It’s widely accepted in the points world that IHG One Rewards points are almost always available at a discount. The observation appears often enough across blogs and forums that it’s rarely examined further.

What’s usually missing is any attempt to quantify it.

Not how often IHG runs buy-points promotions in general, but something more practical:

If there isn’t a 100% bonus today, how long would you realistically have to wait for one?

This piece answers that question using a day-by-day dataset rather than anecdote.

To keep the analysis grounded, I focused on the period when full 100% bonuses became structurally regular.

Some promotions described as “up to 100%” were tiered or targeted at the account level; for this analysis, days were treated as 100% bonus days where full-bonus pricing was observed and reported.

For each calendar day in that window, I asked one question:

If a 100% offer was live that day, it registers as zero.

If not, it records the wait until the next full bonus begins.

This produces a complete daily time series of waiting time.

Across the period analysed, a full 100% IHG buy-points bonus was live on 295 of 615 days, or roughly 48% of the time.

On those days, there was no timing decision to make.

That alone explains why discounted IHG points feel continuously available.

The more interesting question is what happens on the remaining days.

To understand timing risk, I removed all days where a 100% offer was already live and analysed only the rest.

This answers the decision question most people face:

Median wait: ~10 days. 90% of the time, the next 100% bonus appeared within ~26 days.

Note: No waiting times beyond ~40 days appear in this window.

Across all non-offer days since June 2024:

Put plainly:

This is not a cycle defined by long dry spells. The distribution is dominated by short waits, with a thin tail of longer gaps.

Most commentary says that IHG “frequently” sells points with a 100% bonus. That description is directionally right, but it doesn’t help much when deciding whether to buy today.

This analysis reframes the question from how often promotions occur to what typically happens when no promotion is live.

Instead of asking how often sales occur, it asks:

The next full bonus usually arrives soon. Longer waits exist, but they are not representative of normal conditions.

1. A 100% bonus is no longer exceptional

Since mid-2024, full bonuses have functioned as the program’s baseline pricing environment rather than as rare events.

2. Urgency is usually overstated

Buying points outside a 100% bonus is rarely forced by timing alone. In most cases, waiting carries limited risk.

3. Points purchases still belong in a just-in-time strategy

Abundant supply does not change the underlying discipline. Points make sense when tied to a specific redemption, not as a speculative position.

If a 100% offer is live today

If no 100% offer is live

Exception

None of this contradicts the common observation that IHG points are often discounted. It simply measures what that pattern has looked like in practice since mid-2024.

By examining every day rather than every promotion, the timing risk becomes visible. Once it is visible, much of the implied urgency falls away.

This analysis is built on historical IHG buy-points promotion dates compiled and reported over time by Frequent Miler, One Mile at a Time, and LoyaltyLobby.

The underlying offer windows and timelines are drawn from their coverage and archives.

All day-by-day conditioning, waiting-time distributions, visualisations, and decision frameworks are original to this analysis.

Companion analysis: A parallel day-by-day study of Hilton Honors buy-points promotions, using the same methodology and time window, is available here → Hilton Points Are Almost Always on Sale.

A slight variation on this methodology for the Marriott Bonvoy program is available here → Marriott Points Regularly Return to the Same Sale Price Range.