BEST CREDIT CARDSBEST CREDIT CARDSCHASE SAPPHIRE PREFERRED REVIEW: NEARLY A MUST-HAVE FOR TRAVELERS

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

You get bonus points for spending on travel, dining and some everyday purchases. Points are worth more when used to book through Chase.
Claire Tsosie Author AvatarGregory Karp Author Avatar
Mar 17, 2024 5:37 p.m. PDT
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The Bottom Line

5.0

NerdWallet rating

The big sign-up bonus and high-value points have long made this a favorite among travelers.

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card Image
Apply Now
on Chase's website
on Chase's website
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Annual Fee
$95
Rewards Rate
1x-5x
Points
Intro Offer
60,000
Points
Recommended credit score
Intro APR
N/A
Regular APR
21.49%-28.49% Variable APR
Recommended credit score
Annual Fee
$95
Rewards Rate
1x-5x
Points
Intro Offer
60,000
Points
Recommended credit score
Intro APR
N/A
Regular APR
21.49%-28.49% Variable APR
Recommended credit score
  • Annual fee

    $95

  • Rewards rate

    1x-5x

  • Bonus offer

    Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 toward travel when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards®.

  • Intro APR

    N/A

  • Ongoing APR

    APR: 21.49%-28.49% Variable APR

    Cash Advance APR: 29.99%, Variable

    Penalty APR: Up to 29.99%

  • Balance transfer fee

    Either $5 or 5% of the amount of each transfer, whichever is greater.

  • Foreign transaction fee

    $0

  • Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards®.
  • Enjoy benefits such as 5x on travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards®, 3x on dining, select streaming services and online groceries, 2x on all other travel purchases, 1x on all other purchases, and $50 annual Ultimate Rewards Hotel Credit, plus more.
  • Get 25% more value when you redeem for airfare, hotels, car rentals and cruises through Chase Ultimate Rewards®. For example, 60,000 points are worth $750 toward travel.
  • Count on Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance, Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver, Lost Luggage Insurance and more.
  • Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2024.
  • Member FDIC
Video preview image

Pros and Cons

Pros

New cardholder bonus offer

Bonus categories

Primary rental car coverage

Flexible rewards redemption

Transfer partners

Cons

Has annual fee

Requires good/excellent credit

Complicated rewards

Detailed Review

For travelers, the $95-annual-fee Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card stands out as a versatile and valuable choice.

With this card, you can earn rewards — known as Ultimate Rewards® points — in a variety of ways and redeem them strategically for travel, like transferring those points to a variety of loyalty programs, including heavy hitters such as United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Marriott and Hyatt. And it dovetails nicely with some other Chase cards that also earn Ultimate Rewards® points.

Overall, it might not be the easiest card to use — a Swiss Army knife compared with the butter knife that simpler cards are. But it’s a go-to card for travelers who delight in finding ways to reap big value from their rewards.

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card: Basics

Card type: Travel.

Annual fee: $95.

Sign-up bonus: Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 toward travel when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards®.

Ongoing rewards:

  • 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 March 2025: 5 points per $1 spent on eligible Peloton purchases (with a maximum earning of 25,000 points) and on Lyft.

Interest rate: The ongoing APR is 21.49%-28.49% Variable APR.

Foreign transaction fees: None.

Other benefits:

  • A $50 annual credit on hotel stays purchased through Chase.

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

  • Hotel and airline transfer partners.

How much is a point worth?

Chase Ultimate Rewards® points earned on this card are worth 1.25 cents each when redeemed for travel booked through Chase. Using points this way, or transferring them to travel partners, is key to getting the most value from the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. Otherwise, it’s not quite as lucrative to use points for less-valuable redemption options, including cash back, gift cards and merchandise.

Compare to Other Cards

ANNUAL FEE
$95
INTRO APR
N/A
REGULAR APR
21.49%-28.49% Variable APR
RECOMMENDED CREDIT SCORE
ANNUAL FEE
$0
INTRO APR
0% intro APR for 15 months on purchases and balance transfers
REGULAR APR
17.24%-28.24% Variable APR
RECOMMENDED CREDIT SCORE
ANNUAL FEE
$250
INTRO APR
N/A
REGULAR APR
See Pay Over Time APR
RECOMMENDED CREDIT SCORE
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Benefits and Perks

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 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 toward travel when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards®.

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 March 2025: 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:

Airlines

  • Aer Lingus (1:1 ratio).

