Gift cards, Game Pass, sweepstakes, donations — what each one is actually worth per point, the 90-day credit expiry that catches people out, and why hoarding points has cost users more than it earned.
Redeem for a gift card, take the largest denomination you can afford, and don't sit on a huge balance. Every redemption in the catalog converts at roughly 1,000 points ≈ $1, so there is no hidden jackpot to hold out for — the only real levers are the Gold tier discount, occasional Rewards sales, and not letting points rot.
Here's how the main options compare:
| Redemption | Rough rate | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Gift cards (Xbox, Microsoft, Amazon, retail) | ~1,050 pts per $1 | Best default |
| Gift cards at Gold tier | ~945 pts per $1 | Best available |
| Charity donations | ~1,000 pts per $1 | Same rate, different reason |
| Sweepstakes entries | Effectively $0 for almost everyone | Skip |
| Xbox Game Pass | No longer direct — buy a card first | See below |
Everything past that is detail. But the detail is where people lose points.
Note: Catalog prices move by region, change without announcement, and Microsoft has adjusted Rewards values repeatedly through 2026. Your own redeem page is the source of truth — check it before planning around any number here.
The US catalog has historically listed a $5 gift card at 5,250 points and a $10 card at about 10,500 points. That's a flat ~1,050 points per dollar, or just under 0.1 cents per point.
Two things worth knowing:
Bigger denominations are not usually better. Unlike most loyalty programs, Microsoft doesn't meaningfully discount the larger cards — $10 costs about twice what $5 costs. Take the larger card because it's fewer transactions and fewer expiry windows to track, not because the rate improves.
Xbox and Microsoft-branded cards are the most reliably stocked. Third-party retail cards (Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, and rotating regional partners) come and go, and "temporarily unavailable" is a common sight on the popular ones. If you're waiting for a specific retailer to restock, you're taking on expiry risk for no rate improvement.
Gold tier gives up to 10% off redemptions, and Microsoft has been surfacing this as a flat 200-point discount on selected Roblox and Xbox digital cards rather than a uniform percentage.
That takes a $5 card from ~5,250 points to roughly ~4,725 — about 945 points per dollar. It's a ~10% raise on the entire program, and it's the single largest redemption-side lever available to a normal user.
Since Gold requires 750 points plus two level-up activities each month — tier status is re-earned monthly, not held for life — you need to keep clearing that bar to hold the discount. If you're redeeming without Gold, check your tier first; you may already have the discount and not be using it.
Microsoft also periodically runs Rewards sales that discount catalog items outright. These aren't scheduled or announced far ahead, so they're not something to plan around, but if you happen to be sitting on a redeemable balance when one lands, that's the moment to use it.
This is the biggest change most returning users miss. You can no longer redeem points directly for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate — Microsoft removed that option in October 2025.
The old deal was genuinely good: 35,000 points for three months of Ultimate. At the then-price that beat the gift card rate comfortably, and it was the standard advice for anyone with an Xbox.
Now the path is indirect: redeem points for an Xbox or Microsoft gift card, then apply that balance to your subscription. That drops you back to the ordinary ~1,000-points-per-dollar rate. With Ultimate at $22.99/month as of April 2026, a single month costs roughly 23,000 points — where three months once cost 35,000.
It's still the most popular destination for points among Xbox users, and if you're paying for Ultimate anyway, routing points through a card to offset it is perfectly sensible. Just don't go in expecting the old exchange rate.
Sweepstakes are the worst use of points for almost everyone. They're a lottery: the expected value is the prize divided by the entrant pool, and the entrant pool for a Microsoft Rewards sweepstakes is very large. The overwhelming majority of entries return nothing. If you enjoy the lottery aspect, spend a small slice — but treating sweepstakes as a value play is a mistake, and it's the one thing the Rewards community is close to unanimous about.
