Independent comparison.

The product.

What's live today is the comparison: card rankings and per-destination research, refreshed on a schedule, with every claim dated and labelled.

The destination cost index is still calibrating and has no published figures yet. When it publishes, it will carry one standardized number per destination per month: the Nth percentile of mid-tier hotels-only inventory inside the city's central polygon. We won't blend price feeds. We won't promise a real-time hotel price. We will sample once a month, archive the methodology, and readers will be able to cite a dated number.

Around that sits the writing: per-destination context, structurally-recommended credit cards (no points-pricing math), a handful of honest calculators (native units first, conservative cash-back floor as the secondary anchor).

What's deliberately not here: TPG-style "points are worth X cents" valuations, synthetic real-time hotel quotes, redemption-sweet-spot speculation, anything that requires us to overclaim a number we can't back.

Why this exists.

Most travel-rewards publications optimize for two failure modes. They quote prices that change before the page renders ("hotels from $200/night!"), and they value points at numbers favorable to their affiliate revenue ("this signup is worth $1,500").

Both make for content that ranks well on Google and lies to readers.

We chose the harder version: standardize what we measure, date every figure, label every claim, and decline to do the math we can't defend. The result is slower content that travels further once it's published, because it doesn't decay and it doesn't require trust.

Why you can trust this index.

Anyone can post a price. We publish a standardized, sourced, dated one. Affiliate commissions never change our editorial inclusion, rankings, or verdicts.

How we're funded (and not).

Rewardopedia is independently operated. We may earn a commission when you book travel through affiliate links, at no extra cost to you. We do not run sponsored placements or accept payment to elevate or rank cards.

Travel and activity links that are affiliates are disclosed where they appear. Affiliate commissions never change our editorial inclusion, rankings, or verdicts. Card placement is decided by the method behind every card surface, like structural categories, no-foreign-transaction-fee flags, and whether a transfer partner exists, not by commission.

If our affiliate relationships change, we update this disclosure and the public methodology with a dated change-log entry.