Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card review: A streamlined travel rewards experience

The Capital One Venture Rewards card offers an outstanding balance of flexibility and rewards value as a general travel card. It’s an ideal pick for occasional travelers who aren’t dedicated to one airline and want to use rewards from their everyday spending to fund their next trip. 

Rewards rate: Solid, flat-rate cash back for every purchase

The Capital One Venture earns flat-rate rewards, meaning it earns unlimited Capital One miles at the same rate on all purchases. It also earns a boosted rewards rate on hotels and rental cars you book using Capital One Travel.

Most other travel credit cards earn rewards primarily from travel-related spending, like airfare and hotel purchases. But the Venture card’s flat-rate approach and the Capital One Travel portal make it easy to earn and redeem travel miles without sacrificing top-tier rewards value. 

Other cards may offer higher rewards rates in specific categories but if you frequently make purchases not in staple rewards categories like groceries, dining, gas or streaming subscriptions, then a flat-rate card like the Capital One Venture can help you get a nice sum of rewards compared to other cards.

Redemptions: Points are flexible and valuable for bookings or transfers

Capital One provides more redemption options than many competitors, including a comprehensive list of 1:1 transfer partners and the option to use miles to cover outside travel purchases. Your miles don’t expire for the life of your account and there are no blackout dates, so you’d be better off saving them for a rainy day than cashing them in for a half-sized check. You can also combine miles with other Capital One cards or transfer them to a friend or family member, offering even more flexibility.

Based on Bankrate's latest credit card point valuations, Capital One miles could be worth around 1.7 cents each on average when you transfer to a top airline or hotel travel partner, making that a potentially more lucrative option. However, if the transfer partner list or travel portal doesn’t meet your needs, you can shop externally and cover the cost with miles you redeem as a statement credit. You can apply any amount of miles to past travel purchases within 90 days, allowing you time to accumulate more rewards to cover the purchase and flexibility if you can’t cover the entire purchase. Points redeemed this way are worth 1 cent a piece, however.

The Capital One Venture Rewards credit card offers a nice blend of value and convenience for cardholders, but it has some shortcomings compared to other rewards cards. 

Welcome offer: Steep spending requirement

New cardholders can earn a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles after spending $4,000 on purchases within three months of account opening. This bonus is worth up to $750 in travel redemptions when you book travel through the Capital One Travel portal.

Although the current bonus is a step up from the card’s most recent bonus of 60,000 miles (after spending $3,000 within the first three months), it is not the card’s highest offer (100,000 miles after spending $20,000 in your first year) and requires quite a bit of spending to earn a payout that falls short of what you can find on other cards.

It’s worth noting that the Venture card's welcome offer matches the bonus offered on the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card. It’s rare for a card with a $95 annual fee (See Rates & Fees for the Capital One Venture Rewards) to offer a bonus as high as a card with a $395 annual fee (See Rates & Fees for Capital One Venture X), but this might say more about the Venture X card than it does the Venture card. 

Yearly perks: Lacks annual bonus points

The Venture Rewards card carries consistent purchase value with its flat-rate rewards, but it fails to deliver on yearly perks and credits that bring additional value.

For instance, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card has a $50 annual hotel stay credit and a 10 percent anniversary point bonus. With this benefit, Chase will reward you on each account anniversary with 10 percent of the points you redeemed in the previous year. Other travel cards like the Citi Premier® Card and the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card also have annual benefits that can offset their respective annual fees.

These cards could be better choices for you if you are looking for a reliable way to offset the fees that usually accompany traveling. However, you’ll want to review those cards’ details before deciding what works best for you.

Given its small list of perks, it’s clear this card’s key value comes from its travel rewards program. If you’re more of a “show me the money” type, the only ongoing Venture card features with clear monetary value are the $50 Lifestyle Collection hotel stay experience credit and the up to $100 application fee credit you’ll receive every four years for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry.

That means you’ll have to rely primarily on rewards spending each year to make up for the $95 annual fee. Here’s a look at what you’d have to spend in a given category each year to offset the annual fee:

• 2X miles flat-rate spending: at least $4,752 per year if you get a 1-cent-per-mile redemption value ($2,794 if transferring miles, assuming an average mile value of 1.7 cents per mile)
• 5X miles on hotel and rental car booked through Capital One Travel: at least $1,900 per year ($1,117 if transferring miles, assuming an average mile value of 1.7 cents per mile)

Some competing cards in the Venture’s class provide more benefit value to offset annual fees. But depending on your spending habits, the $95 may not be much of a concern, especially if you plan to transfer miles for an average of 1.7 cents per mile (Bankrate’s current valuation). And the 75,000-mile sign-up bonus is enough to cover the annual fee for at least seven years, even if you only get 1 cent per mile in redemption value.

Here’s a look at the first year and ongoing value you should expect based on a 1-cent-per-mile redemption value:

*Based on our formula used to calculate each card’s average rewards rates and average ongoing rewards value, using Bureau of Labor Statistics spending data and an assumed $15,900 yearly spend over three years ($1,325 per month).

Frequent Bankrate contributor Jacqueline DeMarco loves the Capital One Venture card for its streamlined rewards experience and has been collecting miles with it for the past seven years.

“I don’t enjoy figuring out which spending categories will generate the most credit card rewards. With the Capital One Venture, I was attracted to the simplicity of earning unlimited 2X miles on all purchases. For this reason, I use my Capital One Venture for most major purchases over $100, whether it’s to upgrade a phone, buy clothes or do some holiday shopping. If I charge $1,500 in a month, I know that I’ll earn 3,000 Capital One miles. It’s an uncomplicated calculation.”

“In the end, even with a $95 annual fee, my Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is a bargain. This card gives me options, including flat-rate rewards, flexible flights and numerous protections.”

— Jacqueline DeMarco
Personal finance writer

The Venture card is popular thanks to its ease of use and simple reward structure. However, if you like to maximize your credit card rewards with strategic spending then you may be better served with another card.

Flat-rate rewards cards generally pair best with category rewards cards that align with your biggest expenses.

The Capital One Venture offers plenty to love if you’re looking for a simple travel rewards card. Consider the card if you’d label yourself one of the following.

The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is convenient if you prefer simple flat-rate rewards or don’t spend enough on travel to justify a bonus category card or high annual fee premium travel card. 

The rewards and benefits aren’t as great as the specialized features of a card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred, and if you spend more than $300 on Capital One travel bookings each year, it may be worth upgrading to the Venture X due to its extra benefits and rewards potential, which can make it easy to offset the higher annual fee.

*For Capital One products listed on this page, some of the above benefits are provided by Visa® or Mastercard® and may vary by product. See the respective Guide to Benefits for details, as terms and exclusions apply

We rate credit cards using a proprietary card scoring system that ranks each card’s estimated average rewards rate, estimated annual earnings, welcome bonus value, APR, fees, perks and more against those of other cards in its primary category.

Each card feature is assigned a weighting based on how important it is to people looking for a card in a given category. These features are then scored based on how they rank relative to the features on other cards in the category. Based on these calculations, each card receives an overall rating of 1-5 stars (with 5 being the highest possible score and 1 being the lowest).

We analyzed over 150 of the most popular rewards and cash back cards to determine where each stacked up based on their value, cost, benefits and more. Here are some of the key factors that influenced this card’s overall score and how the score influenced our review: