A signup bonus is real money, paid once. Premium cards usually pay it in points. 60,000 of them after $4,000 of spending in three months is a typical offer. Whatever the currency, the card pays it in year one and never again. That makes "what is this bonus worth per year" the wrong question.
Work Out What the Points Are Actually Worth
A points bonus is quoted in a currency you cannot spend at the grocery store, so the first job is converting it. The conservative method is to check what the issuer will give you for the points with no effort, usually a cash-out as statement credits, or the fixed rate in their own travel portal.
Transferring the points to an airline or hotel partner can be worth more, sometimes much more, but only if a seat or room is available on the dates you want. Treat that as a possible upside, not the number you plan around. A card that only looks good at those higher valuations is really a bet that the right award will be there when you go to book it.
Check You Can Actually Reach It
Every bonus has a spending requirement and a window, and there is no partial credit. An offer of $600 for $4,000 of spending in three months is worth $600 if you would put that through the card anyway, and worth nothing at all if you would put through $2,000. It is the same offer either way. Whether it pays you $600 or $0 comes down entirely to whether you clear the requirement.
There is a difference between rearranging spending and inventing it. Moving bills you already pay onto the new card for a few months, then moving them back, costs you nothing and is fair game. Spending money you would not otherwise spend, or paying a fee to force a payment through, is not: those costs come straight out of the bonus you are chasing. If the requirement is comfortably above what you would put through the card anyway, the honest answer is that the offer is not aimed at you.
Then Ask What Year Two Looks Like
A bonus arrives once. The annual fee does not, and this is where the math sometimes catches people. A card charging $550 with a large bonus looks excellent in the first year, when the bonus covers the fee several times over. In the second year the bonus is gone and the fee is not, so the card has to justify itself on rewards and credits alone.
So look at the two years separately rather than blending them into an average. Year one, with the bonus, tells you whether the card is worth opening. Year two, without it, tells you whether the card is worth keeping. Those are different questions, and a single blended number answers neither.
The Part No Calculation Can Tell You
All of the above assumes the bank says yes, which is the one variable nobody can compute for you. Several issuers cap how many cards you can open in a rolling window, and most will exclude you from a bonus you have already collected on the same product, sometimes for years afterwards.
So a bonus you can easily afford to earn may still be off the table because of a card you opened a year or two ago. If you have opened several cards recently, do not count on any first-year figure until you have checked the issuer's own rules on who qualifies.
How CardSpec Handles It
We count the bonus at its full value in the first year, using a conservative points valuation, and only if your spending would actually clear the requirement in the window. If you cannot reach it, the card gets no credit for it. Each card therefore shows two figures, one for the first year and one for every year after, and the rankings let you switch between them. Seeing the order shift as you toggle is often the most useful part, a reminder that the bonus is just one piece of a card's annual value.