Pulsar Pro pays for itself above $642 a month
Pulsar went live alongside Arc mainnet on 16 September, and its subscription tier, Pulsar Pro, launched with it. The Pulsar card spends straight from the account balance, with no separate card balance to top up first. Pulsar publishes the whole reward structure rather than a headline rate, which makes the subscription arithmetic checkable before paying for it. Running that arithmetic puts the break-even higher than the figure on Pulsar's own help page.
Pro costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year
The annual plan works out at $8.33 a month. A launch offer refunds the first month's subscription payment, so the first cycle is free and every cycle after it is not.
The 2% covers the first $1,000 of monthly spend, then falls twice
Rewards are paid in Pulsar Points, earned per $10 of eligible card spend, and the bands differ by plan.
- Free earns 5 points per $10 on the first $500, then 2.5 points per $10 up to $100,000.
- Pro earns 20 points per $10 on the first $1,000, 5 points per $10 on the next $9,000, then 2.5 points per $10 up to $100,000.
At a hundred points to the dollar that reads as 0.5% then 0.25% on Free, and 2% then 0.5% then 0.25% on Pro. Above $10,000 of monthly spend the two plans pay the same rate, so the gap between them stops widening there.
Points convert to dollars at four different rates
A point is not worth a fixed amount. Points come back as a refund against a card purchase already made, and the price in points depends on how much of that purchase is being refunded: 100 points per dollar to refund 25% or 50% of a transaction, 112 points per dollar at 75%, and 125 points per dollar for the full amount.
So "2%" holds only while points are spent in quarter and half slices. Taking a full refund costs 25% more points per dollar, which turns the same 20 points per $10 into 1.6%. The 75% option lands at about 1.79%.
That inversion is worth sitting with, because the marketing points the other way. Covering a whole purchase is the version that reads best in an announcement and the version that pays worst. The refund arrives in USDC, the discount has to be at least $0.50, and a transaction that has already been refunded or claimed cannot be used.
The subscription breaks even around $642 a month
Pulsar's Pro page states that spending at least $500 each month means the plan basically pays for itself. Its own tables say otherwise.
At $500 of monthly spend, Pro earns 1,000 points, or $10.00 at the best conversion rate, against a $9.99 fee. That clears the subscription by one cent, and only by ignoring that the free plan pays $2.50 on the same $500. What the subscription actually buys is the difference between the plans, which at $500 is $7.50 a month against a $9.99 charge.
Break-even on the monthly plan sits at about $642 of eligible monthly spend. On the annual plan it falls to about $548, because the effective fee is lower. Anyone who redeems points as full refunds rather than in slices needs about $785 a month on the monthly plan and about $667 on the annual one.
The most Pro can return is $38.75 a month
The advantage over Free grows until $10,000 of monthly spend and then stops, because both plans pay 2.5 points per $10 above that. At $10,000 Pro earns $65 and Free earns $26.25, a difference of $38.75, and that difference is the same at $20,000 or $50,000.
Net of the monthly fee, the effective rate peaks near $1,000 of spend at almost exactly 1%, then declines: about 0.75% at $2,000, 0.60% at $5,000, 0.55% at $10,000 and 0.40% at $20,000. A card charging a flat 1% with no subscription beats Pro at every level above $1,000 a month.
Double points cover five named merchants
ChatGPT, Claude, X, Uber and Bolt earn twice the points on the same spend, with the current list kept in the app. Those are subscriptions and rides rather than groceries, so the doubling applies to a narrow and mostly small-ticket slice of a month's spending.
Pro also removes Pulsar Invest fees when trading on Arc, and adds a promotion under which a randomly selected card purchase can be refunded in full. No odds are published for that one, which keeps it out of any calculation. The card infrastructure behind Pulsar was announced separately in August.
Card fees sit apart from the rewards
Pulsar charges nothing of its own for card transactions, Apple Pay or Google Pay, declined transactions, or small transactions. Paying from a USD or EUR balance in the same currency carries no FX fee; any other conversion is 1%. ATM withdrawals are free to $200 a month and 2% after that, before whatever the operator adds. The card limit is listed at $30,000. Rewards on a transaction in another currency are calculated at the USD exchange rate on the transaction date.
Card coverage is wider than account coverage
Pulsar's country page, checked on 15 July 2026, lists card service in 76 countries, EUR SEPA account details for residents of 29, and USD ACH details for 48. Card availability does not carry account details with it, which matters for anyone planning to be paid into the account rather than only spending from it.
The rate tables above are the published ones and Pulsar states that current rates are always in the app, so the figure to check first is personal: monthly eligible spend against the $1,000 band, and whether points will be redeemed in slices or whole purchases. Below roughly $650 a month, the free plan is the one that pays.
Sources: Pulsar Goes Live on Arc Mainnet, Pulsar Pro, Pulsar Points Explained, Pricing & Fees, supported countries.