Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card review: A strong alternative for luxury travel

This card not only combines bonus rewards on travel with a generous base rewards rate on all other purchases, but also boasts valuable annual credits and a ton of travel perks. And though the annual fee may be intimidating, it should be easy to offset if you take advantage of the card’s features to travel in style. 

Rewards rate: Terrific mix of bonus categories and valuable rewards

The Venture X stands out from other top-tier travel cards thanks to its combination of a travel bonus category and a generous flat rewards rate on all other purchases. Where most cards only offer more than 1X rewards in specific categories, the Venture X offers bonus rewards on both travel and general purchases.

Like the original Capital One Venture card, the Venture X delivers a streamlined way to earn travel rewards, offering 2X miles on nearly all purchases. But the Venture X also beats out the Venture card’s rewards rate on Capital One Travel bookings, offering 5X miles on airfare and 10X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel. The original Venture only earns 2X miles on airfare and 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One.

The Venture X card’s rewards program is especially impressive considering there’s no limit to how much you can earn, and its rates match or beat those you’d get when booking directly through airlines with competing travel cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve and American Express Platinum.

On top of that, Capital One gives you a solid mix of options for redeeming your bonus miles. Along with booking airfare and other travel through the issuer’s travel portal, you can redeem miles toward a statement credit for travel purchases made within the past 90 days. This gives you the flexibility to book directly with an airline or hotel or use a third-party site and still put your points to good use. You also have the option of transferring your miles to partner airlines and select loyalty programs. 

Your miles are worth 1 cent each when you redeem through Capital One Travel or for statement credits on recent travel purchases, but some transfer partners could offer even higher redemption values. Based on Bankrate’s latest mile valuations, each mile could be worth around 1.7 cents per mile on average with the right airline or hotel transfer partner.

Outside of travel, gift cards are probably your best redemption option since they could potentially get you a 1-cent-per-mile redemption value. You’ll want to avoid exchanging your miles for cash back and PayPal or Amazon.com purchases, though. These options will shrink your miles’ value to 0.5 cents and 0.8 cents, respectively. Since your rewards don’t expire for the life of your account and aren’t subject to blackout dates, it’s best to sit on your miles until you’re ready to use them.

Cardholder perks: Valuable, practical benefits for travelers

The Venture X credit card can offer $400 in value every year with two easy-to-maximize benefits. You’ll get 10,000 bonus miles each year on your account anniversary (worth $100 if you redeem through Capital One for travel) and a $300 Capital One travel credit each year. These perks alone make up for your annual fee. 

You and two guests can also enjoy excellent airport lounge access privileges. The Venture X comes with a complimentary Priority Pass Select membership to over 1,300 lounges worldwide and unlimited access to the brand-new Capital One Lounge. 

You can also receive $100 in credits per year for dining purchases, spa visits and other activities during your stay at a Premier Collection hotel property booked through Capital One Travel. You’re also eligible for room upgrades (when available), complimentary breakfast for two, early check-in, and late checkout at these properties.

The Venture X card’s Visa Infinite status also gets you several useful travel and purchase protections. In fact, the Venture X is one of the best cards for travel insurance due to its trip cancellation and interruption insurance* (one of the most sought-after protection perks). You’ll also get auto rental collision damage waiver*, trip delay reimbursement*, and baggage delay reimbursement* (from common carrier tickets), as well as shopping protections like return protection* and cellphone protection*.   

These are all valuable, practical perks for frequent travelers, so you shouldn’t have trouble taking advantage. While some competing cards, like the Platinum Card from American Express, offer more perks, these are often ultra-niche benefits that appeal to only a minority of cardholders.

Annual fee: Might be too costly

While the card's annual fee is not as high as many of its competitors’, it might still be too steep for some travelers, especially if you only travel occasionally. 

The Venture's X card’s almost $400 annual fee (See Rates and Fees) could be hard to offset if you don’t earn many rewards from card spending or aren’t able to use both the anniversary bonus miles and annual credit every year. If you don't want to stress about spending or traveling enough to cover the fee every year, another travel card would work better.

Welcome offer: Recent drop in value

The Venture X card's latest welcome offer is a drop from the card’s previous bonus. You can now earn 75,000 bonus miles if you spend $4,000 in your first three months — a 25,000-point drop from the previous offer, which came with 100,000 bonus miles after a $10,000 spend in your first six months

While this bonus should be a bit easier to earn than the previous offer, it’s much less valuable. 

Based on Bankrate’s latest mile valuations, which give Capital One miles an average redemption value of around 1.7 cents per mile, 100,000 miles could be worth around $1,700 when redeemed with the right transfer partner (or $1,000 when redeemed through Capital One Travel). Compare this with the new 75,000-mile offer, which would only be worth around $1,275 with the right travel partner (or $750 when redeemed through Capital One Travel).   

The new bonus also fails to impress when compared to the bonuses you’ll find on some of the card’s main competitors, like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. The Sapphire Preferred carries a lower annual fee (just $95) and gives you a chance at 60,000 points when you spend $4,000 in your first three months. The Preferred card's points are worth 1.25 cents each when redeemed for travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal, giving this bonus a base value of $750. That matches the Venture X card’s bonus value when you redeem miles through Capital One Travel.

Bankrate credit cards editor Nouri Zarrugh loves the Venture X card’s combination of practical perks that make the annual fee easy to offset:

I love that the card offers practical travel perks like lounge access, expedited security screening credits and an annual travel credit. They’re all easy to take advantage of and can more than offset the annual fee on their own. Other premium travel cards may offer more perks, but they’re mostly ones that I’ll never use and — at least for me — don’t justify the higher fee.

— Nouri Zarrugh— Editor at Bankrate

The Venture X card comes with several valuable perks that should more than justify its annual fee in the first year and beyond.

Thanks to the card’s generous flat rewards rate, offsetting the Venture X card’s annual fee via rewards shouldn’t be  too difficult either, especially if you’re able to squeeze more value out of your miles with a strategic transfer to an airline or hotel partner.

This combination of ongoing perks and rewards should give the Venture X card solid ongoing value. Here’s a look at how much you can expect to earn based on our card value rating methodology, which assumes an annual spend of $20,500:

The Capital One Venture X offers great annual perks for a medium-sized price tag, but let’s see how it stacks up against two of its most prominent competitors.

The Venture X covers a great spread of spending categories, thanks to its boosted flat-rate miles, so a bonus category card that rewards your biggest day-to-day expenses outside travel would make the best partner. Another issuer’s cash back credit card may be a good option, or a card that can transfer rewards to your favorite Capital One transfer partner programs. 

The Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card is a prime choice since you can convert your cash back to Capital One miles at a higher value — all without an annual fee (See Rates and Fees) to worry about. That way, you can squeeze even more value out of the SavorOne’s 3 percent cash back for dining, entertainment, grocery store (excluding superstores like Walmart and Target) and popular streaming service purchases. Plus, its 8 percent cash back on Capital One Entertainment purchases are popular reward opportunities that may pop up in your travels.

The Capital One Venture X card is a great pick for frequent travelers who want a low-maintenance card with practical travel perks and none of the “fluff” features that often come with higher-fee cards. 

The Venture X doesn’t require you to subscribe to services you wouldn’t normally use just to offset its annual fee, and you won’t need to go out of your way to spend where you otherwise wouldn’t just to earn rewards.

This card is easily worth it if you love the flexibility of flat-rate rewards but also travel enough to take advantage of annual credits and perks like lounge access. 

This combination of valuable rewards, flexible rewards rates and practical perks make the Venture X one of the best travel card deals you can get.

*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: