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Impossible to say, because the number of points needed for a free night varies by a factor of almost 10:1 at most programs.

You have to figure where you want to stay, how many points are needed there at the time of year you want to stay (it can vary in some programs by peak vs non-peak times), and then what the earn rate is of the card.

Also, whatever is the case with the SPG card, it's temporary. The card will likely either go away or be significantly changed within a year or two, because of the upcoming merger with Marriott (and Marriott being the much bigger program, SPG will be swallowed up by Marriott Rewards rather than the other way around).

The only card for which it's easy to calculate is the WyndhamRewards Visa card from Barclay: It earns 2 points per dollar, and every hotel every night everywhere in the WyndhamRewards program is 15k points a night (if it has availability). So it's easy to calculate that every $7500 of spend will get a free night. The only thing is: In many cities those free nights are mostly (or solely) available at lower-end brands, like MircoTel, Ramada, Super 8, and Days Inn.

In the same cities where WyndhamRewards has all its properties at 15k a night, Marriott can easily be 35k a night, and Hilton HHonors can easily be 50k or 60k a night (though sometimes you can get great values with cash + points rates), and SPG and Hyatt may not have a property at all. So all those "big" hotel programs are going to way worse at earning free nights with a credit card on ordinary spend, unless you only need to stay in the "unpopular" places where each program has low-redemption-cost properties. (In the Tampa area you can get an Holiday Inn for 10k IHG Club points and a Fairfield Inn for 10k Marriott Rewards points. But forget finding anything like that in Anchorage in the summer: That's where I got my sample comparisons at the start of this paragraph. And Amsterdam in spring is more like Anchorage in summer than like Tampa.)

Another thing to consider is that not every hotel chain has a presence everywhere. Want to stay near the entrances to US National Parks? WyndhamRewards, Choice, and/or Best Western are likely to be the only hotels near many of those parks. Want to stay in Livingstone (near Victoria Falls) on points? Only Marriott Rewards has a hotel there. Want to stay in Bergen, Norway? You better have Club Carlson, Best Western, or Choice points; no other hotel programs cover Scandinavia outside of the big capital cities. (Note: There is currently a problem booking in Scandinavia with Choice points, and we have no idea if/when it will be resolved.)