How to check a gift card balance: Amazon, Apple, Visa, Target and more

Checking a gift card balance takes a minute if you go to the right place, and the right place is almost never the top search result. Here is where each of the big issuers shows a balance, what you need from the card, why some cards only show a balance once they are added to an account, and the look-alike balance sites to stay away from.

Where should you check a gift card balance?

On the issuer's own website or app, or on the phone number printed on the back of the card. Nowhere else. Visa's advice for its prepaid cards is the general rule: call the toll-free number on the back of the card, or visit the card issuer's site and enter the card number and security code.

The reason to be strict is that search results for “gift card balance” are crowded with pages that are not the issuer. AARP warned after the holidays that fake balance-check sites can appear at the top of search results and collect the card number and PIN, and advised never to enter card details into a result labelled “Sponsored” or “Ad”. Target's security team says the same about its own cards: check balances only on Target's official balance page, and watch for sites that look like Target.com under a different address.

A balance check needs the card number and the PIN, and those two together are the money. A site that collects them can empty the card. How gift card scams work covers this and the other common schemes.

Gift card balance check by brand

Each row below was checked on the issuer's own pages on 29 October 2026. Type the address yourself rather than following a link from a message.

If your card is not in the table, the number and address on the back of the card are the official ones. If the card has neither, ask the shop that sold it.

PeakVoucher does this from your own data. A wallet for the vouchers buried in your messages. Join the free beta →

Amazon, Apple, Google Play and Steam: balances that live in an account

Platform cards work differently from shop cards. The value is meant to move into an account, and the balance you can check is the account's, not the card's.

Amazon shows your gift card balance under Your Account, then Gift cards, once a card has been added to the account or applied to an order. If you bought a physical card on your own account, the serial number on the back can be matched to the order in Your Orders. For a card someone gave you, Techlicious found that Amazon generally does not show the balance until the card is added. Adding it does not spend it; the money waits in your balance.

Apple treats a redeemed card as Apple Account balance, and its support page links to a balance page for your Apple Account. To redeem, open the App Store, tap your photo or the account button, and choose Redeem Code.

Google Play adds the card's value to your Google Play balance when you redeem it, and the balance is under Payments & subscriptions, then Payment methods. Google says its cards are geo-restricted to the country of purchase.

Steam cards are redeemed on Steam's redeem page and the value goes to your Steam Wallet.

Visa and Mastercard gift cards: ask the issuer, not the network

A Visa or Mastercard gift card is issued by a bank or a programme manager, and the network only carries the payment. Mastercard's own prepaid gift card page notes its cards are serviced by InComm and issued by Sutton Bank, and points card questions to the issuer. So the balance lives with whoever is named on the back of the card.

Vanilla is one of the most common. Its FAQ gives balance.vanillagift.com and 1-833-322-6760, and it adds two details worth knowing. The funds never expire, and the valid-through date is there for fraud protection rather than as an expiry. And some purchases, petrol and restaurants in particular, can place a hold of up to 20% above the purchase amount, so a card with $48 left may decline a $45 bill. When a purchase is larger than the balance, tell the cashier how much to put on the card and pay the rest another way.

Why a balance can show zero, or the wrong amount

• The card was never activated. Shop cards are activated at the till. Apple and Google both say a card that will not redeem may not have been activated by the retailer, and that only the shop can fix it. Keep the receipt.
• It was bought in another country. Apple, Google Play and Spotify cards are tied to the country or region where they were sold.
• It has already been redeemed. On a platform card, the value may already sit in someone's account. Apple suggests signing out and back in to refresh the balance before assuming the worst.
• The balance is an estimate. Walmart's terms say so of its online and phone balance; a pending transaction may not show yet.
• It was drained. A freshly loaded card that reads zero before you have used it was probably tampered with on the rack. Call the number on the back at once; the first-hour steps are in the scams guide.

What to write down when you check

A balance check is only useful if you remember the answer. Write down four things: the brand, the amount, the date you checked, and the expiry date if the card has one. The checked date matters because balances drift as you spend, and a number from March is not a number for July.

Bankrate's 2024 survey found 43% of US adults holding unused gift cards, worth $244 on average. Most of that is not lost to expiry; it is forgotten. A list sorted by expiry, reviewed once a week, is the whole fix, and how to keep track of gift cards and vouchers sets it out step by step. Whether a card can expire at all depends on where it was sold; the rules by country are in their own guide.

If you have just been given a pile of cards, the guide to holiday gift cards covers redeeming the platform cards and deciding which shop cards to spend first.

How PeakVoucher does it

PeakVoucher keeps each voucher's amount, expiry and a link back to where it came from, and sorts the wallet by what expires next. When you mark a voucher as partly used, the new balance is stored with the date. It never checks balances on a third-party site, and the code itself is fetched only when you open that one voucher. PeakVoucher is coming soon and in private beta.

Hen Eytan · Founder, UPeak

Builds the UPeak apps and writes up the research behind them.