The cheapest way to use Qantas Points in Australia

“Cheapest” is a slightly dangerous word in points. It usually means fewest points, which isn't the same as best value, and confusing the two is how people end up with a drawer full of small redemptions and no trip.

So this covers both: the genuinely lowest-points flight you can book, and the maths that tells you whether it was a good idea.

The actual cheapest flight

5,700 Qantas Points, on Jetstar, for a sector up to 600 miles. Sydney to the Gold Coast is the classic example, plus taxes and carrier charges.

That surprises people, because it's a Qantas Points redemption on a plane that isn't Qantas. Jetstar Classic Rewards sit inside the same program and price lower than the equivalent Qantas sector.

If your only goal is to convert the fewest possible points into a boarding pass, that's the answer and there isn't a close second.

The cheapest on Qantas itself

On Qantas metal, domestic economy Classic Rewards start at 9,200 points plus about $52 for the shorter sectors — Sydney–Melbourne, Sydney–Brisbane, Melbourne–Canberra and similar.

Note how steeply that climbs. A Perth flight costs more than three and a half times a short Jetstar hop. Distance bands are the single biggest lever on what a redemption costs.

Cheapest is not the same as best value

Here's the trap. A 5,700-point Jetstar seat sounds brilliant until you check what that flight costs in cash. Budget short-haul fares are often genuinely cheap — sometimes under $100.

Run the numbers:

1. Cash fare for that exact flight.
2. Minus the fees on the points booking.
3. Divided by the points spent.

A $99 fare against 5,700 points, after fees, lands somewhere around 1 cent per point. A $700 domestic business fare against 19,300 points comes out closer to 3 cents.

The “expensive” redemption is more than twice as efficient as the cheap one.

Which doesn't make the cheap redemption wrong. If 5,700 points gets your family somewhere for a weekend and the alternative was those points sitting in an account for another year, that's a fine trade. A balance you never spend was never worth anything.

The genuinely bad ways to spend them

There's a difference between low value and bad value. These are the ones I'd avoid:

• Points towards the cash portion of a fare. Paying part of a normal ticket with points typically values them well under a cent, and it's marketed as flexibility.
• The rewards store. Toasters, gift cards, homewares. Convenient, and almost always the worst rate on offer.
• Letting them expire. Zero cents per point, and the most common mistake of the lot. Qantas Points lapse after 18 months of no activity.

That last one isn't really a redemption decision, but it costs more people more points than every bad redemption combined.

What I actually do

I'm saving for one specific thing — four of us, Sydney to Europe and back — so most of what I earn doesn't get spent on anything else. That's a deliberate choice and it has a real cost: years of not flying anywhere on points while the balance builds.

If I weren't doing that, I'd use points where the cash fare is highest and the points price is fixed. That's the only structural edge in this whole game: a fixed points price against a variable cash price.

And I'd stop optimising sooner than feels comfortable. I've written the full ledger, and the honest lesson in it is that the years I spent reading about redemption strategy were worth far less than the months I spent actually earning.

Questions I get asked

What's the cheapest redemption you've actually booked? I like hearing the small wins.