If you’ve at all familiar with the world of points and miles, you probably already know that the game is usually played with credit cards at the center: you spend, you earn, you transfer, you fly and/or stay. But what if you could layer an entirely separate currency on top of all of that, without opening a single new card?
That’s what Rove Miles does. And if you’re not using it yet, you’re leaving miles on the table.
This complete guide covers it all: what Rove is, how it works, why it’s more like Rakuten than Chase, and the specific features that make it genuinely useful, not just another tab to have open.
What Is Rove Miles?
Rove Miles is a travel rewards program that launched in 2025. It lets you earn transferable miles through hotel bookings, flight bookings, and online shopping. The catch? It’s all without requiring a credit card.
The program was founded as a more “inclusive” travel rewards program, since many (especially young people and those without the credit score required to open points-earning card products) are often excluded from award travel. Whether or not you agree with the framing, the product is legitimately useful. At its core, Rove combines three things into a single platform: a hotel and flight booking portal, an online shopping portal, and a transferable points currency. Miles you can earn through shopping or booking through their platform can be transferred to more than 17 global partners (at the time of writing), including all three major airline alliances – Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam, plus – some interesting non-alliance partners.
The best part? It’s entirely free, and since it’s not a card, it requires no credit score or other financial history. You can get started at rovemiles.com
How You Earn Rove Miles
There are three earning channels, and they are all distinct.
Hotels (arguably, the main event)
When you book a hotel through the Rove portal, you can find fantastic rates that earn Rove’s miles – regularly up to 25x Rove Miles per dollar spent on non-refundable stays. Those miles will also post instantly. Rather than pocketing its hotel booking commission as margin, Rove passes the majority back to users as miles, meaning you can earn massive rates on your bookings. This is especially useful for boutique hotels or when going to a place that does not have a specific hotel chain you may be loyal to, as you’d traditionally lose out on any hotel points on stays like those.
Instant posting matters more than it sounds. If you need 15,000 more Flying Blue miles to book a business class award, you can book a hotel now, earn the miles immediately, transfer them to Flying Blue, and complete the award booking for your flight, all within the same day. No other platform currently enables this!
Flights
Rove also allows for flight bookings with over 140 airlines that earn between 1x and 10x Rove Miles per dollar, on top of your standard airline miles and whatever your credit card pays. The earn rates on flights vary significantly by carrier and route, so I recommend checking the booking page before assuming you’re getting a strong return. Hotels are almost always the stronger play for racking up miles quickly.
Shopping Portal
Just like other shopping portals, Rove also offers miles earnings on everyday essentials to your favorite brands at over 13,000 partnered merchants. It has its own browser extension and once installed, it’ll prompt you when you’re on a partnered site, similar to how Rakuten works. Incidentally, I have noticed Rove’s earn rates often hover right around other shopping platforms (e.g., Rakuten, TopCashback, Atmos Shopping Portal), and occasionally beat them outright.
How Rove Is Different from Credit Card Points Programs (and Why It’s More Like Rakuten)
Here’s where most introductions to Rove get it wrong. People hear “transferable miles” and immediately think Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership Rewards. That comparison doesn’t quite fit.
Unlike traditional transferable points programs like Chase Ultimate Rewards or American Express Membership Rewards, Rove doesn’t require a specific credit card to earn miles. That’s not just a small distinction: it changes the entire earn model and it’s in a league of its own.
To earn Chase or Amex points, you need to spend on specific cards. The credit card is the product. Rove has no credit card; as Rove has no co-branded credit card deals to protect, it’s had an easier time signing transfer partner agreements with some unique programs that major US banks haven’t had the luck of breaking through with.
The key differences between Rove and something like Rakuten are that Rove lets you earn miles on hotel and flight bookings (Rakuten rarely does), Rove miles transfer 1:1 to airline and hotel partners (Rakuten only converts to Amex Membership Rewards and Bilt Rewards), and bookings through Rove’s Loyalty Eligible hotel booking platform let you keep hotel points and elite status credits.
Where they overlap is the shopping portal. Both let you earn rewards at thousands of online retailers. You can’t stack them on the same purchase, so it’s worth checking both portals before you click through.
In short, Rove fits right alongside Rakuten when the earn rates are right.
The Real Power Move: Stacking
Here’s where Rove shines through.
Every earn method on the Rove Miles platform stacks on top of credit card rewards, so you can earn Rove Miles in addition to your everyday credit card’s points and miles. That means a single hotel booking can generate rewards from three or more sources simultaneously.
