Bilt Rewards: Earn Points on Rent With No Fees

Rent is, for most renters, the single largest line item in their budget — and until Bilt launched in 2022, it was also completely invisible to every rewards program in existence. Most landlords and property managers don’t accept credit cards at all, and the handful of services that let you "pay rent by card" charge a processing fee of roughly 2.9% — often erasing any rewards you’d earn and then some. Bilt built a card specifically to close that gap, and the no-annual-fee version of it is still one of the most useful cards a renter can carry.

The core mechanic

• 1x point per $1 on rent paid through the Bilt app, with no transaction fee — capped at 100,000 points per calendar year from rent specifically.
• 3x points on travel, 2x on dining, and 1x on all other purchases.
• No annual fee on the base Bilt card (part of the broader Bilt 2.0 lineup launched in 2026, which also added $95 and $495 tiers with extra bonus categories and hotel credits for renters who want more).

The rule every Bilt cardholder needs to know

Rent only earns points if you make at least five separate transactions on the card during that statement period, not counting the rent payment itself. Miss that threshold and the rent payment still processes fee-free, but it earns a flat consolation 250 points instead of the full 1x rate — a meaningful difference on a $2,000+ rent payment. In practice, this just means using the card for a handful of regular purchases (coffee, groceries, a subscription) before rent posts each month.

Bilt also runs Rent Day on the 1st of every month, doubling points on dining and rideshare purchases made that day — a small but easy bonus to stack on top of the regular rent payment.

Where the points actually go

Bilt Rewards transfers 1:1 to roughly 14 airline and hotel partners, including United MileagePlus, American Airlines AAdvantage, Air Canada Aeroplan, Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles, and World of Hyatt — a broader airline lineup than either Chase or Amex offers, notably including two of the big three U.S. legacy carriers directly. That makes Bilt points genuinely useful for booking domestic and international award flights without needing a second transferable-points card at all.

Who this card is for

This is a renter’s card first and a general spending card second. If you don’t pay rent (or your landlord already accepts cards without a Bilt-style workaround), the 2x dining and 1x general spend are unremarkable next to a Sapphire Preferred or Amex Gold. But for the millions of renters who’ve never earned a single point on their largest recurring expense, turning $24,000+ a year in rent into 24,000+ transferable points — for a card that costs nothing to hold — is close to free value that most competing cards simply can’t offer.

The bottom line

Remember the five-transaction rule, use the card for a few everyday purchases each month, and Bilt turns an expense that used to earn nothing into a meaningful stream of transferable airline miles. For renters specifically, there’s no real competitor to what this card does.