  • Air Canada (1:1 ratio).

  • Air France-KLM (1:1 ratio).

  • British Airways (1:1 ratio).

  • Emirates (1:1 ratio).

  • Iberia (1:1 ratio).

  • JetBlue (1:1 ratio).

  • Singapore (1:1 ratio).

  • Southwest (1:1 ratio).

  • United (1:1 ratio).

  • Virgin Atlantic (1:1 ratio).

Hotels

  • Hyatt (1:1 ratio).

  • InterContinental Hotels Group (1:1 ratio).

  • Marriott (1:1 ratio).

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.)

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 major features:

Empty Table Header

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Annual fee

$95.

$550.

Sign-up bonus

Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 toward travel when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards®.

Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $900 toward travel when you redeem through Chase Travel℠.

Rewards

  • 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 March 2025: 5 points per $1 spent on Lyft.

Points are worth 1.25 cents apiece when redeemed for travel through Chase.

  • 10 points per $1 spent on Chase Dining purchases.

  • 10 points per $1 spent on hotel stays and car rentals purchased through Chase.

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

  • 3 points per $1 spent on travel and dining not booked with Chase.

  • 1 point per $1 spent on other purchases.

  • Through March 2025: 10 points per $1 spent on Lyft.

Points are worth 1.5 cents apiece when redeemed for travel through Chase.

Other benefits

  • A $50 annual credit on hotel stays purchased through Chase.

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

  • 1:1 transfer partners, including United, Southwest, JetBlue, Marriott and Hyatt.

  • $300 annual credit, automatically applied to travel spending.

  • 1:1 transfer partners (same as the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card).

  • Access to more than 1,000 airport lounges worldwide through Priority Pass Select.

  • Up to $100 reimbursement every four years for NEXUS, Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application fees charged to your card.

  • Access to “Reserved by Sapphire” restaurant-booking feature.

Learn more

Drawbacks and Considerations

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), worth up to $100 once every four years.

To see how these cards compare to the competition, check out NerdWallet's list of best credit cards to get.

How To Decide If It's Right For You

Using the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card for simple rewards — say, earning cash back — would be akin to buying a top-of-the-line multipurpose tool just to use the nail file. The card offers outstanding value, but to fully appreciate it, a traveler needs to take advantage of its versatility. If that appeals to you, this card is an excellent choice.

alt
Alternate Pick: No annual fee
Solid flat-rate travel rewards on everything

With no annual fee, this card gives you 1.5 miles for every $1 you spend. It comes with a new-cardmember bonus offer, and points are redeemable for statement credit against many kinds of travel expenses.


Methodology

NerdWallet reviews credit cards with an eye toward both the quantitative and qualitative features of a card. Quantitative features are those that boil down to dollars and cents, such as fees, interest rates, rewards (including earning rates and redemption values) and the cash value of benefits and perks. Qualitative factors are those that affect how easy or difficult it is for a typical cardholder to get good value from the card. They include such things as the ease of application, simplicity of the rewards structure, the likelihood of using certain features, and whether a card is well-suited to everyday use or is best reserved for specific purchases. Our star ratings serve as a general gauge of how each card compares with others in its class, but star ratings are intended to be just one consideration when a consumer is choosing a credit card. Learn how NerdWallet rates credit cards.

Frequently asked questions

Rewards are: 5 points per $1 spent on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards®, 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 Ultimate Rewards® and 1 point per $1 spent on other purchases. Occasionally, the issuer may offer bonus rewards in specific categories for a limited time.

That depends on how you redeem them. If you use them to book travel through Chase — such as for airfare, hotels, rental cars or cruises — points are worth 1.25 cents each. If you redeem them for cash, they’ll be worth 1 cent apiece. You can also transfer points to about a dozen airline and hotel loyalty programs; the value you get depends on how you redeem them in those programs.

As long as your account is open, your points won’t expire. There’s no limit to the number of points you can earn.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® has a much higher annual fee — $550, compared with $95 for the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card — but it offers richer rewards and more perks. Points are worth 1.5 cents apiece when redeemed for travel through Chase (versus 1.25 cents for the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card). Perks include an annual $300 travel credit that offsets a big slice of the annual fee. See our comparison article for more details.

If you have good to excellent credit and you’re in line with Chase’s 5/24 rule, you could be approved for the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. Good credit is generally defined as a FICO of 690 or higher, although issuers also take into account your income, existing debts and other information.

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