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AwardWallet just moved one of its most-relied-on free features behind a paywall. Starting October 1, seeing when your points and miles expire — and getting alerted before they do — requires an AwardWallet Plus subscription. If you’ve been leaning on the free tier to keep your accounts from quietly expiring, that safety net is about to have a $49.99-a-year price tag on it.
What Changed
AwardWallet emailed its free-tier users directly with the news: expiration dates and expiration alerts are becoming an AwardWallet Plus-only feature effective October 1. Until now, a free account could see expiration dates for up to three linked loyalty programs and received alerts across all of its linked accounts, regardless of how many. After October 1, both of those go away unless you’re paying.
The change was confirmed directly through AwardWallet’s own user communication and reported by Frequent Miler. The effective date is firm; what’s still anecdotal is how members are reacting — and reaction in the comment threads has not been warm.
Free Tier Before vs. After October 1
| Feature | Free (Before Oct 1) | Free (After Oct 1) | AwardWallet Plus ($49.99/yr) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balance tracking | Yes, all linked accounts | Yes, all linked accounts | Yes, all linked accounts |
| Expiration dates visible | Up to 3 accounts | None | Unlimited |
| Expiration alerts | All linked accounts | None | Unlimited, plus background auto-refresh |
| Family/travel plan tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The balance-tracking core of AwardWallet isn’t going anywhere — you can still see how many points and miles you have. What’s disappearing is the part that actually protects those points: knowing a balance is about to zero out from inactivity, and getting a heads-up with enough runway to do something about it.
Why It Matters Beyond AwardWallet
AwardWallet is one of the largest account-aggregation tools in the points-and-miles space, which makes this more than a single company’s pricing decision. It’s a signal: expiration tracking — a feature that exists specifically to protect value you’ve already earned — is expensive enough to run at scale that even a major player is moving it behind a subscription. Any tool that tracks your loyalty accounts, including free ones, is under the same commercial pressure eventually.
It’s also, bluntly, an opening. Frustrated users are already naming alternatives in AwardWallet’s own comment threads — including newer, free competitors like PointsPulse — and one commenter’s line stuck out: the change is “creating their own downfall.” That’s one data point, not a trend, but it tells you where at least some of the free tier’s most engaged users are looking right now.
If What You Actually Wanted Was a Certificate Alert, Not Just a Date
Here’s the thing worth being precise about: AwardWallet’s expiration alert tells you a date is coming. It doesn’t tell you what to actually do about it. If the thing you’re tracking is a Marriott free-night certificate specifically, we’ve been building PointsCrowd Concierge to close that second gap.
To be upfront about scope: Concierge isn’t a general account aggregator, and it doesn’t track every loyalty program the way AwardWallet does — right now it’s built specifically around Marriott Bonvoy. What it does within that scope is go a step further than a bare alert:
- Proactive certificate alerts — flags a free-night certificate before it expires, the same core job AwardWallet’s free tier used to do.
- Wallet-grounded picks — instead of just a warning, it recommends specific stays sized to the certificate and points you actually hold, not generic advice.
- Honest tradeoffs — each recommendation comes with the caveats attached, not just a headline pick.
It’s currently in closed beta, invite-only, so this isn’t a drop-in replacement for AwardWallet today — particularly if you’re tracking balances across a dozen different airline and hotel programs the way AwardWallet is built for. But if Marriott certificates are the specific thing you were relying on a free alert to protect, requesting beta access is worth doing before your existing tracking method gets more expensive.
Bottom Line
AwardWallet’s free tier still tracks your balances after October 1 — it just won’t warn you before those balances quietly expire, unless you pay $49.99 a year for AwardWallet Plus. That’s a real loss if you’ve leaned on the free alerts, and it’s a reminder that any “free forever” tracking feature usually isn’t. If your main exposure is Marriott free-night certificates specifically, it’s worth a look at what else exists in this space before you decide whether to pay up or track manually.
