How Often Do Credit Card Bonuses Actually Change? Four Years of Tracking Data
By Craig McNamara · Published on 26 July 2026
Every comparison site tells you what the current signup bonuses are. Nobody tells you how often those bonuses change — because nobody else has been logging every change for years.
I have. This site has tracked Australian credit card offers since November 2021, first as a manual changelog and, since mid-2024, as a full version history — every time a bonus, fee, spend requirement or end date moves, a new record is written. That's the dataset behind the latest offer updates page, and it lets me answer the question with actual numbers instead of vibes.
The headline numbers
From my database, as of late July 2026:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Distinct offers tracked since mid-2024 | 135 |
| Offer versions recorded (every change = a new version) | 610 |
| Offers active right now | 46 |
| Headline bonus changes in the last 12 months | 62 |
| Distinct offers that changed their bonus in the last 12 months | 39 |
Two things jump out of that table.
First, the market moves about five bonus changes a month. Some months are quiet (one change each in January and June 2026), some are frantic (17 bonus changes in December 2025, 14 in September 2025). My older manual changelog tells the same story at a longer horizon: 399 recorded offer changes between November 2021 and July 2024, roughly 12 a month across a larger tracked set, with the busiest single month (November 2023) logging 50.
Second — and this is the number I find most useful — 39 different offers changed their headline bonus at least once in the past year, against 46 offers live today. Of the offers live today, 33 already existed a year ago, and 19 of those 33 have changed their bonus since. If you looked at an offer a year ago and haven't looked since, the bonus has more likely than not changed.
Not every recorded change touches the bonus, either. Of 441 version-to-version transitions in the database, 313 changed something other than the points number — annual fees, minimum spend, bonus periods, expiry dates. The bonus is the headline, but the fine print churns even faster.
How long does an offer actually run?
For the 503 offer versions that have started and ended in my data since mid-2024:
| Lifespan | Share of offers |
|---|---|
| Under 1 month | 33% (164) |
| 1–3 months | 34% (169) |
| 3–6 months | 20% (102) |
| 6 months or more | 14% (68) |
The median offer version lasts 59 days. The average is 78 days, dragged up by a long tail — the longest-running unchanged offer in my data sat untouched for 503 days.
So the typical rhythm of the Australian market is roughly quarterly: an elevated offer appears, runs for about two months, and is then replaced — sometimes by something better, more often lately by something worse.
Are bonuses rising or falling?
Across the full dataset since mid-2024, cuts are ahead but not dramatically: 52 bonus increases against 76 decreases.
The last 12 months are more lopsided. Of the 62 headline bonus changes since July 2025, 17 went up and 45 went down — nearly three-quarters were cuts. The moves are chunky in both directions: the average cut is about 26,000 points, the average rise about 37,000. Offers don't drift; they step.
There's a structural reason to expect the downward lean to continue. The RBA's Payments System Board finalised its merchant card payment costs review in March 2026, and the reductions in interchange caps on domestic card transactions take effect from 1 October 2026 (RBA media release, 31 March 2026). Interchange is a big part of what funds bank rewards programs, so lower caps mean less money to fund big signup bonuses. I can't tell you what any individual bank will do — but the last 12 months of my data already lean heavily toward cuts, and the funding squeeze hasn't even landed yet.
Which issuers change the most?
American Express, and it isn't close. Amex accounts for 26 of the 62 bonus changes in the past 12 months — 42% of all movement from one issuer. The Amex Platinum offer alone has 31 recorded versions since mid-2024, the most volatile single offer I track.
My favourite example is older. In December 2021 the Amex Explorer went from 240,000 points down to 100,000 on December 2, back up to 150,000 on December 3, and down to 100,000 again on December 4. Three headline changes in three days.
There's an irony in that volatility: Amex's own offer terms exclude anyone who has held any Amex card in the previous 18 months from earning a bonus — the offers are marketed to new Amex Card Members only. The offer can change 30 times before you're eligible again. Which specific waiting period applies to which issuer is on the eligibility rules page, and I've written up how to sequence applications around those clocks.
After Amex, the movers in the past year were Westpac (9 bonus changes), St.George (8), NAB (5) and ANZ (5). The big-bank offers change a handful of times a year each; Amex changes more than twice a month on average.
What I do with this
I'll keep this factual rather than tell you what to do — but here's how I read my own data:
- A "limited time" offer usually is. With a 59-day median lifespan, the offer you're looking at today is more likely than not gone or different within about two months.
- Waiting for a better offer is a real strategy — with a real cost. Bonuses do spike; 17 moves this year were increases, averaging about 37,000 points. But nearly three-quarters of moves were down, and each issuer's waiting period means you can't act on every spike anyway.
- The bonus is only the headline. Most recorded changes touch fees, spend requirements and bonus periods rather than the points number. Moneysmart's guidance to weigh rewards against fees and rates (choosing a credit card) matches exactly what the data shows changing under the surface.
- Seasonality exists but it's noisy. November 2023 was my busiest month ever (50 changes); March 2024 logged 45. I dig into the pattern properly in the best time of year for credit card offers, and into the long arc of Qantas offers in Qantas signup bonuses over time.
Deliberately not in this post: any current bonus number. On this dataset it would be stale within weeks — the live numbers are on the compare cards page, and every change lands on latest offer updates as it happens.
The short version
- The Australian market averages about five headline bonus changes a month across ~46 active offers; 39 different offers changed their bonus within the past year.
- The median offer runs 59 days unchanged; two-thirds of offer versions last under three months.
- Over the last 12 months, cuts outnumbered increases nearly three to one (45 down, 17 up) — and the RBA's interchange cap cuts from 1 October 2026 point the same direction.
- Amex is 42% of all movement — its offers change more than twice a month, even though its own terms make you wait 18 months between bonuses.
All of it comes from this site's own tracking. If you want to watch the market move in real time, it's all on latest offer updates.
