What are Qantas Frequent Flyer points worth?
Qantas Frequent Flyer is a program that doesn’t get much attention from US-based travelers or points and miles enthusiasts. While Qantas has a distance-based award chart, it charges for point redemptions based on cumulative mileage rather than on the total for each segment, as many programs do.
Last May, Qantas made several changes to its loyalty program, with many award flights increasing in price by up to 20%. Now that the changes have been in effect for almost a full year, we were curious to see what effect they have had on the median value of Qantas points.
The short answer: not much at all.
Overview
At Frequent Miler, we keep a database of point valuations called “Reasonable Redemption Values.” These are estimates of the “worth” of airline miles, hotel points, transferable points, and more. The idea is to identify the point at which it is “reasonable” to get that much value or more from your points.
This information is critical for making informed decisions. In fact, it’s a key component of the First Year Value information shown on our Best Credit Card Offers page, and it’s similarly used to show which cards offer the best value for everyday spend and which offer the best category bonuses.
When we first started looking at the value of airline miles, we used a laborious manual process to create estimates, but we now have a much better way of pinning down their value.
Points Path, a Google Flights extension, keeps records of both the points and cash prices for all searches conducted on its platform. Points Path founder and former Frequent Miler writer Julian Kheel has made this data available to us to identify rewards program point values.
Thanks to Julian and Points Path, we now have access to results for over 172,000 domestic US and international Qantas searches, showing both the cash and award prices for the same flight (including partner flights). Using this data, we can provide a far better estimate of the “Reasonable Redemption Values” than we were ever able to obtain by using manual calculations.
Based on an analysis of Points Path’s data, we’ve concluded that the new Reasonable Redemption Value (RRV) for Qantas Frequent Flyer points is unchanged from last year = 1.3 Cents Per Point.
Points Path Data
Listed below is a summary of the raw data from Points Path. There are two values that are important to us. The median is the point at which half of the observed results offer better point values, and half have worse. We also have the average value of all the searches, in total and by booking class.
We’ve broken down Qantas data into two components: values when redeeming points for domestic US travel with oneworld partners, and values when redeeming points for international travel. In addition, each geographical region is further broken down into booking classes.
Here’s what we found:
Domestic (US)
| Cabin | Median Value (cpp) | Average Value (cpp) | Number of data points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economy | 1.15 | 1.43 | 66,554 |
| Business | 1.41 | 1.57 | 16,257 |
| First | 1.49 | 1.70 | 100 |
| Combined | 1.20 | 1.46 | 82,911 |
International
| Cabin | Median Value (cpp) | Average Value (cpp) | Number of data points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economy | 0.88 | 1.16 | 73,460 |
| Premium | 1.16 | 1.45 | 1,738 |
| Business | 1.56 | 2.47 | 14,565 |
| First | 1.02 | 1.91 | 136 |
| Combined | 0.99 | 1.38 | 89,899 |
Combined
| Cabin | Median Value (cpp) | Average Value (cpp) | Number of data points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economy | 1.01 | 1.29 | 140,014 |
| Premium | 1.16 | 1.45 | 1,738 |
| Business | 1.49 | 2.00 | 30,822 |
| First | 1.37 | 1.69 | 236 |
| Combined | 1.10 | 1.42 | 172,810 |
Calculations
For our airline RRV values, we normally use the midpoint between the average and the median. The reason is that the difference between the two is an indicator of how often more valuable sweet spots can be found in a given category.
If the median is 1 cent per point, that means half of all searches produced a value below 1 cent per point, and the other half above 1 cent per point. However, if the same data showed an average of 2 cents per point, it would mean that some of the 50% of searches that were above 1 cent per point were so far above that they doubled the result to 2 cents per point. Likely, that would indicate a higher prevalence of available sweet-spot awards with outsized redemption value… something we like to see.
Here’s what we found with Qantas:
- Points Path Median Observed Value for Qantas Frequent Flyer redemptions: 1.10 cents per point based on the past 365 days of data as of April 22, 2026)
- Points Path Mean Observed Value for Qantas Frequent Flyer redemptions: 1.42 Cents Per point (based on the past 365 days of data as of April 22, 2026)
- Range: 1.10 to 1.42.
- For our RRV, we’ll pick the midpoint between 1.10 and 1.42, then round it to 1 decimal place, or 1.3 Cents Per Point.
Note that, for Qantas, the average value is ~29% higher than the median. That indicates that, even though only half of the searches Points Path tracked showed redemptions above 1.1 cents per point, enough of those searches produced outsized value to significantly raise the average redemption to 1.42 cents per point.
Probably to no one’s surprise, the awards with the most outsized value (compared to cash prices) are international business-class flights, where the average is nearly 2.5 cents per point. To us, this means there’s at least some opportunity to get excellent value from Qantas points, especially for international business-class.
Conclusion
The exercise described above resulted in an unchanged Reasonable Redemption Value (RRV) for Qantas Frequent Flyer points of 1.3 cents each. That’s the point at which most readers are likely to get that much value or more.
Please keep in mind that this does not mean you will always get 1.3 cents per point. In practice, you’ll sometimes find better redemptions, and sometimes you’ll find worse. However, we believe that 1.3 cents is a “reasonable” expectation for what your Qantas points are “worth” when used towards award flights.
