Show HN: I built a tool to manage and compare credit card rewards

jsh1 · 2025-04-10T21:24:28.000Z

This is a free tool that helps you manage and visualize your credit card rewards across different categories.You can input the cards in your wallet and see how they complement each other, spot gaps in your setup, and also see the best card to use for a given merchant.I’m also a founder at OneCard, where we’re building a smart card that’ll eventually handle all of this automatically, routing each purchase to the best card in real-time.Would love feedback from the HN community!

lxgr 1 year ago |

Don’t make me input things without telling me that I’ll need a login to see the result.

Requiring account creation upfront is fair; this is a very unpleasant dark pattern preying on the sunk cost fallacy.

dev1398 1 year ago | |

I totally hear you! We looked at the comments here and are going to make a lot of the features on the product available without account creation! Appreciate the feedback

RamblingCTO 1 year ago | | |

Be careful to not overfit to HN comments if they're not your target audience though! Sometimes the vibe is "I don't wanna pay for stuff and I can build that myself" and that probably isn't your target audience

lxgr 1 year ago | | |

My complaint isn't about having to pay, it's about not knowing upfront whether I will.

RamblingCTO 1 year ago | | |

And that's totally valid, I agree 100%. Show me what I get and I'll happily pay

lxgr 1 year ago | | |

To be clear, it's totally fair to require account creation – data and customer relationships are currencies too, after all – in my view. (I might personally choose to not use it then, and that's just as fair.)

I'd just have liked to know about it before selecting a few of my cards, which took me a minute or so. That's too much time/effort to get nothing in return.

alex-onecard 1 year ago | | |

Thank you for the comment - based on your feedback we have enhanced a bit the experience for users without logging in.

Now on the landing page users are able to input cards to their liking and compare them at different vendors/categories to determine the best card without login.

fn42 1 year ago |

Interesting idea, thanks for sharing.

Some feedback from using:

- It said to use amex blue cash for 3% back at costco, but costco only accepts visa

- It said to use amex blue cash for 3% back at harbor freight but this card only gets 1% at this store, the BofA customized cash rewards (added to my wallet) is the only card I have found that gives 3% back on home improvement stores

- It said to use amex blue cash for 3% back at BJ's, even though the BJ's rewards card is in my wallet which gives 5% back at this store

bdangubic 1 year ago | |

the tool is sponsored by amex blue :)

dev1398 1 year ago | | |

I wish lol currently not sponsored by anyone

dev1398 1 year ago | |

These are all interesting data points that we are going to look into and once we get it right I’ll be sure to let you know! Thank you so much for the feedback

pimlottc 1 year ago |

What "AI" is involved in this? It's mostly just a few database lookups based on merchant name and/or category, isn't it? Or is that just marketing gloss, because everything is "AI" now?

dev1398 1 year ago | |

To be honest I totally forgot we left it there. We did have an AI feature baked in that we feature flagged because we wanted to get the core functionality right.

Sorry for misleading you but I think the AI feature we have planned will be worth it

pimlottc 1 year ago | | |

Well, if you're not using AI right now, you should remove that text from your website.

KeepFlying 1 year ago |

I can't find my Amazon Prime rewards card in your search, any chance it's in there under a different name?

And for my Discover It card a tool like this is t very useful unless it can handle the rotating reward category (I think one of the Chase freedom cards also has a similar program).

I can easily remember most of my static rewards categories, but managing the rotating categories is harder and is where a tool like this would help me best.

internetter 1 year ago | |

Also, many cards have temporary bonuses, like the Savor's previous 10% Uber promo. If they can handle this, thats huge.

david422 1 year ago |

Ugggh, credit card rewards. We all pay higher prices on goods because of the fees credit cards charge merchants, and then can get "rewarded" some of that money back. No thanks.

ostensible 1 year ago | |

You either play that game or subside others who do, regardless of of whether you like it or not — you are still participating. Prices are already higher for everyone.

eldaisfish 1 year ago | | |

There’s a much better option. Cap the card transaction fees by offering a public alternative.

hakfoo 1 year ago | | |

Nationalize the entire circus.

