Credit Card Rewards Calculator
Your spending and the card
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- United States — Truth in Lending disclosure and the CARD Act set the floor; the terms that decide your balance are in your cardholder or loan agreement
- Rules and time period
- APRs, fees, promotional periods and minimum-payment formulas are the ones you enter; an issuer can change several of them with notice.
- Scope and limitations
- Educational estimate only. Your issuer sets the minimum-payment formula, how a payment is allocated across balances, when interest is charged and any fees or promotional terms — check your agreement for the figures that bind, and expect a payoff date to move if a payment is late.
- Source links checked
- Sep 19, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
Primary sources
How to use
- 01
Enter what you put through the card in a normal month at its base rate, and the rate itself. Everyday spending is whatever earns the flat rate — the 1% or 1.5% that applies when nothing special is happening.
- 02
Enter the bonus-category spending separately, with the rate those categories pay. Count only what genuinely falls in the category all year: a rate that applies to the first $6,000 of groceries and then drops to the base rate is not the rate to type here.
- 03
Enter the annual fee and the sign-up bonus in dollars. The bonus belongs to year one alone, which is why the tool reports it apart from what the card earns every year after.
- 04
Open the advanced field if the card pays points rather than cash back. Cents per point is the one field that keeps its value when the page opens, at 1, which treats a point as a cent. Change it only if you know what your own redemptions are actually worth.
- 05
Read the net figure rather than the earned figure — net is after the fee — and read the effective rate against the flat-rate card you could hold instead. That percentage is the honest comparison, because it prices the fee across everything you spend.
Formula
The calculator values one card over one ordinary year, then again for year one with the sign-up bonus added on top. Rewards on everyday spending = everyday spending x 12 x (everyday rate / 100) x cents per point. Rewards in bonus categories = bonus spending x 12 x (bonus rate / 100) x cents per point. Rewards earned = those two added together. Net rewards per year = rewards earned - annual fee. Year one with the bonus = net rewards per year + sign-up bonus. Total annual spending = (everyday + bonus) x 12. Effective rate on all spend = net rewards per year / total annual spending x 100. Cents per point is a plain multiplier rather than a separate step. At 1 a point is worth a cent and the rewards rate you typed is the rate you get. At 1.5 every figure on the page rises by half; at 0.7 it falls by nearly a third. Nothing else on the page moves that much for a field most people never open, which is why the tool says out loud when the valuation is not 1. The ring splits rewards earned into its two sources, everyday against bonus categories, so you can see whether the card is being carried by a bonus category you might stop using. Note what the formula does not contain. There is no interest in it. A rewards rate is a return on money you were going to spend anyway; an APR is a charge on money you have not repaid. The two are not on the same scale and this page does not net them, because a single month of carried balance at a normal card rate erases a year of rewards.
Example
Inputs: everyday spending $1,800 a month at 1.5%, bonus-category spending $600 a month at 3%, a $95 annual fee, a $750 sign-up bonus, and cents per point left at 1. Step 1 - The everyday side. $1,800 x 12 = $21,600 a year, and 1.5% of that is $324. Step 2 - The bonus side. $600 x 12 = $7,200 a year, and 3% of that is $216. Step 3 - What the card earns. $324 + $216 = $540. The ring shows exactly that split: $324 everyday, $216 bonus. Two thirds of the rewards come from the everyday rate even though the bonus rate is twice as high, because there is three times as much everyday spending behind it. Step 4 - What you keep. $540 - $95 = $445. That is the headline, and it is the figure to judge the card on. Step 5 - The effective rate. Total spending is ($1,800 + $600) x 12 = $28,800, and $445 against $28,800 is 1.55%. The tool rounds that display to two places; the unrounded figure is 1.5451%, so do not multiply 1.55% back by $28,800 and expect $445 exactly. Step 6 - Year one, and why it is quarantined. $445 + $750 = $1,195. The tool reports it and immediately says what it is for: 'Year one looks like $1,195 because of the bonus. Judge the card on the $445 it earns every year after.' The bonus arrives once. The fee arrives every year. Now the valuation, because it is the field doing the most work. Leave everything else alone and set cents per point to 1.5: rewards earned become $810, net $715, year one $1,465, and the effective rate 2.48%. Set it to 0.7 instead and the same card earns $378, nets $283, and returns 0.98% — less than a flat 1% cash-back card with no fee at all. Same spending, same published rates, three different answers. The tool flags this whenever the valuation is not 1, and it is right to: a transfer-partner redemption can beat a cent a point, a statement credit almost never does. And the case the page exists to catch. Drop to $500 a month everyday and $100 bonus, put the fee at $250 and the sign-up bonus at $0. Rewards earned are $126 against a $250 fee, so the net figure turns negative: the tool says 'the card costs you $124 a year from year two on' and prints an effective rate of -1.72%. Nothing about the card changed except how much went through it. A premium rewards rate on thin spending is a subscription, not a return.