Take a hotel stay as an example. Book through Rove using your Chase Sapphire Preferred or Amex Gold, and you earn:
- Rove Miles on the booking (rates vary greatly but regularly approach up to 25x per dollar on non-refundable rates)
- Credit card points on the charge
- Hotel loyalty points, if you are able to book a Loyalty Eligible rate (more on this below)
- You can even stack with Amex Offers, Chase Offers, and Citi Merchant Offers on Loyalty Eligible bookings (this is because the hotel is the merchant of record for Rove’s bookings, meaning the charge should appear on your card statement as being directly from the hotel)
For example, let’s say book a loyalty-eligible rate at a Hyatt for $1000 on the World of Hyatt card from Chase. You may earn:
- 4x points from the charge to your credit card (+4,000 Hyatt points)
- 5x Rove miles from making the booking through Rove (+5,000 Rove Miles)
- 5x points on the room rate for being a World of Hyatt Member and providing your membership number to Rove when making the booking (a bit less than +5,000 Hyatt points as you will not earn on the taxes/fees associated with the booking)
Even without any merchant offers, you’d earn potentially more than $200 of points and miles depending on how much you value them.
This is the stacking model in practice. No single one of these rewards streams is life-changing on its own. Combined, they add up to meaningful miles on purchases you were already going to make.
What Makes Rove Unique
Two features set Rove apart from any other booking platform right now.
Loyalty Eligible Stays
Every other third-party booking platform (Expedia, Booking.com, most credit card travel portals) operates on a simple rule: book through us, and you forfeit your hotel loyalty points and status benefits. The hotel wants you booking direct. That’s the trade-off.
Rove changes the calculus. Its loyalty eligible rates let you earn Rove Miles and hotel points on your stays. While certainly not all hotels in major loyalty programs like Hyatt, Accor Live Limitless, Hilton, etc. will always offer such rates, when you can find a rate, it’s always worth booking through Rove if the rate to book direct with the program is the same. Any benefits you might get through hotel status like complimentary breakfast, room upgrades, elite night credit, complimentary Wi-Fi, late check-out, and early check-in would remain intact while you earn Rove miles on the stay.
The trade-off is earn rate. Loyalty Eligible bookings earn fewer Rove Miles per dollar than the standard non-refundable Rove rate (typically around 5x vs. up to 25x). Whether the hotel points and status benefits are worth the lower Rove earn rate depends on your specific situation: how valuable your hotel status perks are, how close you are to a status tier, and whether the nightly rate difference (if any) changes the math.
If you need miles quickly, booking a non-refundable Rove rate might help you get there. If you need the status credit, the loyalty-eligible rate is worth the wait (but plan accordingly since loyalty eligible rates often take up to six weeks to post).
Transfer Partners
This is where Rove earns its place in a serious points strategy. Rove currently has more than 15 transfer partners, including some rare programs like Lufthansa Miles & More, Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, and SAS EuroBonus.
A few of these partners are worth calling out specifically:
Japan Airlines Mileage Bank: JAL miles have historically been very hard to accumulate for U.S.-based travelers. Bilt Points are the only major credit card currency that transfers to JAL at a 1:1 ratio; Capital One miles transfer at a 2:1.5 ratio. Rove now provides a 1:1 path to JAL. This can help unlock fantastic flights such as the carrier’s new A350 first-class suite from the U.S. to Japan that starts at just 70,000 miles each way.
Lufthansa Miles & More: Miles & More is the combined loyalty program for Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways, and Eurowings. Previous to Rove, it had no U.S. bank transfer partnerships. While a foreign program to most US-based consumers, it often offers bargains on round-trip business class fares to Europe – with as much as 50% off the standard mile price.
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club: Virgin Atlantic is known for ultra-competitive award pricing. Its saver awards start at just 6,000 points each way for select transatlantic flights. It’s also one of the best ways to book Delta flights for domestic redemptions.
Accor Live Limitless: The one hotel program in the transfer mix. Accor has over 5,600 hotels worldwide, including brands like Banyan Tree, Fairmont, Mondrian, and SLS. Despite the less favorable 1.5:1 transfer ratio here, it’s still a great program.
Rove mile transfers are generally instant but cannot be reversed (similar to card programs), so confirm award availability before you move miles.
Note: Rove’s transfer partner list has been growing quickly. Verify the current roster at rovemiles.com before making any moves.
Is Rove Worth Adding to Your Setup?
Very simply: yes.
Rove is not a replacement for Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, nor Bilt. Those more established programs have deeper partner ecosystems, guaranteed credit card earn rates on spend, and years of proven track records. Rove is an additive layer to those ecosystems.
The strongest use cases right now are booking hotels where the earn rate is genuinely competitive, accessing JAL Mileage Bank or Lufthansa Miles & More, and stacking on top of existing credit card and hotel loyalty earnings. If any of those apply to a trip you’re already planning, Rove earns its place.
Sign up for free here for automatic bonus miles to start building your stash.