Cashback vs Points: UK Cardholder Guide

Everyone who looks seriously at points eventually asks the same awkward question. Why am I doing all this Avios admin when a flat cashback card would just give me money? It's a fair challenge and the answer depends entirely on how you actually travel.

What the UK cashback side looks like

The headline options most British shoppers consider:

Amex Platinum Cashback Everyday. Free, no fee. 0.5% on the first £10k of annual spend and 1% above that. Capped, but a sensible no-fee baseline.
Amex Platinum Cashback. £25/year. 1% on the first £10k, 1.25% above.
Chase debit card. 1% on most spend for the first year, then a few specific categories. Not a credit card, so no Section 75.

That's the realistic ceiling: around 1-1.25% back in cash, no thinking required, no programme to manage. On £20,000 of annual spend you're looking at £200-250 in your bank account.

What the same spend earns in points

Take the same £20,000 of annual spend on the headline UK points cards:

Free Barclaycard Avios. 20,000 Avios. At a realistic 1p per Avios in cash-equivalent terms, that's £200. Same as cashback.
Barclaycard Avios Plus (£240/year). 30,000 Avios plus an Upgrade Voucher at £10k spend. The voucher alone can be worth several hundred pounds on a long-haul Business booking. Net: comfortably ahead of cashback for anyone using the voucher.
Amex BA Premium Plus (£300/year). 30,000 Avios plus a Companion Voucher at £15k spend. The voucher's real-world value is typically £1,500-3,000 on long-haul Business.

So which wins?

Cashback wins if any of these describe you:

You fly once or twice a year, mostly short-haul Economy.
The thought of managing an airline account and timing redemptions makes you tired.
You spend modestly on cards, so the absolute amounts involved are small either way.

Points wins, often by a wide margin, if all of these are true:

You take a long-haul trip in Premium or Business at least once a year.
You'll actually pay attention long enough to use a Companion Voucher within its two-year life.
You spend £10,000+/year on cards anyway, so hitting voucher thresholds happens without effort.

The hybrid most UK collectors actually run

Nobody serious about points runs only one card. The defensible setup for most British households is a cashback Amex for spend you'd otherwise put on a debit card (groceries, bills, anything indistinct), plus one points-earning card for the big spend that pushes you towards a voucher threshold. You get the predictability of cash on small stuff and the upside of a Companion Voucher on the big stuff. Best of both, very little extra admin.

The honest line

If you'd struggle to point at a long-haul redemption you'd actually book in the next 24 months, take the cashback. Points are an investment in future trips and they reward people who commit to using them. They reward everyone else with a balance that quietly devalues.