Capital One Venture X Review: A Steal of a Deal Among Premium Cards

High rewards rates

You'd expect a higher-end travel card to offer bonus rewards on travel spending. This card delivers, as long as you’re willing to use Capital One’s online travel-booking portal. You get:

• 5 miles per dollar on flights and vacation rentals booked through Capital One Travel.

• 10 miles per dollar on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel.

Unlike some of its competitors, this card rewards you handsomely for everyday spending, too. It earns 2 miles per dollar spent on purchases outside the bonus areas, where most people's spending typically occurs. Competing cards typically offer only 1 point or mile per dollar for such spending.

Remember that A/C I had to replace? That purchase alone netted me 24,000 miles — worth at least $240 toward my New York City trip.

» MORE: Best credit cards for home improvement

Generous welcome bonus

Welcome offers can change over time, especially with travel credit cards. The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card has an excellent one: Earn 100,000 bonus miles once you spend $10,000 on purchases in the first 6 months from account opening - equal to $1,000 in travel.

» MORE: Best credit card bonus offers

Airport lounge access

According to the issuer's website, the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card gives access to more than 1,300 Priority Pass lounges. This is a somewhat common offering on travel cards in this class. But what sets the card apart is that it also offers full access to the Capital One's nascent but growing lounge network. As of December 2025, according to Capital One Travel, Capital One-branded lounges and "landings" were open at:

• Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

• Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.

• Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

• Denver International Airport.

• Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

• John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. (A location is planned for LaGuardia, too.)

I’ll be honest: Airport lounge access doesn’t do much for me. My home airport is small and has only one Priority Pass lounge, and I don’t need the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card to access it; any number of travel credit cards could get me in. More to the point, I’m not sure I even want to anymore? Like most other Priority Pass lounges, mine is cramped and crowded and low on amenities. The line for the bathroom is interminable, and while snagging a “free” soda or beer is nice, oddly there’s no bottled water in sight.

Even more exclusive lounges can, in my experience, be underwhelming. There’s sometimes a line to get in the line, and that’s assuming you can even find it. Me, I’d been looking forward to sampling the new Capital One lounge at JFK when we flew home from our NYC trip — but because we were flying JetBlue, our terminal wasn’t anywhere near the lounge and would have required going back through security to access it. No thanks.

So personally, this benefit isn’t worth much to me. But if you're a lounge lover, NerdWallet's travel rewards experts report that Capital One’s are nice! Maybe one day I'll find out for myself.

Annual perks

Central to the value of the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card are its annual credits, which have substantial dollar value.

• Up to $300 annual credit for bookings made through Capital One Travel.

• 10,000 bonus miles every account anniversary (equal to $100 toward travel). The first batch of miles comes when you renew after one year of card membership.

Those benefits alone, which renew each year, make up for the annual fee. That assumes you’ll use the Capital One Travel online booking service — and I’ve been more than happy to do so.

In February 2025, I used my $300 credit toward flights for my wife and me to Cancun, to celebrate our 15-year anniversary.

And in summer 2026, I’ll be using these credits toward a family trip to England. They’ll be enough to almost fully cover a four-night stay at a small inn, nestled in a rustic town with no major hotel chains. In my mind, that’s a perfect use case for an issuer's travel portal.

Flexible redemption options

Capital One's rewards program gives you several ways to use your miles for travel:

• Redeem rewards as a statement credit. Book travel however you want, then redeem miles for statement credit for some or all of the cost. Miles are worth 1 cent each when redeemed like this, according to NerdWallet valuations, with no minimum redemption amount required. Any expense that Capital One considers "travel" is eligible, including not only flights and hotel stays, but "rail lines, car rental agencies, limousine services, bus lines, cruise lines, taxi cabs, travel agents and time shares," according to the Capital One website.

• Book through the issuer's travel center. This online portal offers flights, hotels, rental cars and vacation packages. You can pay upfront with your miles, at a rate of 1 cent per mile, according to NerdWallet valuations.

• Transfer miles to partners. Capital One lets you transfer your miles to the loyalty programs of a number of airline and hotel partners. We calculate that miles are worth an average of 1.6 cents apiece when used this way.

Miles have no blackout dates and never expire.

For me — and, remember, I’m trying to keep things simple — using my rewards to book directly through Capital One’s travel portal has been the most seamless redemption option, especially since that’s also how you have to use the annual $300 travel credit.

I know I could probably squeeze more value from my points by transferring them to a Capital One partner, but that actually happens to be one of the few drawbacks of this card, in my opinion. More on that later.

Simplicity

“Simple” and “premium travel credit card” aren't concepts that usually go together, since the typical card in that category is wildly complicated. But relatively speaking, the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card is easier to understand than, say, the American Express Platinum Card®. That card has a dizzying array of benefits, many of which aren’t super-useful to everybody or take an inordinate amount of effort to use.

By contrast, the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card at its core retains the simplicity of the original Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card by offering a flat rewards rate on all spending and lets you redeem rewards to pay for any travel expense.

It layers on airport lounge access and more rewards if you use the Capital One Travel portal.

