The Biggest Rewards Credit Cards In A Nutshell: What They’re Actually Good For, And Where They Fall Short

There are tons of in-depth reviews of rewards credit cards. The truth is that the value proposition of each can be boiled down to essentials. We can talk about what each one does well – and does poorly – in a nutshell. That helps understand all of the details without getting lost, and gives a framework for thinking about each of the pieces that get pretty complicated.

Here’s how I think about several of the major cards, boiled down to their essentials:

• Chase Sapphire Reserve® (See rates and fees) This is a good lounge card, a good spending card, but it’s expensive and the coupons aren’t nearly as great as Amex Platinum.

  You can make the economics of the card work, especially if you can do high spend in bonus categories – 4x on direct airfare spend, 4x on hotel spend, 8x on Chase Travel portal spend and 3x on restaurants and dining is great.

  I’ve put over $75,000 which earns me an additional $500 Southwest Airlines credit booking through Chase’s portal; Southwest’s A-List status; IHG Diamond status and a $250 Shops at Chase credit on top of the points from the spend. And I use the The Edit credits (2 x $250 on minimum two-night hotel stay) and plan to use the $250 hotel brand-specific credit (which can be stacked with The Edit credit and the $300 travel credit) and easily using the dining credits, so the card really works for me.

  

• American Express Platinum Card® (see rates and fees) The most expensive mainstream card with an $895 annual fee, but the credits they give you are worth several times the fee. This is not a good card for spending, outside of airfare. But if you make the credits work, it covers the cost of the card and then some and pays for your lounge access. Amex has the biggest lounge network, but Centurion lounges aren’t as nice as Chase lounges and the food is much worse than Capital One lounges.

  

• Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card (See rates and fees) It’s the least expensive of the premium rewards cards, the value premium card. Capital One lounges are the best bank lounges, but there aren’t enough of them. It’s a good card for spending at 2x transferrable points on everything, though the standard $95 annual fee Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card (See rates and fees) is identical in earn.

  The $395 annual fee is easily ‘covered’ by the card’s $300 travel portal credit (I just buy a single airine ticket each year) and the annual 10,000 points at card renewal. Then it gives me lounge access – the JFK lounge especially is great, and the two ‘Landings’ (at LaGuardia and Washington’s National airport) have the best lounge food in the United States. I basically view this access as becoming free given the cards fee vs. credits. It used to be my ‘catch all’ spending card before Bilt introduced its new card products.

  

• Citi Strata Elite^SM Card (See rates and fees.) offers transferable points and the only transfers to American Airlines AAdvantage. Their hotel portal earns 12x, and I’ve found favorable pricing. The credits more than cover the card’s annual fee, by a lot in the first year, and that’s an inducement to try it out. While I have it I like earning 6x at restaurants including restaurant delivery services every Friday and Saturday from 6 PM to 6 AM ET.

• Bilt Palladium Card (See rates and fees) is a Bilt Points-earning machine.

  It has the potential to be a 4x on everything card, but you could ignore every feature the card has and just treat it as ‘2x on everything’ and it’s still earning the most valuable points currency with the best points-transfer partners. Plus, Bilt Rewards has the biggest transfer bonuses, often up to 100%.

  The card’s rollout was rocky at the start of the year and so it’s really undervalued now. I’m earning more points than before – a lot more – and then transferring them at 100% bonuses or more (which I’ve taken advantage of with Bilt to Air France KLM, British Airways, Japan Airlines, Virgin Atlantic).

  

• Bilt Blue Card (See rates and fees) is really underappreciated as the best no annual fee in the market. It earns the most valuable transferable points, that can be spent through Bilt’s travel portal at 1.25 cents apiece or transferred to airline and hotel partners (more partners than Amex, Chase, Capital One or Citi). And since you can earn up to 1.25X points on rent and mortgage payments by matching the spend you do on the card, you can actually wind up with 2.25 points per dollar on your general spend. More than 2x earn with the best points makes it unbeatable at the price point.

• United^SM Explorer Card (See rates and fees) You need a United cobrand now if you play much in MileagePlus, because (1) you earn more miles for your United flights if you have one that comes with an annual fee, and (2) you pay fewer miles for your awards, too. This is a card to get if you’re a United flyer, but not to put regular spending on.

• Citi® / AAdvantage Business^TM World Elite Mastercard® [See rates and fees] is an interesting tool because (1) it lets you ‘double dip’ with the AAdvantage Business program, your business account earns points for ticket spend in addition to the spend each traveler earns, (2) you can transfer those points to yourself or others (cardholders get the requirement of 5 travelers crediting trips to the account and $5,000 spend a year waived), (3) while technically a targeted offer, everyone I know is targeted: authorized user cards earn Loyalty Points towards status both for the authorized user and for the primary cardmembers – so it’s possible for the same spend to count towards status for two different people. That’s an unbeatable combination. Oh, and (4) crediting a trip to AAdvantage Business also earns an additional Loyalty Point per dollar spent.

For rates and fees of the American Express Platinum Card®, click here.