We should have some form of Faster Payments scheme, backed by the state, because cheap, reliable transaction networks are the sort of infrastructure that's good for business. At the very least, this screams "make FedNow the default payment rail". Then if people actually want to spend money that isn't theirs, let lenders build something pluggable on top, so their costs and needs are solely limited to the credit aspects, rather than skimming of of every single transfer of value.

scarface_74 1 year ago | | |

Yes and just wait for the “public alternative” to play political games with which merchants they accept.

There is already a low transaction fee network that works over the current infrastructure - debit cards.

satvikpendem 1 year ago | | |

Sure, you can wait another decade for that to happen or just play the game for today's money and benefits.

lxgr 1 year ago | |

I also dislike the concept, but whether you personally participate or not doesn't change anything about the underlying game theory causing the emergent phenomenon.

If you really dislike it, maximize your points and fund a campaign to lower credit card interchange from them :)

tiffanyh 1 year ago | |

Most of the time, you’re paying the same price even if you use cash.

lxgr 1 year ago | | |

Yes, which is what makes it so bad. Somebody else's cash payment subsidizes my credit card rewards.

zeroday28 1 year ago | | |

Most places only charge extra fees for credit cards in Japan.

scarface_74 1 year ago | |

Accepting and managing cash has costs too - external and employee theft being the main two.

Every study shows that people on average spend more when they use credit cards. If I owned a business, I wouldn’t accept cash at all.

m463 1 year ago | |

That's why lots of smaller/family restaurants are cash only.

lxgr 1 year ago | | |

That probably has at least as much to do with taxes as it has with swipe fees.

muli_d 1 year ago |

1. The website looks sleek and has good design.

2. I wish I could get a little bit more of a sneak peek / preview before needing to create an account.

3. Unrelated to the core business of your website, there's a small "bug" in the light/dark theme switch -- the first mouse click doesn't do anything (at least when "system" = "dark"). This is happening because when you launch the site for the first time and the localStorage is "clean", the "theme" value is "system". But clicking the toggle changes the value to "dark", which keeps the current theme as it is.

dev1398 1 year ago | |

THANK YOU! I’m actually pushing a fix to that right now!

bravura 1 year ago |

Recently, I signed up for two premium cards. The main benefit I wanted: Collision and damage coverage on INTERNATIONAL car rentals.

Honest feedback: I logged into your site and found it useless. I plugged in my two cards. Your site gave me such a cursory and incomplete picture of them, I would never have the information I needed.

p.s. they are literally the credit cards you have on your homepage, so I expected at least these to be complete.

lxgr 1 year ago | |

That's something I also wish existed: A credit card insurance comparison tool.

Essentially all "travel cards" offer some kind of trip cancellation or interruption insurance, but covered events vary wildly.

In some, thinks like illness of anybody on the trip is enough (not just the cardholder or immediate family members); in others, the cardholder basically needs to die in a very specific way to be eligible for any type of compensation.

Proper travel insurance is worth way more than half a percent more in points on domestic rental cars in shades of red to yellow (but not orange!) and grocery stores in states starting with "O" to me.

Henchman21 1 year ago |

What sort of information do you collect on your users? Do you resell their purchase history? Why are you as trustworthy as my bank(s)?

Genuine questions I would need answered before considering this. Super cool idea — but the devil is always in the details!

streptomycin 1 year ago |

The small % you get on each purchase is crumbs, but the cookie is the big sign up bonus you can get. For the past several years I've been making about $2k/year from that, which is so much more than the % bonus that I don't know why anyone would care about getting 3% back rather than 2%. Like if you are that worried about your money, take the free $2k first.

dhbanes 1 year ago |

I can select Amex plat but not business plat. These cards have materially different benefits and rewards earning structures.

Plus selection first then making me create an account? Feels like a scammy aggregator of some sort (even if it’s not).

Your audience will largely not appreciate the dark pattern.

