This Free Tool Will Help You Maximize Your Miles for Award Travel

Definitely don't ignore free tools like this.

If you're a fan of credit card rewards, you may be hoping to redeem your rewards for a flight so you can take a fantastic vacation. Using credit card rewards for travel can be a smart redemption choice. While some credit cards allow you to redeem rewards for cash back or gift cards, travel redemptions may give you more value.

With so many award travel options, it can be challenging to know the best move to make. Luckily, there's an easy-to-use tool that can help you maximize your miles for award travel. Using this resource can make your credit card miles go further.

Introducing AwardHacker

AwardHacker is a free tool that you can use to plan award miles redemptions.

The website makes it simple to search for award flight routes between two places. You can search by airport code or city.

You can decide if you want to search for one-way or round-trip flights, pick the cabin type, and search for routes with up to one layover or two layovers. AwardHacker also allows you to search for award flights within specific frequent flier and credit card rewards programs.

When the results are displayed, you'll see how many miles your journey requires -- so you'll know what trips are possible based on the number of miles you have.

One thing worth noting is that AwardHacker can't show you whether award flights are currently available for your desired travel dates. You'll need to check with the airline loyalty program to see if there is availability before using your miles to book a flight.

Benefits of using AwardHacker

Here are three advantages to using a tool like this to plan award travel:

1. You can find the best route to fly to use fewer miles.
2. You can get the most out of your miles by choosing the most valuable redemption.
3. You can save time by researching award flight options with one tool.

Save money by making your miles go further

Maximizing your travel can help you keep more money in your bank account.

Let's imagine you have 100,000 miles to use. By using AwardHacker, you might find that you can take two separate round-trip international flights for 50,000 miles each.

If you didn't use the tool and redeemed your miles without much consideration or planning, you may have only gotten the chance to take one international flight with the same number of miles.

I don't know about you -- but I'd rather take two trips instead of one. Maximizing your miles and making the best redemption choice can result in fewer out-of-pocket travel expenses.

If you're new to credit card rewards, review our list of the best travel credit cards to find the right travel rewards card to earn free or cheap travel from your everyday spending.

But credit card miles aren't the only way to score a great travel deal. You can score cheap flights with these tools to stretch your vacation budget further.