14 Best Cash Back Credit Cards of December 2025
Many or all of the products on this page are from partners who compensate us when you click to or take an action on their website, but this does not influence our evaluations or ratings. Our opinions are our own.
Many or all of the products on this page are from partners who compensate us when you click to or take an action on their website, but this does not influence our evaluations or ratings. Our opinions are our own.
The best cash back credit card is one you will use regularly. Some cards pay a single rate on every purchase, with no work required on your part. Others pay higher rewards in specific categories (up to 6% in some cases) and a lower rate elsewhere. Choose one card for everything, or carry several to maximize your cash back.
| Credit card | NerdWallet rating | Annual fee | Rewards rate | Intro offer | Learn more |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
More about our picks: Best cash back credit cards
Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card
Our pick for: Flat-rate cash back
Among flat-rate cash-back cards, you'll be hard-pressed to beat the Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card. It earns an unlimited 2% back on all purchases, which is excellent. But in addition, the card offers a rich sign-up bonus and a decent intro APR period on both purchases and balance transfers. That's an impressive, hard-to-find combination of features on a card with a $0 annual fee. Read our review.
Citi Double Cash® Card
Our pick for: Simplicity + high rate
Year after year, the Citi Double Cash® Card has been a top choice among flat-rate cash-back cards. You earn 2% cash back on every purchase — 1% when you buy something and 1% when you pay it off. There's no 0% intro period for purchases and no bonus categories, but the high rewards rate more than makes up for the lack of bells and whistles. Read our review.
Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card
Our pick for: Simplicity + intro APR offer
The original 1.5% flat-rate cash-back card still holds its own in a now-crowded field and the 5% cash back offered on hotels, vacation rentals, and car rentals booked through Capital One Travel offers the opportunity to earn more rewards. The Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card offers a compelling combination of a good rewards rate, redemption flexibility, sign-up bonus and introductory APR period (see rates and fees). Read our review.
Chase Freedom Unlimited®
Our pick for: All-around cash back
The Chase Freedom Unlimited® was already a fine card when it offered 1.5% cash back on all purchases. Now it's even better, with bonus rewards on travel booked through Chase, as well as at restaurants and drugstores. On top of all that, new cardholders get a 0% introductory APR period and the opportunity to earn a sweet bonus. Read our review.
Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express
Our pick for: Families and households
If your household spends a lot on groceries, gas, transit and streaming, the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express is for you. The rewards it pays in those categories — particularly at U.S. supermarkets and on select U.S. streaming subscriptions — are among the richest of any card. There's a nice welcome offer for new cardholders and an introductory APR period, too. The generous benefits come at a cost, though: Unlike most cash-back cards, this one charges an annual fee. Terms apply. Read our review.
Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card
Our pick for: Going out & Staying in
Some credit cards reward you well for going out, others for staying in. The Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card is the rare card that does both. It offers a terrific cash-back rate not only on dining and entertainment but also at grocery stores and on popular streaming services. Toss in a good bonus offer and intro APR period, and this card is a winner. (see rates and fees). Read our review.
Discover it® Cash Back
Our pick for: Quarterly categories + matching bonus
The Discover it® Cash Back earns bonus cash back in quarterly categories that you activate. In past years, those categories have included common spending areas like grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations and specific major retailers. Category activation can be a hassle, but if your spending aligns with those categories (and for most households, it probably will), you can rake in serious rewards. You also get the issuer's signature "cash-back match" bonus in your first year. Read our review.
Chase Freedom Flex®
Our pick for: Quarterly categories + cash bonus
The Chase Freedom Flex® offers bonus cash back in quarterly categories that you activate, as well as on travel booked through Chase, at restaurants and at drugstores. Category activation can be a hassle, but if your spending matches the categories — and for a lot of people, it will — you can rack up hundreds of dollars a year. There's a fantastic bonus offer for new cardholders and an intro APR offer, too. Read our review.
Blue Cash Everyday® Card from American Express
Our pick for: Popular 3% categories
The Blue Cash Everyday® Card from American Express pays elevated rewards at U.S. supermarkets, at U.S. gas stations and on U.S. online retail purchases. The rewards might not be as rich as on the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express, but this card doesn't charge an annual fee either. New cardholders get a decent welcome offer and an introductory APR period. Read our review.
Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards Visa® credit card
Our pick for: Customizable 3% categories
The Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards Visa® credit card gives you a little more control over your credit card rewards by letting you choose which category earns the highest cash-back rate, from a list that includes gas stations, restaurants, travel, home improvement and more. You also get bonus rewards at grocery stores and wholesale clubs, plus a great new-cardholder bonus offer. Read our review.
Synchrony Premier World Mastercard®
Our pick for: High rate + hassle-free redemption
It doesn’t get much easier than earning 2% cash back on your spending and receiving rewards automatically as a credit to your account. That’s the deal with the Synchrony Premier World Mastercard®, which applies rewards as a statement credit to your account within two billing periods after the purchase is made. It has no sign-up bonus, but the annual fee is $0. Read our review.
Apple Card
Our pick for: Apple Pay users
If the bulk of your purchases are going through Apple Pay, it makes sense to put them on the Apple Card. It earns 2% cash back on all Apple Pay purchases, rising to 3% when such purchases are at Apple and other select merchants. (Purchases made with the physical card or a virtual card number online earn only 1%.) Rewards are credited to your account daily and available for use immediately. Read our review.
Prime Visa
Our pick for: Amazon Prime shoppers
If you drop a lot of money at Amazon and/or Whole Foods Market, this is the card for you, with 5% back on such purchases, plus bonus rewards at restaurants and gas stations, plus local transit and commuting (including rideshare). There's no annual fee, but you have to be a Prime member, and that does have a fee. Read our review.
PayPal Cashback Mastercard®
Our pick for: Regular PayPal users
Earn unlimited 3% cash back on purchases made with the card through PayPal and unlimited 1.5% cash back on all other purchases. You'll need a PayPal account, but if you're the sort of person this card appeals to, you probably already have one. Read our review.
How NerdWallet rates cash back credit cards
NerdWallet assigns star ratings to cash back credit cards based on how much value they provide to a typical consumer. Our scale goes from 1.0 at the bottom to 5.0 at the top and is incremented in tenths of a star — such as 2.5, 3.7 or 5.0.
How ratings are set
What the stars mean
Rewards structure
Bonus categories
Fees, perks and more
Ask our credit card experts
Kenley Young
Kenley YoungWHAT'S YOUR CASH BACK CREDIT CARD STRATEGY?
I carry about a half-dozen cash-back credit cards, and each has a specific use case. Groceries are a major line item for our family of four, so the Citi Custom Cash® Card is our designated card for supermarket sweeps. Dining out is a close second, and those expenses typically go on the Chase Freedom Unlimited®. If either grocery stores or restaurants happens to be in the quarterly bonus categories for Chase or Discover, then I reach for my Chase Freedom Flex® or my Discover it® Cash Back. For "all else," it's usually my Citi Double Cash® Card.
Kenley Young
Managing Editor
Funto Omojola
Funto OmojolaWHAT'S YOUR CASH BACK CREDIT CARD STRATEGY?
The best cash back card for me is one that earns a high flat rate for all my spending, so I don't have to juggle many cards or keep track of multiple bonus rewards categories. I use a credit card for nearly every purchase, so it gives me the peace of mind knowing I can pull out one card and earn rewards regardless of what I use it for.
Funto Omojola
Lead Writer & Content Strategist
Claire Tsosie
Claire TsosieWHAT'S YOUR CASH BACK CREDIT CARD STRATEGY?
I use the Citi Double Cash® Card, which I got in 2015, for almost all of my purchases. When it came out, I remember wondering if it would stick around for long because the rewards rate seemed too high (and at the time, higher than all the other offers). It changed some details but it's basically the same as when I got it. It's helped me earned thousands in rewards over the years without any fancy strategies. At times, I've juggled dozens of credit cards and been a super-optimizer, but this is a card that I come back to when I don't want to deal with all that.
Claire Tsosie
Managing Editor
WHAT'S YOUR CASH BACK CREDIT CARD STRATEGY?
I carry about a half-dozen cash-back credit cards, and each has a specific use case. Groceries are a major line item for our family of four, so the Citi Custom Cash® Card is our designated card for supermarket sweeps. Dining out is a close second, and those expenses typically go on the Chase Freedom Unlimited®. If either grocery stores or restaurants happens to be in the quarterly bonus categories for Chase or Discover, then I reach for my Chase Freedom Flex® or my Discover it® Cash Back. For "all else," it's usually my Citi Double Cash® Card.
Kenley Young
Managing Editor
WHAT'S YOUR CASH BACK CREDIT CARD STRATEGY?
The best cash back card for me is one that earns a high flat rate for all my spending, so I don't have to juggle many cards or keep track of multiple bonus rewards categories. I use a credit card for nearly every purchase, so it gives me the peace of mind knowing I can pull out one card and earn rewards regardless of what I use it for.
Funto Omojola
Lead Writer & Content Strategist
WHAT'S YOUR CASH BACK CREDIT CARD STRATEGY?
I use the Citi Double Cash® Card, which I got in 2015, for almost all of my purchases. When it came out, I remember wondering if it would stick around for long because the rewards rate seemed too high (and at the time, higher than all the other offers). It changed some details but it's basically the same as when I got it. It's helped me earned thousands in rewards over the years without any fancy strategies. At times, I've juggled dozens of credit cards and been a super-optimizer, but this is a card that I come back to when I don't want to deal with all that.
Claire Tsosie
Managing Editor
Ask Reddit: What's the best cash back card?
Reddit users who frequent the site's personal finance forums, particularly r/CreditCards, know that requests for credit card recommendations come up on a daily if not hourly basis. These requests are so common that r/CreditCards asks users to fill out a detailed template with enough information to help other redditors make an appropriate recommendation.
The credit cards subreddit has scores of threads asking some variation of the question "What's the best cash back credit card?" The answers tend to be all over the map — as they should be, since the "best" cash back credit card for you (or anyone) is very much dependent on your individual circumstances. In one of these discussions, a user summed up the point pretty much the same way NerdWallet does:
— Reddit user Eli-Had-A-Book-"Depends on where you spend your cash & how much it is. One card doesn't fit everyone's needs or wants."
For example, in a post from spring 2024 (the source of the comment shown above), a redditor asked for the "best cash back card in 2024," with their only parameters being no "hoops" to jump through and no rotating categories. The thread attracted 208 comments before being archived, and those comments touched on more than 30 distinct cards. Some were cited more than others, but the sheer variety of the suggestions reflects the many ways in which people use cash back cards. For example:
For those who value simplicity, multiple users suggested getting a good flat-rate card like the Citi Double Cash® Card (the card that came up most frequently in that discussion), the Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card, the Fidelity® Rewards Visa Signature® Card or the PayPal Cashback Mastercard® and then putting all spending on that card.
Other redditors recommended cards that offer supercharged rewards when used in specific ways. For example, the Kroger Rewards World Elite Mastercard, from the Kroger supermarket conglomerate, pays 5% cash back on purchases made with mobile wallets. With so many merchants now able to take mobile wallet payments, some users view this card as giving them 5% on everything. The amount of spending eligible for 5% has an annual cap, though, so some users said they have more than one account, giving them a higher cap.
Users who are members of the Bank of America® Preferred Rewards program rave about the high cash back rates they're able to earn on that issuer's cards thanks to rewards bonuses of up to 75%.
A separate discussion in fall 2024 started with a question, "What is the BEST cash back card for EVERYTHING?" After 117 comments, users had tossed around more than 30 options there, too. And looking back at similar threads over the years, the pattern is the same.
Worth noting: The r/CreditCards subreddit is popular with card hackers who might carry a dozen or more cards and excel at squeezing maximum rewards out of them all, so it's common to see suggestions that point to fairly obscure cash back cards or even travel rewards credit cards whose points can be turned into cash with strategic redemption. A post asking for recommendations for a single cash back card that someone can use for every purchase will commonly draw responses encouraging the user to expand their horizons and combine two or more options to enhance their earning.
So what's Reddit's favorite cash back credit card? It doesn't have one. While r/CreditCards maintains comprehensive lists of cards that earn good cash back in common categories, it isn't going to pick a "winner." Reddit is a huge community of individuals. The r/CreditCards subreddit had 1.4 million members as of September 2024, while r/personalfinance had 20 million. You're never going to get a single definitive answer, because every response is coming from a different individual who has found what works for them. But because so many people are participating, Reddit users offer up a lot of different scenarios that might match your situation, which means the recommendations that accompany those scenarios may have value to you.
Here are threads that Reddit's algorithm has highlighted for discussions about the "best" cash back cards in popular categories:
Groceries (or see more discussions).
Gas (or see more discussions).
Restaurants (or see more discussions).
Travel (or see more discussions).
"Everything" (or see more discussions).
Most popular cash back credit cards
NerdWallet’s credit card experts have reviewed hundreds of credit cards. These are the most visited review pages for cash back credit cards.
The information related to the Citi Custom Cash® Card has been collected by NerdWallet and has not been reviewed or provided by the issuer or provider of this product or service.
Methodology
NerdWallet's Credit Cards team selects the best cash-back credit cards based on overall consumer value, as evidenced by star ratings, as well as their suitability for specific kinds of consumers. Factors in our evaluation include each card's cash-back earning rates, rewards structure (such as flat-rate or tiered categories), annual fee, redemption options (including minimum redemption amounts), promotional APR period for purchases, bonus offers for new cardholders, and noteworthy features such as loyalty bonuses or the ability to choose one's own rewards categories. Learn how NerdWallet rates credit cards.
Frequently asked questions
How do cash-back credit cards work?
Every time you use a cash-back credit card, the card issuer "pays you back" a certain percentage of the purchase amount. For example, if your card earns 2% cash back on all purchases, and you buy something for $80, then you would earn $1.60 in cash back. Or say your card earns 5% at the gas station; in that case, a $42 fill-up would earn $2.10.
With most cash-back cards, you can see your accumulated earnings on your monthly statement or through your online account portal, and you can decide when and how to redeem your cash back. Some cards automatically apply your cash back to your account as a credit.
Do cash-back cards actually give you cash?
"Cash back" doesn't mean the card issuer sends you an envelope full of dollar bills. But the rewards do ultimately leave you with more cash in your pocket. The simplest way to redeem cash back is to take it as a credit that reduces your account balance: Redeem $50 worth of cash back, and a $325 balance becomes $275. Many cards also allow you to redeem cash back as a direct deposit into a bank account, and some will even mail you a paper check if you request it.
Every card issuer has its own rules for how you can redeem cash back. Some have a minimum redemption requirement — you might not be able to cash in your rewards until you have accumulated at least $20 or $25. Others let you redeem any amount at any time.
What kinds of cash-back credit cards are there?
There are two basic kinds of cash-back credit cards:
Flat-rate cards pay the same cash-back rate no matter what you buy. Flat-rate cards typically pay 1.5% to 2% on everything.
Bonus category cards pay higher rates (as much as 5% or 6%) at specific types of merchants, such as grocery stores or restaurants, and a lower rate (usually 1%) everywhere else.
Bonus categories themselves come in different flavors. On a lot of cards, the bonus categories never change. For example, you might always earn 3% at restaurants or 5% at gas stations. Some cards have rotating categories that change every three months, and you need to "activate" the categories online to qualify for the higher rate. And some cards have customizable bonus categories — you can choose which purchases earn higher rewards, or the card automatically adjusts to give you higher rewards in the category where you spend the most money.
It's common (though by no means universal) for bonus category cards to cap the amount of spending that qualifies for their highest rates; once you hit the cap, any spending in those categories reverts to the card's lower "everywhere else" rate. In general, cash back cards don't limit the total amount of cash back you can earn, although there are some exceptions.
What's the highest-paying cash-back card?
Everyone's spending patterns are different, so the card that earns you the most cash back depends on your individual situation. If you spend far more money eating out than at home, for example, a card that pays 3% at restaurants would likely be a better fit than one that pays 6% at supermarkets.
Is cash back from a credit card taxable?
Legally speaking, credit card rewards are treated as discounts on purchases rather than as income. That means you don't owe any taxes on your cash back.
Does cash back expire?
Cash back rewards typically do not expire as long as your account remains open and active. (Exceptions may apply, so check your card agreement.) Some cards may automatically apply your cash back as a credit against purchases on your next statement; others let you save it up and use it when you want.
Should I save up cash back rewards?
From a purely financial standpoint, the best way to use cash back is to redeem it as soon as it is received. Cash back doesn't earn interest, so inflation erodes its value as it sits unredeemed. If you want to put the money into savings, redeem it as a direct deposit into a bank account rather than let it build up. If that's not an option, redeem for statement credit and then put an equal amount into savings.
That said, it's not a catastrophic error to let your rewards balance build toward a goal — a big purchase, a trip, whatever. Just have a goal in mind, and don't let it sit for years on end.
Why do credit cards give cash back?
Credit card issuers give you cash back because doing so encourages you to use their cards. Credit card issuers make money from three main sources:
Fees paid by cardholders, including annual fees, late fees, balance transfer fees and so on.
Interest.
Transaction fees paid by merchants who accept credit cards, often referred to as "interchange."
Most cash back cards don't charge annual fees. So in most cases, the only way the card issuer is going to make money off a cash back card is if the cardholder uses the card — and uses it enough that the fees and interest collected by the issuer outweigh the rewards it pays out. Cardholders can make the math work in their favor by paying their bill in full and on time each month. When you do that, you don't incur interest on purchases and you never pay late fees.
