Program Guides
Buying Aeroplan Points: The Math Almost Never Works
Air Canada will happily sell you Aeroplan points at 3.75¢ per point — against the 1.9¢ we value them at for a well-booked redemption. At sticker price, buying points is a donation to Air Canada with extra steps. The interesting question is what happens during bonus promotions, and the honest answer is: even then, it almost never clears the bar.
The standing price
Outside promotions, points cost 3.75¢ CAD each, processed through Points.com, with GST/HST added for Canadian billing addresses. (Some coverage still quotes a 3.5¢ base; the promotional math on recent sales back-solves to 3.75¢, which is the figure we use.) You can buy up to 1,000,000 points per calendar year. At sticker price you'd pay $3,750 plus tax for a million points worth about $19,000 in well-booked flights — which sounds fine until you notice the same money spent on a welcome bonus or two earns points at a fraction of a cent each.
What promotions actually deliver
Aeroplan runs buy-points promotions roughly every month or two. The 2026 record so far:
| Promotion | Effective price |
|---|---|
| January — up to 100% bonus | ~1.88¢/pt |
| March — up to 90% bonus | ~1.97¢/pt |
| May — up to 90% bonus (top tier) | 1.97¢/pt |
| June — 30% discount | ~2.63¢/pt |
| Best ever: July 2024, 125% bonus | 1.56¢/pt |
Notice the pattern: the best 2026 promotions land at 1.9–2.0¢ per point — right at our valuation, not below it. Buying at that price is trading dollars for points at even odds, with the downside that points sit exposed to award-chart devaluations (the June 2026 chart increase raised most premium long-haul prices) and expiry rules. Only the historic 125% bonus genuinely beat the valuation, and offers like it have appeared roughly once in recent years.
The one case where buying makes sense
Topping up for a specific, priced award. You've found business-class seats to Tokyo for 102,500 points each, you're 20,000 points short, and the seats won't wait for your next statement. Buying 20,000 points — ideally during any bonus — to complete a redemption worth 2¢+ per point is rational: you're not speculating, you're closing a known-value transaction. Family Sharing often makes even this unnecessary, since a household can pool balances toward the same booking.
What's never rational is speculative buying — accumulating points at 2¢+ because a trip might materialize. Points are a depreciating currency: charts get worse, programs devalue, and unused balances now face expiry. Earn them through cards and spending; buy them only to finish a booking you can see.
Prices and promotion history verified July 11, 2026. No buy-points promotion was running as of publication; check Aeroplan's site for the current state before buying.