Travel points value calculator

Zero points cost is rejected with invalid_input instead of inventing infinity.

How to call the API and what comes back

Send a JSON body with two required finite numbers and one optional number. cash_value (aliases cash, fare, price, cash_price) is the paid cash price of the same product in major currency units—dollars, euros, or whatever unit you already quote fares in—and must be greater than or equal to zero and at most one billion. points_cost (aliases points, miles, cost_points, award_points) is the award price in points or miles; it must be strictly greater than zero and at most one billion. baseline_cpp (aliases baseline, target_cpp, target) is the cents-per-point floor you want to beat; when omitted it defaults to one and a half. On success the response echoes rounded cash_value, points_cost, and baseline_cpp, sets cash_cents to cash_value times one hundred, cents_per_point to cash_cents divided by points_cost, margin_cpp to cents_per_point minus baseline, value_ratio to cents_per_point divided by baseline when the baseline is positive, beats_baseline to true only when cents_per_point is strictly greater than the baseline, formula to the canonical string, message to a short English summary, and steps to an ordered array of substitution lines. Failed validation—missing fields, non-finite numbers, values outside published limits, zero or near-zero points_cost, or a non-finite CPP—returns invalid_input and is never charged. Pricing is a flat $0.002 per successful request with unit item and zero marginal unit price.

Practical tips, limits, and related searches

Prefer sending numbers rather than pre-formatted currency strings; string numbers are accepted only when they match a strict finite numeric pattern without currency symbols. Use the same currency for every comparison in a batch—mixing a euro cash fare with a dollar mental baseline will not be converted for you. Prefer this capability when you already know the cash alternative and the points price and only need CPP plus a baseline comparison; if your source is a screenshot of an award search, extract those two numbers first. Keep cash and points inside the published absolute ranges so intermediate products remain finite in IEEE double precision on the Worker and in the browser. When teaching, pair examples: four hundred cash and forty thousand points at a one-point-five baseline yields one cent per point and does not beat the baseline; six hundred cash and forty thousand points yields one and a half cents and still does not beat a one-point-five floor under the strict greater-than rule; eight hundred cash and forty thousand points yields two cents and beats the baseline; and a zero points_cost demonstrates the hard invalid_input path. This landing targets people searching for a travel points value calculator, cents per point award tool, or redemption baseline checker; it is not a live award-chart scraper, not a multi-currency converter, and not a loyalty-program valuation model that invents program-specific multipliers. Failed tasks that return invalid_input do not consume prepaid balance, which keeps exploratory scripts cheap when learners deliberately set points to zero. Round-trip checks are easy: recompute cash times one hundred divided by points by hand and confirm it equals the published cents_per_point within the same twelve-decimal rounding, and confirm that raising only the cash fare flips beats_baseline from false to true once CPP crosses the baseline.