Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card review: Extraordinary rewards for fair credit

If your spending is more evenly distributed than focused around food and entertainment, the Capital One QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards Credit Card’s flat cash back rate could be a more lucrative pick. It still has a $39 annual fee, but it packs the same stellar credit-building perks as the SavorOne as well. 

On the other hand, the Capital One Quicksilver Secured Cash Rewards Credit Card could be worth considering instead if you’d rather invest in a refundable deposit instead of sinking money into an annual fee, especially if you're looking for a secured option that helps build credit without requiring prequalification for fair credit, as the SavorOne typically does.

Similarly, the Discover it® Secured Credit Card is a top alternative if you want to avoid an annual fee or if you fall below the typical “fair” credit range, which usually makes it harder to qualify for unsecured cards. Its boosted cash back rate on gas station and restaurant purchases is limited by a quarterly cap, which may make it less rewarding overall than the SavorOne card’s more flexible and higher-earning rewards structure. Discover’s automatic account review to potentially upgrade you to a higher, unsecured credit line also starts slightly later, upon your first seven months. Just one month isn’t a big deal though, especially since it’s perhaps the best potential timeline behind Capital One’s six-month threshold.

However, the Discover it® Secured Credit Card could be more cost-effective with no annual fee, no foreign transaction fees and no fee on the first late payment (then up to $41). Plus, it’s one of the only credit-building cards to provide a welcome rewards offer, which could make it more lucrative than the SavorOne by the time you upgrade to a full-fledged credit card. Discover matches the cash back you’ve earned by the end of your first year, which could ultimately put more money in your pocket without an annual fee eating into your rewards too.

For the best approval odds, you should apply for the Capital One SavorOne with at least a fair credit score (a FICO score of 580 or higher, or a VantageScore of 601 or higher). If you want an extra vote of confidence, though, you can check if you prequalify on Capital One’s website.

The Capital One SavorOne earns 3 percent cash back at traditional supermarkets like Harris Teeter, Kroger, Publix, Albertsons, Aldi, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market. Like many other grocery store reward categories, it excludes superstores like Walmart and Target, along with wholesale clubs like Costco and Sam’s Club.

To get an idea of which stores qualify, check the merchant category code (MCC). This four-digit classification can vary by card network, but purchases from any location that appears as MCC 5411 on your card statement will earn 3 percent cash back as a grocery store/supermarket since both Visa and Mastercard use this code. What’s more, the SavorOne card’s grocery category even includes purchases at specialty markets and meat lockers, freezers and dairy product stores — merchants that often fall under other MCCs.

Capital One specifically states the following entertainment spending earns 3 percent cash back:

• Movie theater purchases
• Sports tickets for professional and semi-professional live events
• Theatrical performance tickets
• Amusement park tickets
• Tourist attraction tickets
• Aquarium and zoo tickets 
• Dance hall, pool hall and bowling alley purchases
• Record store purchases

The issuer specifically excludes collegiate sport event tickets, golf course purchases, and non-industry entertainment merchant codes — meaning things like cable, digital media purchases and streaming subscriptions.

Although streaming services don’t fall within the entertainment category, the SavorOne has a dedicated 3 percent cash back streaming category, which rewards Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and other unspecified streaming services.

Unfortunately, audiobook and fitness programming subscriptions are specifically excluded from the category (as well as Verizon FIOS On Demand, for any fans out there). Some issuers’ streaming categories include a few popular audiobook services, but fitness programs usually fall under their own categories. However, this gap probably won’t be a deal-breaker since streaming services typically don’t involve enough spending to rack up much cash back to begin with.

The Capital One SavorOne is issued as a Mastercard, so you shouldn’t have any acceptance problems anywhere that accepts credit cards.

However, Capital One and Discover merged in May 2025, and it’s likely that Capital One may eventually move some or all of its credit cards to the Discover network. The issuer hasn’t released any concrete details about this potential network shift at the time of writing, but this move could affect where Capital One cards are accepted.

A student or credit-building card’s cost has a large influence on its overall score. 

Students already face a ton of expenses, so extra card costs are best avoided if possible, and people with limited or damaged credit tend often find the cards they can qualify for are much pricier than traditional credit cards designed for people with a good or better credit score. 

We compare a card’s total cost, including any annual fees, account activation fees, monthly fees and more against the total cost of other cards in this category and assign each card a score based on its affordability. We also factor rewards-earning potential into our assessment of a credit-building card’s total cost, subtracting a card’s expected earnings from the sum of its fees. 

To get a sense of a card’s rewards-earning potential, we estimate its average annual rewards rate and average annual earnings based on the most popular spending categories (as covered in the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer spending report). 

However, we use a slightly lower spending assumption ($300 per month or $3,600 per year) to estimate average earnings, assuming students and credit-builders will start out with a lower credit limit, will want to keep credit utilization low and will focus primarily on small purchases they can easily pay off.

Given the many costs students face — from textbooks to laptops — the presence of an introductory APR on purchases or balance transfers also plays a role in a student card’s score.

A card’s APR is also a major factor in its credit-building score. Each card’s average APR is compared against the average APR of other cards in the category, and the cards with lower-than-average APRs receive a higher rating. 

Though high APRs are hard to avoid when you’re just starting out or working on your score, credit-builders should strive for as low an APR as possible since they’re likely to either be new to managing cards or trying to establish better financial habits and avoid falling into debt.

Along with a credit-building card’s cost, our rating system takes into account how easy the card makes it to build credit. To assess this, we evaluate its credit limit potential and minimum deposit requirement.

Unsecured cards with a high starting credit limit and secured cards that let you put down a large deposit and get a matching high credit limit will score the highest according to our “Ease of building credit” rubric and are more likely to appear on our list. 

This is because a high credit limit can make it much easier to keep your credit utilization low, a primary credit-building factor that makes up 30 percent of your FICO credit score. 

Secured cards have a slight advantage in this category since the maximum credit limit on a secured card tends to be much higher than the typical starting credit limit on an unsecured card that’s available with a bad or fair credit score. However, unsecured credit-building cards have the upper hand in another key aspect of building credit: accessibility. 

Cards that carry no or a low deposit requirement can also receive a high score according to our “Ease of building credit” rubric since these cards offer a lower barrier to entry than secured cards that require you to put up hundreds of dollars in an upfront deposit. 

Indeed, some users may prefer to pay a non-refundable $50 annual fee while they work on their credit score than tie up hundreds in a refundable security deposit.

We also evaluate each card’s benefits based on how useful they are for students or someone looking to build a positive credit history and save money on everyday spending. 

We consider the inclusion of a rewards program, student-centric perks and access to your credit score or a credit monitoring service of prime importance, along with the ability to prequalify for the card with only a soft credit pull and a clear path to increase your credit limit or graduate to an unsecured or full-fledged rewards card.

Cards that include these benefits are likely to score higher according to our credit-building card scoring rubric.

1. “Are Capital One Cards Visa® or Mastercard?®” Capital One. Accessed Sept. 15, 2025.
2. “Consumer Expenditures 2023.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed on Sept 15, 2025.