward night, such as resort fees, destination fees, or local taxes on those fees. Unlike Hilton and Hyatt, IHG does charge resort fees on award stays, so this field is often not zero — leaving it blank will make the award option look cheaper than it really is. The same fees are applied to the Points + Cash option, which is also a reward booking.

Points + Cash

Optional. Enter the points and cash shown for IHG’s Points & Cash rate (e.g. 5,000 points + $75.65).

Points & Cash is a full reward night where the cash buys the points you don’t pay. A 20,000-point night at 5,000 points + $75.65 buys 15,000 points at about 0.50¢ each. With Points Required filled in, the calculator shows this price. If it’s below your point value, Points & Cash beats the full award.

It counts as a reward stay: no hotel base or elite bonus points are earned on the cash, and cancellations are refunded in points, not cash. The calculator credits your selected card’s regular purchase rate on the cash used to buy points: 3 points/$1 for Premier Select, Premier, and Premier Business; 2 points/$1 for Traveler; or 1 point/$1 for the discontinued Select. These card rewards reduce the effective cost and appear separately in the result details. Separately entered resort/destination fees are excluded from this calculation.

Buy Points

Use this when you would buy points to cover the award — either because your balance is short, or because a points sale is cheaper than paying the cash rate. Enter the price you would pay per point, in cents. If a sale is running, use the sale price. Purchase prices are always in US cents, like the point value below, because points are sold in dollars regardless of the currency your hotel quotes.

The second field is how many points you already hold. It starts filled with the full award, meaning you have enough and are buying nothing — so the comparison you get by default is the ordinary one, points against cash, with no purchase in it. Edit it down to the balance you actually have and the calculator buys only the shortfall. Enter 0 to cost buying the whole award, which is what you want when weighing up a sale purely to book one stay. Clear the field and it goes back to tracking the award total.

Points that come out of your existing balance are costed at their redemption value (the Point Value field below), because spending them means giving up that value. Points you have to buy are costed at what you actually pay in cash.

Purchase rules: Points are sold in blocks of 1,000 — the calculator rounds your purchase up to the next whole block and credits any leftover points back at their redemption value. No tax or processing charge is added on top of the purchase price. Purchases are capped at 200,000 points per calendar year. If a stay needs more than that, the calculator flags it and costs the excess against your existing balance.

The award card then shows a break-even price: the price per point at which buying the points and booking the award costs exactly the same as paying cash. Below that price, buying wins; above it, pay cash. When the award can never beat cash whatever the points cost, the card says so instead.

Two things the calculator cannot check for you: purchased points generally do not count toward elite status or tier qualification, and in some programs they cannot be transferred to partners. Read the terms of the sale before buying.

Brand

Select the brand group of your hotel stay:
Main brands - Almost all IHG brands earn a rate of 10 base points per $1.
Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites - Earn a reduced rate of 5 points per $1.

Status

Select your IHG One Rewards elite tier. Your status tier adds a percentage bonus on top of the base points you earn. Club Member (initial tier when joining) receives no bonus; Silver Elite adds 20%; Gold Elite adds 40%; Platinum Elite adds 60%; Diamond Elite adds 100%. The bonus applies to base hotel points only - credit card and promo points are not multiplied.

The base points from a paid stay also count as elite qualifying points towards next year’s status, so the earn figure doubles as status progress. Status can be reached either on nights (Silver 10, Gold 20, Platinum 40, Diamond 70) or on elite qualifying points (Gold 40,000, Platinum 60,000, Diamond 120,000). Credit card and promotional points do not count towards these thresholds.

Offers

Active IHG One Rewards promotions are listed here. Check any offer you have registered for and that apply to your stay. Most offers require registration before your stay - deadlines and stay windows are shown where applicable. Select the 'Custom Offer' option to enter a new or targeted offer. You can choose from a fixed amount of points per stay, per night, or a multiplier of the total base points. Check the Offers page in your IHG account for details of promotions you have registered for. IHG offers can stack so you can receieve bonuses from multiple offers on the same stay.

Most IHG offers only count stays where the total spend is more than US$30 (or the local currency equivalent) per night. Very cheap nights, and reward or Points & Cash stays, usually do not qualify — check the offer’s terms if your rate is close to this threshold.

Nights

This field will only appear if needed to calculate points from a an offer which is based on nights stayed.

Credit Card

IHG co-branded Chase cards (US only) earn additional points on hotel spend. The IHG One Rewards Premier Select card earns 12 points/$1, the IHG One Rewards Premier and Premier Business cards earn 10 points/$1, while the Traveler and the discontinued IHG Rewards Club Select cards earn 5 points/$1. Credit card points are earned on the total spend (room rate plus taxes and fees). Select No Credit Card if you are paying with a non-IHG card.

Your card also affects the cost of a reward stay. If you still hold the old IHG Rewards Club Select card ($49 annual fee, no longer available to new applicants), you get 10% of the points back on every redemption. The calculator applies this rebate to both the Points and Points + Cash options and shows the net points cost. The Premier, Premier Select, Premier Business, and Traveler cards instead give you the 4th night free on reward stays, which IHG applies when you book — these two benefits stack if you hold both cards.

Extra Points

Use this field for any additional points not covered by the other fields — for example, bonus-point packages purchased during the booking process or a targeted offer.

Point Value

The assumed value of one IHG One Rewards point in US cents, used to convert your earned points into an estimated cash equivalent. The default of 0.6¢ per point reflects a reasonable redemption value.

Comparison Results

After clicking Compare, three cards show the effective cost of each option. Cash shows your out-of-pocket cost minus the value of points you would earn. Points converts the points spent to a dollar value using your chosen point valuation, plus any fees. Points + Cash combines the cash paid with the dollar value of points used. The option with the lowest net cost is marked “Best value.” A higher point value favors cash stays (your points are worth more kept), while a lower point value favors using points.

Stays That Earn Nothing

Bookings made through most online travel agencies — Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com and the like — earn no points and no elite night credit at all, so the calculator result will not apply to them. Book direct with IHG to earn. A few third-party channels are exceptions and do earn, notably American Express Fine Hotels + Resorts and loyalty-eligible bookings through Rove. Rates such as some corporate, wholesale, and crew rates are also excluded.

Not Included in the Calculator

Milestone Rewards: IHG One Rewards members earn Milestone Rewards every 10 qualifying nights per calendar year, starting at 20 nights through 100 nights. If you choose the bonus-points option at each milestone, you receive 5,000 points at the 20 and 30 night milestones and 10,000 points at every milestone from 40 nights onward — up to 80,000 extra points per year. Other milestone choices include $20 F&B vouchers, confirmable suite upgrades (at 20, 40, and 70 nights), and annual club lounge membership (at 40 and 70 nights). Because milestones are cumulative across an entire year of stays, they are not factored into this per-stay calculator. If you know how many milestone points you will earn from a particular stay, add them in the Extra Points field.

Welcome Amenity Platinum and Diamond members are offered a choice of welcome amenity at check in, usually a drink voucher or points. The amount of points vary by region and brand.

Free night certificates: IHG issues 40,000-point certificates on the anniversary of the Premier and Premier Business cards (these can be topped up with unlimited extra points for a more expensive night), 40,000-point certificates on the old Select card, and sometimes 60,000-point certificates as part of a card welcome offer. Certificates without top-up cannot be used above their point ceiling. The comparison assumes you are paying with points rather than a certificate.

Multiple rooms: You earn points on up to nine rooms booked under the same membership number, but elite night credit for only one room. The calculator covers a single room — for a group booking, enter the cost of one room and multiply the result, or enter the total cost of all rooms if you booked nine or fewer.

Stays that span New Year: If a stay starts in one calendar year and ends after 1 January, all of its points and elite nights credit to the new year.

Airline miles: IHG lets you collect Loyalty Program Partner miles (e.g. airline miles) instead of IHG points on a stay. This is an either/or choice — you cannot earn both. Partner earning rates are not covered here; the calculator only estimates IHG One Rewards points.