Definitions
- Everyday rate
- The base earn rate that applies to spending outside any bonus category. It is the rate that quietly determines most of the total, because most spending is not in a bonus category.
- Bonus category
- Spending the issuer pays an elevated rate on — groceries, travel, dining, or a category that rotates each quarter. Many carry an annual or quarterly cap, after which spending reverts to the base rate, so the headline rate is not the rate you earn across the year.
- Cents per point
- What one point is worth when you redeem it. 1.0 means a point is a cent. It multiplies every rewards figure on the page, so it is the single assumption most capable of flattering a card.
- Sign-up bonus
- A one-time award for meeting a spending requirement in the first months. It belongs in year one and nowhere else, which is why this page reports year one separately rather than folding the bonus into an annual figure.
- Net rewards per year
- Rewards earned less the annual fee, excluding the sign-up bonus. This is the recurring value of holding the card and the number the page leads with.
- Effective rate on all spend
- Net rewards divided by total spending. It restates a card with a fee and two earn rates as a single percentage, which is the only way to compare it fairly against a flat-rate card.
- Grace period
- The stretch between the statement closing date and the due date, during which a balance paid in full carries no interest. Under 12 CFR 1026.5(b)(2)(ii)(A) a card issuer must mail or deliver the statement at least 21 days before the due date and must not treat a minimum payment received within those 21 days as late. Rewards only survive inside that window.
Frequently asked questions
Is an effective rate of 1.55% good?
It is the right question, and the benchmark is the card you would otherwise hold rather than zero. Flat-rate cash-back cards paying 1.5% or 2% on everything with no annual fee are ordinary in the US market, so 1.55% net of a $95 fee is roughly a wash against a free 1.5% card and clearly behind a free 2% one. The card in the default only justifies itself on the sign-up bonus, on spending well above $2,400 a month, or on benefits this page does not price. Run the annual fee break-even page next: it compares a paid card against your free one directly, which is the comparison that decides it.
What is a point actually worth?
Whatever your own redemptions return, which is why the field exists and why it opens at 1 rather than at a flattering number. A cent a point is the sane default and roughly what a statement credit or a cash deposit returns. Transfer partners can beat it, sometimes substantially, but only if you have the flexibility to use them and only until the program reprices. Redemptions through an issuer's own travel portal usually land between 1.0 and 1.5 cents. The honest test is to divide what you last got in dollars by the points it cost, and type that. If the answer is below 1, the page will show you a card earning less than its published rate suggests.
Should I open a card just for the sign-up bonus?
The arithmetic is usually in favor and the page shows why: $750 against a $95 fee is nearly eight years of that fee recovered at once. Three cautions the calculator cannot apply for you. The bonus normally requires a minimum spend in a set window, and spending you would not otherwise have done to reach it is a cost, not a qualification. A new account lowers the average age of your accounts and adds an inquiry. And the tool's own framing is the point: year one at $1,195 tells you nothing about year three at $445, which is when the decision to keep or cancel actually gets made.
Do I have to pay tax on my rewards?
In the ordinary case, no, and this page does not model tax in any event. Rewards earned by spending are generally treated as a rebate — a reduction of the purchase price rather than income — which is why cards do not send you a tax form for cash back. The treatment is different where nothing was spent to earn the award, for example a bonus paid for opening a deposit account or for a referral, which is commonly reported to you on a Form 1099. The IRS has not published comprehensive guidance covering every rewards structure, so this answer is deliberately general and cites no authority. If your situation is unusual — a business card, or rewards converted to cash at scale — ask someone who can look at the facts.
Does carrying a balance cancel out the rewards?
Comprehensively, and it is not close. The Federal Reserve's G.19 Consumer Credit release of September 8, 2026 puts the average rate on card accounts assessed interest at 22.15% for the second quarter of 2026. Set the two rates beside each other and the argument is over: the card returns about one and a half percent on what you spend and charges about twenty-two on what you do not repay. They are not measured on the same base — a rewards rate applies to annual spending and an APR to a carried balance — which is exactly why no ratio between them is worth quoting. The point is the order of magnitude, and the tool says so in as many words. There is no rewards rate available in the US market that outruns a carried balance, which is why every figure on this page assumes the statement balance is paid in full inside the grace period.
Can the issuer cut the rewards program without telling me?
Largely, yes, and this surprises people who assume the 45-day notice rule covers it. Under 12 CFR 1026.9(c)(2)(i)(A) a creditor must give 45 days' written notice before a significant change in account terms, but 1026.9(c)(2)(ii) defines that as a change to a term required to be disclosed under 12 CFR 1026.6(b)(1) and (b)(2) — the account-opening table — plus an increase in the minimum payment, a change to a 1026.6(b)(4) term, or the acquisition of a security interest. A rewards earn rate, a category definition and a redemption value are not in that table. The annual fee is, at 1026.6(b)(2)(ii)(A). So the fee cannot move without notice and the earn rate largely can.