Earn factors, miles or cash again: Maximize online shopping portals for your purchases

Many of us usually store at retail shops and websites for pet provides, house decor, clothes and presents. In the face of rising prices, we additionally look for each doable method to economize.

Unfortunately, these kinds of purchases not often fall into the bonus classes on rewards bank cards, making it tougher to earn additional factors, miles or cash again whenever you store online.

That’s the place online shopping portals are available.

Related: How to earn factors, miles and cash-back rewards on pet bills

Online shopping portals provide a straightforward method to earn bonus factors, miles or cash again on purchases you are already making. For occasion, Rakuten is at the moment providing a one-time $30 bonus to new members who be a part of with a referral hyperlink (and make qualifying purchases) and to the one that referred them.

In this information, we’ll discover a number of the prime online shopping portals and how one can maximize your rewards when shopping.

Basics of online shopping portals

At essentially the most fundamental stage, shopping portals permit you to earn bonus factors, miles or cash again at a whole bunch of online retailers.

You can both log in to your online shopping portal of selection, click on the shop the place you wish to store and be redirected to the shop’s web site to buy as regular, or you may obtain the portal’s browser extension. Browser extensions make it even simpler to obtain rewards for online shopping as a result of they are going to robotically show the incomes charge and any out there low cost codes whenever you go to an eligible shopping web site. Some portals, together with Rakuten, even have an app you should utilize in case you are shopping by way of a cellular gadget.

Related: The finest journey rewards bank cards

You’re nonetheless buying the identical gadgets immediately from the service provider, however since you began on the shopping portal, you may earn bonus factors, miles or cash again. However, this usually solely applies to the subtotal of your buy (excluding taxes and transport charges). In addition, you may nonetheless earn factors or miles on the rewards bank card you utilize, making this a straightforward method to double dip.

Here’s an instance utilizing Rakuten: Let’s say you propose on shopping for $100 price of faculty clothes for your kids from Macy’s.

Before going straight to the shop’s web site, you go to Rakuten’s web site and spot it’s providing 2% cash again at Macy’s. So you click on by way of to Macy’s from Rakuten and make your buy as regular, incomes $2 within the course of.

If you had shopped immediately on macys.com, you’d’ve missed out on the additional $2 you bought by way of Rakuten. You’ve earned further rewards — and you are still getting the identical merchandise for the identical worth. Plus, with Rakuten, you may decide to earn American Express Membership Rewards factors as a substitute of cash again. Therefore, from this buy, you possibly can earn 200 Amex factors, which TPG values at $4 per our April 2025 valuations.

You would possibly marvel how these portals can do that. After all, they do say nothing in life is free. But there is not any catch right here. In change for directing you to a specified service provider, the portal will take a minimize of any buy you make from the retailer. It’s a win-win-win scenario for all concerned: The service provider will get extra enterprise, the portal generates extra income and also you earn additional rewards.

You might imagine that an additional few {dollars} or factors right here and there will not make a lot of a distinction. However, if you happen to constantly make the most of shopping portals, you may simply rack up a major quantity of factors, miles or cash again in a yr.

The great thing about this course of is that you just’re incomes further rewards for stuff you would’ve purchased anyway — an particularly savvy transfer to handle value will increase for every little thing from groceries to furnishings and computer systems.

Types of online shopping portals

Now that you understand how they work, let’s check out the key varieties of shopping portals on the market. You can usually group them into three classes:

• Airline loyalty packages
• Credit playing cards
• Cash again

Let’s dive into every one to get a way of the chances.

Airline loyalty packages

Almost each main airline has an online shopping portal, and so they work equally. While the precise login course of could fluctuate barely, every one will award bonus factors or miles primarily based on your purchases throughout a whole bunch of outlets.

These are the most well-liked airline shopping portals:

In addition to the usual incomes charges these websites provide, many often run promotions as an added incentive. These usually cowl transactions throughout all collaborating retailers over a set interval, and you may often earn totally different bonuses relying on how a lot you spend in complete. For instance, bonuses usually launch across the winter holidays or back-to-school time. Be positive to bookmark our everlasting web page to maintain up with these affords.

Finally, some portals will permit you to hyperlink your bank card and earn further factors and miles for in-store shopping — like this set of outlets by way of United’s web site.

Credit playing cards

Some card issuers provide their very own online shopping portals the place you may stack your bank card earnings. They are:

To make the most of most of those portals, you need to have an energetic, eligible bank card account that earns rewards within the financial institution’s program. The exception is Capital One Shopping, which is free and out there to everybody. You can entry a few of these by shopping by way of the portal’s web site, and others provide browser extensions.

If you’ve got a Chase card that earns Ultimate Rewards factors, understand that Chase permits 1:1 transfers to greater than a dozen journey companions. You may successfully earn Hyatt factors, United miles or British Airways Avios, for instance, by logging in to your Chase account and launching Shop Through Chase.

Although American Express does not have its personal shopping portal, there’s a method to earn bonus Amex factors when shopping online (extra on that in a bit).

Cash again

The remaining class of online shopping portals consists of these providing additional cash again on your purchases. This is a superb possibility for anybody who does not wish to trouble with maintaining monitor of airline miles or bank card factors. In some situations, you may even earn bonuses for reserving resort reservations by way of these websites.

That being mentioned, going for cash again additionally provides complexity, as there are over a dozen competing websites on the market. Some of our favorites are:

Most charges are within the 1%-5% vary, although chances are you’ll discover limited-time specials at choose retailers.

Hybrid possibility

One of the most effective websites — and the one which TPG staffers use most often — is Rakuten. In addition to cash again, you even have the choice to earn American Express Membership Rewards factors at a ratio of 1 cent to 1 Membership Rewards level, so a service provider providing 1% cash again would as a substitute present 1 level per greenback spent.

Based on TPG’s April 2025 valuations, which peg Amex factors at 2 cents apiece, opting for factors over cash again successfully doubles your return with Rakuten. Since the positioning works with over 3,500 shops, it is among the many most expansive online shopping portals. It has a browser extension that can notify you when a service provider affords a bonus, and it additionally has in-store affords.

How do I discover the most effective provide?

As you may see, it is a dizzying array of choices — and if you happen to’re feeling overwhelmed, you are not alone. Fortunately, there is a quick, simple method to kind by way of them for your subsequent online shopping spree.

Let’s say you are able to make a purchase order at a particular retailer, however you do not know which shopping portal to make use of. You have accounts with just about each program mentioned above, however does that imply it’s good to manually load every portal to see what bonus you’d earn?

Thanks to the magic of shopping portal aggregators like Cashback Monitor, you do not. If you have by no means used it, you need to undoubtedly bookmark it for future reference.

In essence, a shopping portal aggregator permits you to pull up a particular retailer and see the incomes charge you’d get throughout all relevant shopping portals. This permits you to shortly evaluate incomes charges and decide which portal affords the most effective return for your chosen service provider.

If you create a free account, you may entry superior options like selecting your favourite portals and setting a worth for every loyalty foreign money. The default on the positioning is 1 cent per level or mile, however if you happen to add the numbers from TPG’s most up-to-date valuations (for instance), the positioning will robotically replace the return you’d get on your purchases — as you see within the above screenshot.

Related: Why transferable factors are price greater than different rewards

Additionally, as a substitute of making an attempt to recollect every totally different shopping portal, you may merely add a browser extension to Google Chrome. While you are shopping, this browser extension will inform you of offers and reductions and generally provide coupons at checkout.

Important suggestions and reminders

Accessing online shopping portals is comparatively easy, however there are a number of important issues to bear in mind:

• You should click on by way of the hyperlink on the portal’s web site or activate the browser extension provide earlier than making your buy. Don’t navigate away and return later; chances are you’ll miss out on rewards.
• You should guarantee your browser has cookies enabled for the retailer’s web site. This permits the portal to trace your purchases and award bonuses accordingly.
• Only use promotions or promo codes discovered on the portal; if you happen to use others, the acquisition could turn out to be ineligible for bonus factors or miles.
• Read the restrictions for every service provider. Many will not depend reward playing cards as eligible bonus purchases; others exclude particular merchandise. Earning charges at a specific service provider could fluctuate by class — for occasion, equipment purchases at Home Depot could earn solely 0.5 factors per greenback spent, whereas house decor and kitchenware could earn 2 factors per greenback.
• Use a bank card with the most effective incomes charge on your buy. Most of those retailers do not fall into the normal bonus classes, so you may in all probability wish to persist with card for on a regular basis purchases.

That mentioned, you need to be capable of stack most Amex Offers, Chase Offers, Citi Merchant Offers and bonuses from American’s SimplyMiles web site with rewards by way of online shopping portals. The overwhelming majority of those affords are primarily based solely on the whole quantity of your buy and do not require any coupon code, so it should not create any points.

Aside from the rewards, shopping portals are a superb method to preserve loyalty accounts energetic since spending even a single greenback by way of a shopping portal might be sufficient to maintain your factors and miles from expiring. That could be a lifesaver if you have not banked journey to your account shortly and haven’t got a viable choice to switch factors from elsewhere.

Related: Your information to airline and resort eating rewards packages

Bottom line

Online shopping portals are a improbable method to earn bonus factors, miles or cash again for online purchases at varied retailers. Even if you happen to’re solely incomes an additional mile or two for each greenback you spend, these earnings can shortly add up and go a good distance towards redemptions like first-class flights and luxurious resort rooms, or even spending cash for your subsequent journey.

Now is a superb time to begin if you have not already utilized these portals. We usually suggest Rakuten as top-of-the-line choices, due to the flexibleness of Amex factors and the sheer variety of retailers on the positioning, however discover all the above choices to find out which might work finest for you.