Chase Sapphire Preferred Review: Nearly a Must-Have for Travelers

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card offers versatility for travelers that's hard to find at a similar price point.

Solid sign-up bonus

The card features a generous sign-up bonus: Earn 100,000 bonus points after you spend $5,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

Bonus rewards in multiple categories

You earn extra points in a bunch of spending categories, which is good, but also makes it complicated:

• 5 points per $1 spent on all travel purchased through Chase.

• 3 points per $1 spent on dining (including eligible delivery services and takeout).

• 3 points per $1 spent on select streaming services.

• 3 points per $1 spent on online grocery purchases (not including Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs).

• 2 points per $1 spent on travel not purchased through Chase.

• 1 point per $1 spent on other purchases.

• Through September 2027: 5 points per $1 spent on Lyft.

• Each account anniversary, cardmembers will earn bonus points equal to 10% of total purchases made the previous year.

Triple points on dining and streaming services is useful, while online grocery purchases may or may not be, depending on your lifestyle. Travel-related purchases are far more lucrative if you’re willing to book through Chase's travel portal. Even if you’re not, Chase’s definition of "travel" is fortunately broad; in addition to airfare and hotel stays, you can also earn bonus rewards on expenses like parking garage fees, bus fares and campgrounds. And these bonus rewards aren’t just available for travel and dining in the U.S., they can be earned worldwide.

Those earnings rates are, in effect, slightly higher because of the 10% anniversary bonus boost. For example, streaming services rewards effectively have a rewards rate of 3.1%. (The anniversary bonus applies to dollars spent, not points earned.)

And if you’re willing to use points to book travel through the Chase portal, your points will get a 25% boost (points are worth 1.25 cents). All told, a dollar spent at a restaurant or for a streaming service, for example, would earn a total value of 3.75 cents when used for travel through Chase.

Transfer partners

This card’s valuable 1:1 transfer partners make it a keeper, especially if you're willing to look for good redemption opportunities. Say you spot a nice deal with one of Chase’s airline transfer partners — maybe a flight that normally costs thousands of dollars going for a mere 50,000 miles plus taxes and fees. With this card, you have the ability to transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards® points into that airline’s loyalty program and pounce on that deal.

Here are the transfer partners:

» MORE: Chase Ultimate Rewards: How the Program Works

Complementary cards

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is an excellent companion to other cards in the Chase Ultimate Rewards® family. That’s because you can move points to this card from your other cards that earn Chase Ultimate Rewards®, potentially opening up more redemption options.

Consider the Chase Freedom Flex®. It earns 5% cash back on rotating quarterly categories (on up to the first $1,500 in purchases, upon activation) in addition to rewards for other spending. You could potentially move the rewards you earn on that card to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. From there, you could get more value out of your points by transferring points at a 1:1 ratio to other loyalty programs or redeeming them for 1.25 cents apiece when booking travel through Chase. (See our comparison article on Flex versus Sapphire Preferred.)

» MORE: What is the ‘Chase Trifecta’?

Sapphire Preferred vs. Sapphire Reserve

If you have your eye on the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, you might also be checking out the pricier Chase Sapphire Reserve®. A premium travel card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® comes with an annual fee of $550 and several rich perks and benefits, including airline lounge access and an annual $300 travel credit. If you travel enough, going for the more expensive option could be well worth the cost.

Read NerdWallet’s full comparison of these two cards to learn more about the differences.

Here’s a look at how the cards stack up on their major features:

It's complicated

All those reward categories with different rates, an anniversary bonus and a 1.25 cents per point redemption for travel through Chase? Dizzying.

Additionally, the best rewards and redemptions are tightly tied to using the Chase portal to book travel or to transferring points to a different loyalty program, which is more to figure out. And to really boost your points, many people will use the card in conjunction with other Chase cards.

Phew.

In the end, making the most of the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card requires a learning curve and an ongoing juggling act that some consumers simply don’t want to deal with. If you're interested in earning travel rewards, but want something a little easier to use, the $95-annual-fee Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card has a much simpler rewards structure.

You'll earn 5 miles per dollar on hotels and car rentals booked through Capital One Travel. Other purchases earn 2 miles per dollar. But like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, there's multiple ways to redeem rewards with this card, including transferring them to travel partners. If you want something even more straightforward, consider a cash-back credit card.

Few premium perks

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is an excellent card for travelers in general. It even has a few travel perks, such as primary rental car insurance, trip cancellation/interruption insurance and lost luggage insurance.

But for those who love to travel in style, the more expensive Chase Sapphire Reserve® could be a better fit.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® with an annual fee of $550 comes with an annual $300 travel credit and Priority Pass Select access, which gets you into several airport lounges for free and includes meal credits for certain airport eateries. And it comes with a credit for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry (or NEXUS).