Donations are a different question entirely. They convert at the same ~1,000 points per $1, so you're not giving up rate — you're choosing where the dollar goes. Microsoft has run matching promotions around major giving seasons that double donated points, and during those windows a donation is genuinely the highest-value redemption in the catalog. Outside them, it's rate-neutral and comes down to what you want.
This trips up more users than any pricing detail, because the two clocks are completely different:
Points expire after 18 consecutive months of no earning or redeeming. This is generous — if you use Rewards at all, you'll never hit it.
Microsoft account credit you've redeemed points into expires in 90 days. This one is brutal and catches people constantly. Converting points to account credit and then forgetting about it can zero out months of work. If you redeem for credit rather than a card, spend it promptly.
There's also an annual ceiling: you can redeem up to 550,000 points per year. No normal Bing-side earner will approach that — it only matters at the far end of the Xbox and Game Pass earning categories.
The instinct is to save toward something big. The track record says otherwise.
Over the past two years Microsoft has cut Daily Set values in half, folded mobile searching into a shared cap, removed direct Game Pass redemption, and rebuilt the entire tier system with substantially lower daily ceilings. Points have not been devalued directly very often — but the things you could buy with them have gotten worse, and options have disappeared outright.
A user who banked 35,000 points in 2025 for three months of Game Pass and waited found that option gone, their balance now worth about a month and a half of the same subscription.
The practical rule: redeem when you cross a denomination threshold, not when you hit an aspirational target. Take the $10 card at 10,500 points rather than grinding to 13,000 for a Roblox tier, unless the Roblox card is specifically what you want. A card in hand doesn't get repriced.
The exception is a Rewards sale or a donation match — those are the only situations where waiting has reliably paid.
Redemption is the easy half. The tedious half is the daily routine: run the searches, work through the Daily Set, click the activity tiles, stop when the counter stops moving. That's what Points Harvest automates.
It reads your live points counter off the Rewards dashboard rather than assuming a fixed cap, so it stops when your tier's ceiling is actually reached instead of burning searches that earn nothing. Delays between actions are drawn from a human-shaped distribution rather than a fixed interval, which avoids the throttle that costs manual searchers points. It works through the Explore on Bing cards, the Daily Set, and the More Activities tiles, and pauses on quizzes and polls so you can answer those yourself — or answers them for you if you turn on auto-answer. A full run takes about 2–5 minutes.
Worth stating plainly, as we do everywhere on this site: automating Microsoft Rewards is against the Microsoft Rewards Terms of Service. Microsoft suspends accounts for automation, and a suspended account loses its unredeemed balance — which is a redemption risk, not just an earning one. Weigh that against a payout that now sits near $3/month at Silver (about $5 at Gold).
If you want to see what it does before deciding, the getting started guide walks through installation and a first run.
What's the best way to redeem Microsoft Rewards points? A gift card, at Gold tier for the ~10% discount. Everything in the catalog converts at roughly the same rate, so the discount is the only real edge.
How much is a Microsoft Rewards point worth? About 0.1 cents — roughly 1,000 points per $1, or ~1,050 points per $1 at standard gift card pricing. Gold brings that to about 945.
Can I still redeem points for Game Pass Ultimate? Not directly — Microsoft removed that in October 2025. You redeem for an Xbox or Microsoft gift card and apply the balance to your subscription, at about 23,000 points per month of Ultimate.
Do Microsoft Rewards points expire? Points expire after 18 months of no earning or redeeming. But Microsoft account credit you've already redeemed into expires in 90 days — that's the one that actually costs people.
Are Microsoft Rewards sweepstakes worth it? For nearly everyone, no. The expected return is far below what the same points fetch as a gift card.
Should I save my points or redeem them? Redeem as you cross denomination thresholds. Microsoft has removed and repriced redemption options repeatedly, and there's no rate bonus for a bigger balance. Wait only for a Rewards sale or a donation match.
Is there a limit on redeeming? 550,000 points per year, which no Bing-side earner will realistically reach.