Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card review: The best travel rewards card for less than $100

If you’re looking for a cost-effective travel card, the Sapphire Preferred is hard to beat. The travel perks, annual credits and bonus points are impressive for a card in its class and may even make up for the annual fee on their own. Perhaps even more appealing is the diverse selection of bonus categories and redemption options, plus the remarkably high redemption values to fuel your next trip.

Rewards: Outstanding travel value

The Sapphire Preferred card’s rewards program is a powerhouse, offering impressive rewards rates on a more comprehensive variety of travel categories than many competing cards. Plus, it rewards plenty of other popular everyday categories that may be difficult to find on typical travel cards, including dining, select streaming services and online grocery purchases (excluding wholesale clubs and superstores like Target and Walmart). 

However, this card’s biggest strength is the value of Chase Ultimate Rewards points on certain redemption options. By redeeming your points for travel through Chase Travel℠ — including plane tickets, hotels, car rentals and cruise vacations — your points are worth 25 percent more (1.25 cents per point). Chase also features an impressive list of 1:1 airline and hotel transfer partners, and the right one could provide a market value of about 2.0 cents per point on average according to our most recent valuation. 

Even this card’s non-travel redemptions are notable for their value and versatility. You can redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points at 1 cent apiece for cash back, statement credits, gift cards, merchandise (including Apple product purchases), Chase Experience events and Chase Dining purchases. You can also use your points at the checkout screen on Amazon.com and PayPal for a lower value (0.8 cents apiece). There’s no cap on the number of points you can receive in all of these categories, so the Sapphire Preferred has solid potential to be your primary credit card.

Perks: High-caliber benefits for its card tier

In addition to its stand-out reward features, the Sapphire Preferred’s benefits include valuable perks you’d normally need to fork up a higher annual fee to get. For example, the stellar travel insurance you’ll receive with the Sapphire Preferred includes trip cancellation and interruption insurance, trip delay reimbursement and baggage delay insurance — top-tier protections usually found among premium travel cards with annual fees around $400 or more.

Two of the most valuable perks of the Sapphire Preferred are its recurring bonuses. You’ll get up to $50 back each year in statement credits for hotel stays purchased with the card through the Chase Travel portal, but you may be able to squeeze even more value out of the anniversary point bonus. An eye-catching 10 percent points bonus on your total combined spending in points from the previous year will be automatically added to your rewards balance each account anniversary.

These types of bonuses are rare and quite significant for big spenders, but even average budgets can earn a decent amount of points from this annual offer. Bureau of Labor Statistics spending data suggests that the average annual yearly spend is $15,900, which would net an extra 1,590 Ultimate Rewards points with the anniversary bonus, worth up to $318 (based on our 2-cent point valuation) in travel each year. These two yearly benefits alone can more than make up for the annual fee before factoring in your rewards spending.

Chase also stacks on additional, limited-time partner perks so that your first few years with the card are especially lucrative. Although these partner perks won’t last forever, you can also rack up statement credits and bonus points from the Sapphire Preferred’s Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and Gopuff benefits. In fact, these generous food delivery perks could be worth close to $200 or more.

Welcome offer: Good, but not the card’s best bonus

The current welcome offer for the Chase Sapphire Preferred weighs in at 75,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. That’s equivalent to $937.50 when you redeem through Chase Travel℠, or potentially around $1,500 with the right transfer partner (based on Bankrate’s latest point valuation of about 2.0 cents on average).

This is a 15,000-point increase, much closer to the card’s previously offered 80,000-point bonus with the same spending requirement. 

In fact, this is higher than the issuer’s flagship Chase Sapphire Reserve® card offers, and the Sapphire Preferred is known to occasionally surpass its luxury counterpart’s offer with sometimes the best sign-up bonus on the market. So, this can be a great opportunity for those who are planning a trip in the near future.

The Sapphire Preferred is an excellent rewards card for experienced and novice travel cardholders alike. However, the card isn’t currently offering the top-notch sign-up bonus it has a reputation for and it may take convincing if you’re wary of annual fees.

Rates and fees: Annual fee may discourage newcomers

The Sapphire Preferred has a $95 annual fee, which may appear intimidating if you’re an occasional traveler looking for your first travel card. However, this price tag is low compared to the perks and rewards the card offers. The annual account anniversary bonus points and credits can potentially offset the annual fee alone, but the fee isn’t too difficult to offset through your normal rewards spending if needed.

You’d only need to spend about $212 across your 3X categories or $317 in the 2X general travel category each month if you redeem toward Chase travel at a value of 1.25 cents per point. However, if you transfer your points to the right high-value Chase travel partner and redeem at a value of 2.0 cents per point, you’d only have to spend $132 in the 3X categories or $198 in the 2X general travel category each month to offset the annual fee.

This level of rewards and perk value can be difficult to find among no-annual-fee travel cards, so the annual fee can be well worth it for the Sapphire Preferred card’s stellar category variety, redemption options, transfer partners, travel insurance and other benefits. No-annual-fee competitors also typically have lower rewards rates than the Preferred card and no yearly credits or notable travel perks.

The other rates and fees are typical for travel cards — there are no foreign transaction fees to worry about while you’re abroad and the ongoing APR is only slightly higher than the average current credit card interest rate.

Bankrate credit cards editor Nouri Zarrugh loves the flexibility that comes with the Sapphire Preferred. He especially appreciates that — unlike most travel cards — the Sapphire Preferred offers 1 cent per point in cash back redemption value. Most competing cards force you to sacrifice value if you redeem for anything other than travel bookings.

"This was my first mid-tier travel card and it was a great starting point thanks to its practical bonus categories and flexible redemption. I especially love that — though I can get more value by redeeming points for travel — I have the option to get at least 1 cent per point for cash back."

—  Nouri Zarrugh, Senior Editor, Credit Cards

Other Chase credit cards are your best pairing option because of their complementary reward categories and the ability to pool your earned rewards onto one card. Although the Sapphire Preferred is not part of the traditional Chase trifecta, this card’s fantastic reward opportunities and redemption values make pairing the Chase Sapphire Preferred with the Chase Freedom Unlimited® and/or Chase Freedom Flex℠ one of the best credit card combinations available. Given that the Sapphire Preferred is a travel card, consider pairing it with a flat-rate travel card or a cash back credit card that rewards your biggest non-travel categories — such as the Chase Freedom Unlimited.

Just keep Chase’s 5/24 rule in mind as you search for cards to pair with the Sapphire Preferred: You may not be eligible to open a Chase credit card if you’ve already opened five or more credit cards (no matter the issuer) in the past 24 months.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a flexible and valuable rewards card that can suit a range of wallets. Here’s who’s most likely to squeeze the most value from the card.