Affiliate Disclosure

We believe in full transparency. Here's exactly how Award Optimizer earns money — and how it affects (or doesn't affect) our recommendations.

The Short Version

Award Optimizer is free to use. We earn small commissions when you click affiliate links on our site and make a booking — at no extra cost to you. These commissions help us keep the site running, the data updated, and the tools free.

Affiliate relationships do not influence our award chart data, program rankings, or editorial content. We never rank a program higher because of an affiliate arrangement — only because the CPP math says so.

Our Affiliate Programs

Commission Junction (CJ) — Hotel & Flight Booking

We are a publisher in the CJ Affiliate network (Publisher ID 101720496). When you click a booking button on our destination or blog pages and complete a reservation, we may receive a commission from these partners:

Partner What They Offer Network
Hotels.com Hotel search & booking worldwide CJ
Expedia Hotels, flights, vacation packages CJ
VRBO Vacation rental homes CJ
Orbitz Hotel & flight booking CJ
Travelocity Hotel & flight booking CJ
CheapTickets Discounted flights & hotels CJ

Travelpayouts — Tours & Activities

We are also a partner in the Travelpayouts network (Publisher ID 706871, Project "Awardoptimizer"). Partners include:

Partner What They Offer Commission Rate
Klook Tours, activities & experiences worldwide 2–5%
Tiqets Museum, attraction & event tickets 3.5–8%
Kiwi.com Flight search including multi-stop routes ~3%

How to Identify Affiliate Links

Affiliate links on this site are marked with rel="sponsored" in the HTML and typically appear as booking buttons (e.g., "Hotels.com", "Klook", "Tiqets") inside highlighted booking sections labeled Sponsored.

Award data, program rankings, and editorial analysis on Award Optimizer are never sponsored or paid for by any airline, bank, or travel company.

Questions?

If you have any questions about our affiliate relationships, email us at hello@awardoptimizer.com.

Last updated: April 2026.