Which Shopping Portal Pays the Most for Catalog Brands? A 2026 Rate Roundup

Which Shopping Portal Pays the Most for Catalog Brands? A 2026 Rate Roundup

No single shopping portal pays the most on every catalog brand, and on some brands none of them pays anything. We read five portals' own store pages on October 7, 2026, for twelve catalog brands: Rakuten for cash back, and the shopping portals of United, American Airlines, Delta and Southwest for miles and points. Rakuten's promotional 10% stood out on three brands, the airlines ran bonuses on three others, and the three Williams-Sonoma brands were listed by none of the airline portals at all. This roundup shows what each portal paid, which portals hide their rates until you sign in, and how to compare cash against miles before you order.

How You Earn Points

A shopping portal pays you for sending a sale to a store. You start at the portal, click through to the store and order as normal; the store pays the portal a commission, and the portal passes part of it to you as cash, miles or points. Your card still earns its normal rewards on the charge, because the portal pays for the click and the card pays for the purchase.

The five portals here pay out in two ways. Rakuten pays cash back, shown as a percentage of the order. The airline portals pay miles or points per dollar into the airline's own program: United MileagePlus Shopping, American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping, Delta SkyMiles Shopping and Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping. Each publishes a full store list with the current rate beside every store, open to anyone without signing in.

Both kinds show promotions the same way. A store page that reads "was 2%" or "was 1.5, now earn 6" is a bonus on top of the usual rate, and bonuses come and go. The store pages also carry the fine print. United's Crate & Barrel page, for example, excludes registry creation, purchases made with coupon codes not found on United's site, and gift cards.

Three well-known options could not be compared this way. Chase's portal, called Shop and Earn, is described on Chase's Ultimate Rewards page as paying "1-15 bonus points per $1 spent at 1,000+ stores," but its store rates did not load for a signed-out visitor. Capital One Shopping is a free browser extension and app that Capital One describes as scanning the web for coupons and deals while you shop. Amex Offers are deals American Express Card Members add to an eligible card from their account or the Amex app, with enrollment required, so each account sees its own set.

What Each Portal Paid, Brand by Brand (October 7, 2026)

Rakuten's rate comes from its store page for each brand; the airline rates come from each portal's store list. "Not listed" means the portal had no store page for that brand.

Four readings from that table:

• Rakuten's lead was a promotion. Its 10% on L.L.Bean, Lands' End and Sur La Table was a jump from a usual 2%. On a normal day those three pay 2%, the same as Ballard Designs, Eddie Bauer and J.Crew.
• The airlines run their bonuses together. Lands' End and J.Crew carried a bonus on all four airline portals at once, and Grandin Road doubled from 0.5 to 1 on all four. American's 6 miles per dollar on J.Crew was the highest airline rate on the board.
• Frontgate is an airline-portal brand. Rakuten had no Frontgate store page, while American and Southwest paid 2 per dollar.
• The Williams-Sonoma brands pay almost nothing through portals. Rakuten's pages for Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma read "No Cash Back," none of the four airlines listed them, and West Elm had no page anywhere. For those brands, the store's own Key Rewards program does the work; our Key Rewards guide covers it.

These are one day's rates. Check the brand's page on the portal you use on the day you order.

Stacking Opportunities

• Portal plus card — start the order from the portal that pays the most, then pay with your best rewards card; the portal pays on the click and the card pays on the charge.
• Portal plus the store's program — a store's own program, such as Williams-Sonoma's Key Rewards, runs on the store's side, separate from the portal.
• Portal plus an Amex Offer — an Amex Offer is attached to the card, not to how you reached the store, so check your offers before an order you have already routed through a portal, and read that offer's terms.
• Read the exclusions — gift cards, registries and outside coupon codes are common exclusions on the airline portals' store pages, and an excluded purchase earns nothing.

Redemption Value

Cash back is worth its face value: Rakuten's 2% on a $200 J.Crew order is $4. Miles need one more step, because an airline mile has no fixed cash value; what it is worth depends on the flight you book with it. The same $200 J.Crew order earned 1,200 American miles that day, so the miles beat the $4 in cash if you expect to get more than a third of a cent from each mile. At the usual 1.5 miles per dollar, the order would earn 300 miles, and those would need to be worth more than 1.3 cents each to beat 2% cash.

Chase sets a plain value for its own points. Its Sapphire Reserve page says points are "worth $0.01 each when redeemed through Chase Travel," so 100 points are worth $1, and a Points Boost promotion on select flights and hotels can raise that to $1.50 for Sapphire Preferred cards or $2.00 for Sapphire Reserve. Our Chase Shop and Earn guide goes deeper on Chase's portal.

Bottom Line

The portal that pays the most depends on the brand and the day. On October 7, 2026, Rakuten's promotional 10% led on L.L.Bean, Lands' End and Sur La Table; American's 6 miles per dollar led on J.Crew; the airline portals were the only option on Frontgate and Grandin Road; and Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma and West Elm paid nothing through any of the five. The habit that works is to open the brand's page on the portal you use before every order, read the exclusions, and decide what a mile is worth to you before you pick miles over cash.

References

• Rakuten
• L.L.Bean - Rakuten
• Lands' End - Rakuten
• Sur La Table - Rakuten
• J.Crew - Rakuten
• Pottery Barn - Rakuten
• Williams Sonoma - Rakuten
• All stores - United MileagePlus Shopping
• Crate & Barrel - United MileagePlus Shopping
• All stores - American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping
• J.Crew - American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping
• All stores - Delta SkyMiles Shopping
• All stores - Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping
• Ultimate Rewards - Chase
• Chase Sapphire Reserve - Chase
• Capital One Shopping - Capital One
• Amex Offers - American Express