Marriott Raised the FNC Top-Up Limit: Here's What It Actually Means

March 18, 2026 | By the Gondola Team | Based on our full analysis of 9,270 Marriott properties

What Changed

On March 12, Marriott raised the points top-up limit on free night certificates from 15,000 to 25,000. Every cert tier shifts by 10,000 points:

We ran the numbers across 9,270 Marriott Bonvoy properties to find out what 10,000 extra points actually gets you. The Points Guy covered our data, and the full analysis is on our blog. Here's the short version.

The 35k Cert: 471 New Properties

The Bonvoy Boundless cert now reaches 92.3% of the entire Marriott portfolio. The 471 newly accessible properties include nine Ritz-Carltons, 19 JW Marriotts, and strong coverage across California (46 properties), Florida (38), and New York (31).

The availability numbers are what stand out. At the old 50k cap, these properties were bookable a median of 39% of nights. At the new 60k cap, that jumps to 73%. You're not just getting more names on a list. You're getting properties you can actually book most of the year.

Standouts: Ritz-Carlton Budapest, JW Marriott Istanbul Bosphorus, Cadillac Hotel Miami Beach, W Philadelphia, Moxy NYC Times Square.

The 50k Cert: Hawaii and the Ritz

The Brilliant annual cert now covers 96.2% of the portfolio. The 206 new properties include 15 Ritz-Carltons, 18 JW Marriotts, and 14 W Hotels. Bookable nights at these properties nearly double under the new cap.

This is the tier where the change feels most personal. The Moana Surfrider in Waikiki goes from 49% of nights bookable to 74%. Sheraton Kauai Coconut Beach jumps from 24% to 92%. Fiji Marriott Resort Momi Bay goes from 29% to 100%. If you've been sitting on a 50k cert because the math didn't work for Hawaii or the Caribbean, it works now.

Standouts: Moana Surfrider Waikiki, Sheraton Maui, Ritz-Carlton Chicago, W San Francisco, JW Marriott Clearwater Beach, Walt Disney World Swan Reserve.

The 85k Cert: The Properties That Were Out of Reach

The 85k cert already covered 97.4% of the portfolio, so the 56 new properties are a smaller group. But they're the ones that felt permanently out of range: Ritz-Carlton Maui (avg 107k/night), London EDITION (102k), JW Marriott Maldives (109k), W South Beach (104k), Paris Marriott Champs-Elysees (108k).

At 99% portfolio coverage, the only properties still out of reach are a handful averaging over 110,000 points per night.

Standouts: Ritz-Carlton Maui, London EDITION, St. Regis Bali, JW Marriott Essex House New York, Riviera Maya EDITION, W Aspen.

The Bottom Line

The top-up increase matters most at the 35k tier in volume and at the 85k tier in quality. The 50k tier is somewhere in between, with the biggest practical impact for travelers planning resort and beach trips.

If you have a free night cert and have been holding off because the top-up math didn't feel worth it, it's worth running the numbers again.

Update: April 2026

Five weeks after the change took effect, we re-ran the numbers on our April 16 pipeline. Short version: no sign Marriott is repricing upward into the new top-up bands. The bands just above each new cap moved by single-digit amounts — the 60k–65k band (just above the 35k cert's new ceiling) actually shrank by 9 properties. The 75k–80k band grew by 9, and 110k–115k grew by 4. Not the accumulation you'd expect from a structural response.

Portfolio-wide, median nightly points cost drifted up about 500 points since February, but almost all of that happened in the first two weeks. Between the March and April pipeline runs, prices were essentially flat (median change: -34 points). A few headline properties did drift above their cap — the Ritz-Carlton Maui nudged just past 110k, the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas crossed above 75k — while others came back under (the Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi, St. Regis Dubai Palm, and Ritz-Carlton Jeddah all dropped back under the 75k cap). Net threshold crossings are under 0.5% of the portfolio at every tier.

Two months in, the headline from March still holds: the 10,000-point cap increase remains far larger than any pricing drift we can see in the data.

For the full property-by-property breakdown, including availability data, geographic analysis, and the detailed two-month price comparison, read our complete analysis.