The point is that someone willing to endure only modest hassle from their travel credit card can enjoy and benefit from the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card. That same person might be frustrated by complex competing travel credit cards.

Travel-friendly perks

The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card offers additional benefits that frequent travelers will enjoy. Some come because it's a top-tier Visa Infinite card.

• Complimentary Hertz President’s Circle status. This is the top status tier at Hertz. According to Hertz, customers with this status can get confirmed one-car-class upgrades, 50% bonus on Gold Plus Rewards points on qualified rentals, free additional driver, expedited pickup and e-return, and more. The status is typically reserved for customers who have 20 or more rentals in a year or spend $4,000.

• Cell phone protection.

• Travel protections. These include auto rental collision damage waiver, trip cancellation and interruption, and trip delay reimbursement.

• No foreign transaction fees. Standard on travel credit cards and useful for overseas purchases.

• Trusted traveler application credit. A statement credit of up to $120 for the application fee for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck. The credit is available once every four years.

(Note: Benefits may change over time.)

That TSA PreCheck/Global Entry application credit is a common perk among travel cards, but it’s also one I’ve historically undervalued, simply because until recently, my home airport did not offer Global Entry appointments. But that changed in 2025, and I figured that since I had an upcoming trip to England, it was time to take the plunge and apply. Thanks to the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, the $120 application fee was reimbursed.

» MORE: Capital One credit cards mobile app review

MORE NERDY PERSPECTIVES

Annual fee

With annual fees, it’s all relative. A yearly fee of $395 is substantial, but other luxury travel credit cards have similar or even significantly higher fees. For example:

• Chase Sapphire Reserve®: $795.

• American Express Platinum Card®: $895.

Still, if a big annual fee bothers you, but you like aspects of the card, consider the original Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. (See a comparison below.)

Outside the Capital One family, look at the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card with an annual fee of $95. It’s versatile and valuable as a travel credit card.

Value tied to booking portal

Capital One Travel, the issuer’s online travel-booking site, has nice features, including predictive pricing models and tools to help customers get the best deals — including proactively comparing hotel rates against Expedia, Orbitz and other travel booking sites. It offers access to thousands of flights, hotels and rental cars, and features free price-drop protection, 24/7 alerts and the option to freeze a price and come back 14 days later to book it.

But this card’s value is so tied to that booking portal that it diminishes one of the main selling points of the Venture family of cards: flexibility.

If for some reason you won’t use Capital One Travel for booking, the bonus rewards for spending on this card as well as the huge $300 travel credit are worth nothing to you. The card’s value proposition quickly shrinks. Many travelers prefer to book directly with hotels, for example, which adds to their elite status with a particular hotel chain or allows them to use status benefits they already have. Booking through a travel portal can negate those elite benefits.

By comparison, the competing Chase Sapphire Reserve® also links the value of its rewards to its travel portal. Chase Ultimate Rewards® points can be worth more than the standard 1 cent per point if used to book travel there. But the Chase card's $300 annual credit is good toward travel booked anywhere, not just in Chase's travel portal, and it can be used for a broader range of travel purchases, including taxi rides, campground fees and train fares.

The 10,000-point anniversary bonus on the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card is more comparable to the Chase card's $300 credit. That bonus can be used more flexibly for travel, although it is worth only $100.

Granted, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® has a higher annual fee of $795.

Lack of familiar transfer partners

For travelers who like to squeeze every last drop of value out of loyalty programs, the growing roster of transfer partners on the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card is appealing. You can now transfer your Venture miles to more than a dozen airline partners — but JetBlue is the only domestic carrier. While transferring miles to foreign airline carriers can bring outsize value for your miles, it may be overwhelming for those just beginning with transfers.

Heck, it's overwhelming for me, and I'm not exactly a novice. I also have travel credit cards with Chase and American Express, and I've transferred points to those issuers' partners many times. But Chase and AmEx boast major U.S. carriers and companies as partners, names that are much more familiar to the average traveler.

But hey, if you have the time and inclination to study up on travel routes and mileage charts for EVA, Finnair, or TAP Air Portugal? Knock yourself out. I’m sure there are sweet spots for outsize value there, but I have other cards for that.

If you, too, want to work all the angles, one of the aforementioned Chase travel cards might be a better choice — the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or the Chase Sapphire Reserve®. You can move points to several useful airline and hotel loyalty programs at a 1:1 ratio. Partners include United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Marriott.

How it compares to the regular Venture card

Both Venture cards are general travel credit cards and come with the same base rewards rate of 2 miles per dollar spent. You can redeem miles for credit on your statement against a recent travel purchase, use them at Capital One Travel or transfer to more than 15 travel loyalty programs. And both offer the same credit for applying for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry. A third Venture card, the $0-annual-fee Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card - Miles Boost, is a less useful comparison (see rates and fees).

Is the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card worth the higher annual fee? Here’s a quick comparison.

If you already have the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, you can also apply for the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card.

» MORE: Full review of the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

Still unsure about whether this card, or any travel card, is what you need? See our best credit cards page for options across categories.