I got into credit card churning in 2023. The idea is simple: you apply for credit cards with sign-up bonuses, meet the minimum spending requirement, collect the bonus, and repeat. Some people earn thousands of dollars a year doing this, and the deals are genuinely good if you pay your balances in full and keep track of what you are doing.
That last part is the hard part.
The Spreadsheet Phase
Like everyone else, I started with a Google Sheet. Card name, date applied, date approved, bonus amount, minimum spend, deadline, annual fee date, notes. It worked for the first five or six cards. Then my wife started applying for cards too, and suddenly I needed a second tab. Then I wanted to see how much we earned by quarter. Then I wanted to know our combined Chase 5/24 count. The formulas got tangled, the dates got stale, and I realized I was spending more time maintaining the spreadsheet than it was saving me.
The r/churning community has shared dozens of spreadsheet templates, and they are all basically the same. A grid of fields that works until it gets big, and then becomes a chore. I wanted something that felt more like a dashboard and less like homework.
Building the Tracker
The first version was just a list with status tags. Applied, approved, spending, met, bonus posted. That alone was more useful than the spreadsheet because I could see at a glance where every card stood. But the real value came from the features I added around the list.
Chase 5/24 tracking was the first addition. Chase famously denies applications if you have opened 5 or more credit cards across all issuers in the past 24 months. Counting this manually is surprisingly error-prone because you have to know which cards count, when each card falls off, and how business cards factor in. The tracker does this automatically from your application dates.
Charts came next. A bar chart of earnings by month and year, broken down by bonus type (cash, points, miles). This was the feature that made my wife actually start using the tool. Watching the bars grow turns an abstract hobby into something tangible.
Multi-player support was essential for us. Both players see the same dashboard, same charts, same 5/24 counts. You can filter by player or see the household totals. Most churning families I know run two separate spreadsheets. This puts everything in one place.
Why Not Browser-Only
Unlike BridgeToFI, which runs entirely in the browser with no server, Churning Hub uses Firebase for authentication and cloud storage. The reason is simple: we access it from multiple devices. I check it on my phone at the store to verify a spending deadline. My wife checks it on her laptop. If the data only lived in one browser, it would be useless for how we actually use it.
Firebase handles auth and the database. The app itself is still static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with no framework. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest through Firebase's defaults. I do not run any analytics beyond basic page view counts, and I do not share or sell any data. The only information stored is what you choose to track.
The Analytics Dashboard
This is the part that grew the most beyond the original plan. What started as one bar chart turned into a full analytics section:
- Earnings heatmap showing which months have historically been the most lucrative
- Issuer breakdown so you can see how much you have earned from Chase vs. Amex vs. Citi vs. others
- Year-over-year comparison tracking whether you are ahead or behind last year's pace
- Personal records for biggest single bonus, best month, and best year
- Annual fee tracker showing upcoming fees and whether the card is worth keeping
- Goal progress with a target you set at the start of the year
I realize this sounds like a lot for a hobby tracker. But churning is one of those hobbies where the numbers are the whole point. If you are not tracking the numbers, you are guessing, and guessing leads to missed deadlines and wasted annual fees.
What I Would Do Differently
The data model. Early on I treated every bonus as a flat dollar amount, which works for cash back but not for points and miles where the value per point varies depending on how you redeem them. I eventually added a flexible valuation system, but the migration was messy. If I started over, I would build in multi-currency from day one.
I also wish I had built CSV import sooner. A lot of people have years of churning history in spreadsheets, and typing it all in by hand is a terrible first experience. The smart field mapper that tries to guess which column is which made a big difference in onboarding.
Who Uses It
Mostly people from the FIRE and travel hacking communities. There is a lot of overlap between people who plan early retirement with BridgeToFI and people who churn credit cards to fund their travel. The tool is free, there are no ads, and the only reason it exists is that I needed it for myself and figured other people might too.