awardtracker

Local first reward tracking

Award Tracker is a reward portfolio management application that runs locally as a background tray service on your computer. The README describes it as secure, private, and fully local, automatically or interactively syncing point and mile balances, membership tiers, and reward certificate details from major airline, hotel, and credit card loyalty programs. The problem it addresses is the usual design of cloud based reward aggregators, which ask you to upload master credentials to their servers so they can scan balances. The README argues that design creates centralized breach risk and can trigger account closures when automated cloud logins look suspicious to an airline. Award Tracker instead runs the automation on your own machine using local network addresses that mirror normal browser navigation, which reduces the chance of lockouts. A dashboard summarizes point balances, USD valuations, membership tiers, and upcoming expiration dates in card grids, and you can group portfolios by owner or by program with custom badge colors. The app also tracks manual entries such as credit card points from Chase, Amex, Citi, Capital One, and Wells Fargo, or offline store programs, with custom name overrides. The whole point is that your loyalty data stays under your control rather than in someone else's database. The source lives in the shyoo-awardtracker repository on GitHub and is implemented in Python, with the license recorded as unspecified in the project metadata.

Privacy and encryption

The privacy model is called zero knowledge. The README states your passwords are encrypted locally and never traverse the cloud. The encryption uses AES-256 inside a SQLite database via Fernet symmetric encryption, and the key is derived from a master password only you know. There is no cloud backup and no password recovery option, which the docs present as a feature: your data is fully under your control and unreadable without the master password. Automation runs through local Selenium engines that navigate like a normal browser, and when a program requires multi factor authentication or a captcha, the app opens a visible browser window, pre fills your ID and password, and injects a guide card that walks you through four steps before it auto navigates to the mileage overview and closes. Backups are automatic: the database file is backed up daily at 3:00 AM and on startup if the prior day's backup is missing, with a retention window you choose as Never, 3, 7, or 30 days, the default being 7. Backup files are stored as dated files inside an application data folder. Native OS notifications fire on startup, sync start, sync results, and expiry warnings through the Windows, macOS, or Linux notification systems. Debug mode can mask sensitive information in logs and screenshots by replacing credentials and balances with stars.

Supported programs and sync

The README lists a wide set of supported loyalty programs. Credit cards and manual programs include American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Capital One Miles, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou, and Wells Fargo Rewards, plus any custom manual program. Airlines span Air Canada, Alaska, All Nippon Airways, American, Asiana, Avianca, British Airways, Delta, EVA Air, Japan Airlines, JetBlue, Korean Air, Southwest, United, and Virgin Atlantic. Hotels include Caesars Rewards, Hilton Honors, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, and World of Hyatt, with Hertz Gold plus Rewards for car rentals. Automatic voucher and certificate scraping is explicitly supported for Korean Air SKYPASS and United MileagePlus, while other programs show an informational notice on their account page. Syncing runs in the background at custom intervals such as every day or every week, quietly skipping offline or manually managed portfolios. The onboarding guide walks a new user through the tray icon, setting a master password, adding accounts, and running an interactive login when automation hits a captcha. For developers, the repo includes compilation guides for macOS and Windows, a Flask based dev server, database migrations, and test runners. Build scripts produce standalone binaries and native installers, with a Windows exe around 42 MB and a macOS app bundle around 54 MB.

Editorial conclusion

The application is written in Python and runs as a local background tray service that stores data in an encrypted SQLite database.