By KBC Associate 
There are many perks of holding a Delta Air Lines cobranded American Express card, and I don’t just mean free bags. Not only can you save 15% on all SkyMiles redemptions, but you can also access the Pay with Miles benefit.
Pay with Miles offers another way to redeem your Delta miles beyond standard award tickets and Miles + Cash redemptions. You’ll get a fixed value of 1 cent per mile using Pay with Miles, but you can also earn more Medallion Qualification Dollars toward Delta elite status.
Keep reading to learn how to use Delta Pay with Miles and why it might be worth redeeming your miles this way.
Related: Delta SkyMiles: Your complete guide to earning, redeeming and elite status
What is Delta Pay with Miles?
Pay with Miles is a feature available exclusively to SkyMiles members who hold one of the following cards:
To use Pay with Miles, you must be the primary cardmember; this feature isn’t available to authorized users. You must also have a minimum of 5,000 SkyMiles per passenger in your account. For example, to use Pay with Miles for a two-person booking, you’ll need at least 10,000 SkyMiles.
You can use Pay with Miles to cover part or all of your ticket(s) at a rate of 1 cent per mile. You must pay in increments of 5,000 miles, so for each 5,000 miles you redeem, you’ll save $50 off the ticket price.
There are no blackout dates or seat restrictions with Pay with Miles, and no limit to how many miles you can redeem this way. However, Pay with Miles is only available on flights operated by Delta or a Delta Connection carrier. If the flight you’re looking at is operated by a partner airline, the Pay with Miles option won’t show up.
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TPG values Delta SkyMiles at 1.2 cents each as of April 2025, so you will lose some value if you opt to redeem award tickets using the Pay with Miles benefit; basically, it isn’t the best way to maximize your miles.
However, since award prices vary widely, you may find that Pay with Miles isn’t a significantly worse option than redeeming miles for an award ticket. And it may be worth losing a little value because you can potentially earn more Medallion Qualification Dollars on your purchase, which we’ll go into later.
Take this Delta-operated flight from Asheville, North Carolina, to Frankfurt, for example. A Main Cabin award ticket costs 106,500 SkyMiles (thanks to Delta’s TakeOff15 perk for select cardmembers), compared to a cash price of $1,186. That comes out to 1.1 cents per mile, not much better than the value you’d get using Pay with Miles.
On the other hand, this flight from New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) costs $259 in cash or 13,100 miles for an award ticket, giving you a much better value of 2 cents per mile.
In this case, you’d be losing significantly more value by going the Pay with Miles route — but it could still make sense if Medallion status is important to you. Here’s why.
Related: Use Delta SkyMiles Shopping to earn bonus miles on online purchases
How to use Delta Pay with Miles
To see Pay with Miles options, you’ll need to log in to your Delta SkyMiles account before searching for flights.
When you pull up an eligible flight — meaning the flight is operated by Delta or Delta Connection and you have at least 5,000 miles per passenger — you’ll see “Pay with Miles Eligible” below the cash price. Once you choose your flight and reach the purchase screen, scroll down to find the Pay with Miles option in the payment section.
In this JFK-BOS example, a refundable Main Cabin fare costs $288.49 with taxes and fees. My dad, who has a Delta Gold Amex card, has the option to redeem miles in increments of 5,000, up to 30,000 miles for the total ticket price. To use Pay with Miles, he must pay the remaining balance with his eligible Delta Amex card.
If you pay for any part of your ticket with cash, you’ll earn miles based on the cash portion minus the taxes and fees. You won’t earn any miles if you use miles to cover the entire ticket price.
Where this gets interesting is earning Medallion Qualification Dollars, Delta’s currency for earning elite status. If you pay any part of the ticket with cash, you’ll earn 1 MQD per dollar on the cash portion minus the taxes and fees. But if you pay for the whole base fare with miles, you’ll earn MQDs as if you’d paid for the whole thing with cash.
In this example, if my dad chose to pay 25,000 miles plus $38.49 in cash, he would earn 35 miles and 5 MQDs for the portion he paid out of pocket.
On the other hand, if he used Pay with Miles for the whole ticket, he’d earn 0 miles and 255 MQDs.
Let’s compare this to a traditional award ticket for the same flight, which costs 13,100 miles. Delta awards MQDs on award tickets, calculated by the number of miles redeemed divided by 100 (government-imposed taxes and fees do not earn MQDs). This ticket costs 13,100 miles, so it would earn 131 MQDs.
So, if you’re looking to stretch your miles as far as possible, you’re better off booking the award ticket. If earning status is your top priority, you may want to shell out more miles and earn more MQDs using Pay with Miles.
Related: Delta Air Lines’ SkyMiles partnership with Uber
Pay with Miles vs. Miles + Cash
Delta offers a similar payment method called Miles + Cash, which is available to all Delta SkyMiles members (not just cardholders). Miles + Cash is a payment option that shows up when you search for flights; you can choose “$USD,” “Miles,” or “Miles + Cash” in the top right.
Miles + Cash tickets are still considered award bookings, because you’re essentially buying some miles to book your flight. Unlike when using Pay with Miles, Miles + Cash prices are fixed, so you can’t choose how many miles or dollars you want to pay.
Going back to our JFK-BOS example, which costs $259 in cash or 13,100 miles for an award ticket, the Miles + Cash option is 10,500 miles plus $96. When you subtract taxes and fees, you’re essentially paying $90 for 2,600 miles. That’s a price of about 3.5 cents per mile — yikes.
Some Miles + Cash tickets present a better value, while others actually require more miles and dollars than a simple award ticket in the same fare class. Either way, this isn’t usually a great use of your SkyMiles.
Because Miles + Cash bookings are considered award tickets, you won’t earn any miles. You’ll earn MQDs on the cash portion minus the taxes and fees at a rate of 1 MQD per dollar. So, for the JFK-BOS flight above, you’d earn only 90 MQDs. You’ll get closer to elite status by booking a standard award ticket (131 MQDs), and even closer using Pay with Miles (255 MQDs).
Related: How to earn Delta Medallion elite status without flying
Bottom line
Delta’s Pay with Miles is a useful feature that Delta Amex cardholders should be aware of. If you’re pursuing Delta Medallion status this year, it may be worth spending the extra miles to earn more MQDs. But if getting the most out of your SkyMiles is your top priority, you’ll probably want to stick to standard award tickets.