I’ve been journey hacking for over a decade and normally rack up round a million miles per yr. Journey hacking — the artwork of amassing factors and miles that you should utilize at no cost journey or journey perks — is hands-down one of the best ways to remodel your on a regular basis spending into free flights and lodge stays so that you could journey extra, with out spending extra.
However, whereas maximizing incomes factors and miles is one thing I take pleasure in, for many vacationers, it could actually come off as sophisticated and time-consuming. Managing completely different factors and miles applications and discovering the perfect redemptions may be overwhelming should you’re new to journey hacking.
Enter level.me.
Level.me goals to streamline the method of discovering the perfect redemptions so that you just don’t must spend worthwhile time trying to find them. It helps you get essentially the most bang in your buck with the factors and miles that you’ve.
However is it well worth the worth? And does it really work?
What’s level.me?
level.me is a search and reserving engine that helps you discover the perfect methods to make use of your factors and miles. It searches 30+ loyalty and 100+ airline applications to seek out the perfect worth doable.
Listed here are simply a few of these airways and applications:
Level.me works like airline reserving instruments like Skyscanner: you place in your required flight particulars (location, dates, and many others.) and it brings up all of the accessible award flights that you can e-book for that journey.
The interface is modern and straightforward to make use of, and it walks you thru each step of the reserving course of, making it nice for brand spanking new journey hackers.
How Does level.me Work?
Say you wish to e-book a flight from New York to Paris
An elective first step is syncing your awards applications with level.me. You do that by connecting level.me with AwardWallet, a free factors and miles monitoring instrument that syncs with virtually 700 rewards applications, from airline to lodge to automotive rental applications.
If you happen to already use AwardWallet, all you do is hit a button and also you’re all set.
If you happen to don’t already use AwardWallet, you’ll have to enroll (it’s free) and join all of your award applications there first. To do that, you’ll have to permit AwardWallet entry to your accounts.
Observe: If you happen to don’t really feel comfy doing that, you’ll be able to at all times manually filter by your awards applications or most popular airways. You’ll be able to select to manually filter by just a few applications or solely a selected program:
If you happen to do select to attach your award accounts to AwardWallet, you’ll see them listed within the drop-down menu like this:
Subsequent, it’s time to seek for flights.
As soon as your outcomes are up, you would possibly wish to mess around with filters and sorting, to get a very good take a look at your choices. Right here is the completed search from above, sorted by “level.me picks” (once more, which makes use of an algorithm to ship the perfect total flight):
Nevertheless, you’ll discover that whereas the variety of factors required is kind of low (simply 10,000 factors), the charges are fairly excessive ($147 USD). That is the place you in all probability will wish to begin taking part in round with dates. There could be higher choices on different days, as reward flights can fluctuate drastically by day.
On this case, this was the subsequent day’s consequence:
You’ll discover that whereas the factors required are larger, the price is decrease. To see which is a greater deal, you would possibly wish to use a factors calculator such because the one provided by The Factors Man, which is continually up to date with present level valuations.
The correct selection additionally is dependent upon your private state of affairs. For instance, you might need tons of Chase factors however not many Citi factors (or vice versa). For this instance, let’s assume you’ve gotten a ton of miles and like to make use of much less money. Which means the second possibility is clearly the higher one for you.
When you’ve picked your redemption possibility, hit “view reserving choices” and also you’ll see this:
Select your most popular possibility, and it’ll deliver you to a web page that offers you an summary of the three primary steps within the reserving course of and what you want to do:
Subsequent, level.me walks you thru every step of really reserving the flight, with screenshots and even movies on the right-hand aspect that present you precisely the place you want to click on. Right here you’ll be able to see the step for studying how you can switch from a bank card (American Categorical Membership factors) to an airline rewards program (Flying Blue):
All you need to do is observe the steps and e-book your most popular flight. Skilled journey hackers which might be already conversant in the method can merely click on to skip by way of these steps.
Now that we’ve gone over the method, you will have already discovered among the execs and cons of level.me. However this wouldn’t be a complete assessment with no full breakdown, so let’s have a look!
Execs of Level.me
1. The power to go looking throughout many applications without delay
The obvious professional of utilizing level.me is pulling up all accessible award flights in your desired journey. With out this instrument, you’d have to go looking throughout all of the applications during which you’ve gotten factors and miles. That entails logging into every web site, discovering the award charts, factoring in any charges, and evaluating throughout all applications. It’s not that arduous, but it surely does take time.
2. Enhanced search options
level.me additionally contains enhanced search options that aren’t accessible elsewhere. These present mixed-cabin flights (which means that you just’ll be in several lessons on completely different legs of the route, resembling financial system on one leg and enterprise on one other). These may be nice choices should you’re taking a protracted journey and wish to pay for the longest leg in a extra comfy (and costlier) class however nonetheless lower your expenses by touring in financial system class on shorter legs.
There may be additionally a “level.me picks” filter, which ostensibly makes use of an algorithm to seek out the very best choices throughout the board. It reveals you essentially the most comfy flight accessible (i.e., the fewest transfers and shortest layovers) for the perfect level redemption. Generally this is similar as sorting by “factors low to excessive” (that’s, from the bottom to the best variety of factors required), however not at all times. It’s good to see at a look what you’re working with.
Lastly, it highlights applications which might be presently providing switch bonuses, which is when applications provide extra factors should you switch between applications earlier than a sure date.
3. You’ll be able to join your awards accounts
I like the flexibility to attach all of your awards accounts to level.me by syncing with AwardWallet. For our function of monitoring airline factors, you solely want to attach your airline and journey bank card applications, however if you wish to use it to trace the whole lot, go wild!
4. The interface is straightforward to make use of
The web site could be very easy and straightforward to make use of, and for newer journey hackers, it walks you thru each step of the method, with screenshots and suggestions.
Cons of Level.me
1. The subscription price
level.me has a month-to-month price: $12 per 30 days, or $129 a yr (there’s a ten% low cost whenever you pay yearly). You too can pay for a one-time day-pass for simply $5, so you’ll be able to test it out and even e-book a flight.
Nevertheless, should you’re new to journey hacking and haven’t fairly memorized the ins and outs of every program, $12 is a discount when you think about the potential financial savings level.me provides.
And, as a Nomadic Matt reader, you will get your first month for simply $1 with the code NOMADICMATT.
2. The search choices want some enchancment
One other downside is that, as of the time of writing, you’ll be able to solely search by particular airport, with no skill to go looking by metropolis.
For cities with only one primary airport, this isn’t a problem, however should you’re trying to fly between cities with a couple of airport, like in our instance search from NYC to Paris, for instance, there are numerous airport combos that you just could be open to. Proper now, you should search individually for JFK to CDG and JFK to ORY, and probably even embody EWR (Newark) to cowl all of your bases.
You can also’t use versatile dates or a date vary to go looking, one thing that’s key when reserving award flights, as they will fluctuate drastically relying on the day (that is even a tip that time.me highlights within the pointers provided whilst you wait). For now, you need to search by particular person dates, which may get tedious.
Who’s Level.me For?
level.me is particularly geared towards vacationers which might be newer to redeeming factors for award flights. If that’s you, utilizing it’s a no-brainer, because it makes the whole course of easy, saving you time (and cash) within the course of.
However even skilled journey hackers can get quite a lot of worth out of the web site, because it actually does pace up the method of discovering award flights. If you happen to’re a professional that already has a course of down pat for reserving award flights, you then won’t see the good thing about utilizing an internet site like this.