Just my 2 mr points.

bix6 1 year ago |

Cool idea with the smart card.

Can you tell me when I need to get a new card offering 2.5% instead of 2% and it’s a good relative bonus? Tired of managing things.

Would like to try a simple search as a demo before making an account.

AznHisoka 1 year ago |

Why are you making people create an account? If you wanted to monetize your users, the simple way would be adding referral links for each credit card

alwa 1 year ago | |

I hear that pays really, really well:

https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-to-travel-li...

Jaxkr 1 year ago |

This is great. I’ve thought about building something like this for myself.

Complaints:

- Discover It rotating categories not factored in. These are 5% and very significant.

- Can’t add Amazon Chase Visa, as someone else pointed out.

Also I would LOVE an iOS shortcut where I can just type in what I’m buying and you categorize it with an LLM and it just tells me what card to use.

ClearAndPresent 1 year ago |

Useful idea. I, and many peers, are your target market. However, this looks like it might be US centric, based on searches in the merchant/wallet search on the main page.

Is it? Might be worth mentioning that somewhere so a large international audience doesn't waste time signing up.

robg 1 year ago |

Please don’t make me login to see a simple comparison of existing cards. My thought process:

1. Seems interesting, ok, I’ll try to search

2. Login

3. Nope

dogtorwoof 1 year ago | |

This

TSUTiger 1 year ago |

How does this compare to something like MaxRewards[0]?

I'd try doing my own due diligence first, but without signing up for an account first, I can't get past the homepage.

[0]: https://maxrewards.com

nailer 1 year ago |

I like this tool, and I’ve made an account and entered in all my cards.

But “Highest Rewards by Category” doesn’t quite work because of the truncation of the text. it says “Chase Sap” but I don’t know which sapphire card is that.

clarkdale 1 year ago |

It could be factored in, but many restaurants near me add a fee for credit card use, usually 2% but I've seen as high as 3.5%.

The credit card rewards usually still make sense, but sometimes I pay cash even if I might lose 0.5% on it.

Sontho 1 year ago |

It will be great if you can work this out without making people logging in.

vzaliva 1 year ago |

Here is a type of question I wish your site can help me answer:

Amazon Fresh online purchases : AMEX Gold or Chase Reserve? Format gives 3x reward for groceries but later have a promo (shown on your web site).

dev1398 1 year ago | |

I hear you and this is a problem that I currently face as well! We actually source offer data from all the major credit cards and one of the features we are going to implement is to show you offer data next to your optimal card (once we make improvements to our optimal card decision engine)

The idea is to later incorporate the promo and give you the ultimate best card, something we still need to figure out and perfect but as of now we can show you the best card for groceries and offers on the merchant selected

kilroy123 1 year ago |

I use and love https://awardwallet.com. Been a long time customer.

asdev 1 year ago |

Credit cards allow proxying? How will you route it?

ceejayoz 1 year ago | |

I’ve seen half a dozen startups promise this. None ever really made it into the market. I suspect the chips are a major obstacle (as they’re supposed to be!).

barbazoo 1 year ago | |

They’re not routing anything atm

nodesocket 1 year ago |

I’ve been using the Robinhood Gold card over 6 months and found the unlimited/unrestricted 3% cash back to be nearly unbeatable.

ostensible 1 year ago | |

Bank of America provides 5.25% percent cash back on each category. Get one for every category. Done. (You need to enroll to preferred rewards for that). 3% is not worth to be bothered about, nor should anyone support robinhood in the first place.

nodesocket 1 year ago | | |

One for every category, not exactly great if you spend frequently. I’ll take free money at 3%, outrage over Robinhood usage is typical (rolling eyes).

jamestimmins 1 year ago | |

Sadly they have a waiting list

deevus 1 year ago |

U.S. only, it seems.

zeroday28 1 year ago |

How many credit cards does an average person have?

Symbiote 1 year ago | |

"According to an Experian consumer credit review, Americans have an average of 3.84 credit cards per person."

In most other countries I expect it will be far less. 1.7 for the UK.