Don’t want to miss out on earning bonus points? There’s an extension for that

Shopping portals are such an important aspect of the points and miles hobby. While you can learn all about them in our TPG beginners guide, we realize it's easy to forget about this method of double dipping on your online purchases.

If you haven't built up the habit of clicking through a shopping portal — and don't want to have to worry about remembering — technology is happy to come to the rescue. There are a number of extensions that you can add to your web browser to remind you anytime you're shopping on a website where you can earn bonus points, miles or cash back.

Doing this ensures you never lose out on valuable points and miles when you shop online — let's take a closer look.

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Airline shopping portals

If you're looking for the highest payout at a particular time, going through an aggregator (more on those later) will help you find the best option. However, if you're looking to earn miles toward a particular redemption or a perk such as the Southwest Companion Pass, you might want to be loyal to just one airline's shopping portal.

Airline shopping portal promotions come and go. However, they tend to offer new-member bonuses and spending bonuses throughout the year. Here are the details on each:

• Alaska Airlines (Chrome extension): Alaska Airlines has one of the most valuable airline currencies and incredible partners, making it a great choice for going all-in on accumulating bonus miles.
• American Airlines (Chrome extension): The AA portal generally offers some solid earning rates, particularly during promotions. Plus, you can earn Loyalty Points to inch closer to American elite status when shopping online.
• Delta Air Lines (Chrome extension): In addition to one of the least-valuable major airline currencies, Delta SkyMiles Shopping seems to have consistently lower rates than the other airline portals. So, I'd only recommend it if you really need extra Delta miles.
• JetBlue (Firefox add-on): ShopTrue Notify is JetBlue's own browser extension. Versions for other browsers seem like they have disappeared, but the Firefox version is still available. It will automatically notify you if you are on a site where you can earn TrueBlue points.
• Southwest Airlines (Chrome extension): This was one of the first airlines to launch a shopping portal browser extension back in October 2017. And yes, bonus points earned through the shopping portal go toward Companion Pass qualification.
• United Airlines (Chrome extension): United launched its browser extension in March 2018 and has since racked up an impressive 70,000 users.

Related: Why I'm focusing on the American Airlines shopping portal this year

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Cash-back portals

While you can get a lot of value from airline miles, cash back is still king for a lot of shoppers. Here are some of my favorite cash-back portals with browser extensions:

• Rakuten — formerly Ebates (Chrome extension, Firefox add-on): Rakuten quickly became my favorite cash-back portal in February 2019 when new members could start earning Membership Rewards points instead of just cash back. Then, it later let all members opt into earning points instead of cash. Plus, Rakuten consistently runs some of the best promotions.
• TopCashback (Chrome extension, Firefox add-on): This portal has an extensive list of over 4,000 partner stores where you can earn cash back and has a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox.
• Mr. Rebates (Chrome extension, Firefox add-on): The website looks like it hails from the early 2000s, but it typically offers solid everyday cash-back earnings. And despite its older look, it has extensions to help remind you when you can be earning cash back on a website.
• Ibotta (Chrome extension, Firefox add-on): Ibotta provides cash back when you shop at hundreds of stores through its app. Ibotta also has an app that allows you to shop in-store. The minimum amount to redeem rewards is $20.
• Honey (Chrome extension, Firefox add-on): This is a popular cash-back portal that is also part of the PayPal network. Honey will automatically search for coupons and apply them when it's time for you to check out.
• Amazon Assistant (Chrome extension, Firefox add-on): This will send you notifications for the deal of the day and new deals on Amazon, plus compare prices as you shop online. It will also show you the best price available on Amazon and recommend similar products.

Other cash-back portals include:

• BeFrugal: Chrome extension and Firefox add-on.
• GoCashBack: Chrome extension.
• Lemoney: Chrome extension.
• RebatesMe: Chrome extension.

Aggregators

Aggregators are a great place to look if you just want the best return, regardless of whether it's cash back, airline miles or credit card portal points.

Cashback Monitor: This is my go-to for figuring out which airline, bank or cash-back portal is paying out the highest rate when I'm ready to buy something online. While it doesn't have an extension, Cashback Monitor has a handy JavaScript link that Chrome, Firefox and Safari users can bookmark to manually check the payout rates for a particular website.

Bottom line

Shopping portals are an easy way to save money. Using portals with browser extensions is great if you want to take the hassle out of searching for rewards or frequently forget to search for them.

Related: Use online shopping portals to maximize your online shopping

Additional reporting by Jordyn Fields and Ryan Smith.