Best credit card for Costco
Costco is the rare merchant where the network matters more than the rewards: U.S. warehouses accept Visa and nothing else, so a 6% Amex grocery card is worth exactly zero at the register.
Chase Sapphire Preferred leads at 3.8¢ back per dollar at Costco — 3x, against a $95 annual fee. AAA Daily Advantage Visa Signature follows at 3.0¢.
Updated 2026-09-16
Cards with a bonus that applies at Costco
Ranked by real value — the printed rate multiplied by our conservative value for the currency it pays, so a big multiplier in a weak currency can't win on the number alone. The "what the rate covers" column is the issuer's own printed wording, because that is what decides whether the bonus reaches this merchant at all.
| # | Card | Value | Rate | What the rate covers | Cap | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chase Sapphire Preferred Chase |
3.8¢/$ | 3x | Online grocery purchases (not in-store); excludes Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs | uncapped | $95 |
| 2 | AAA Daily Advantage Visa Signature Comenity Capital Bank (AAA) |
3.0¢/$ | 3% | Wholesale clubs | uncapped | $0 |
| 3 | Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards Bank of America |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | Also covers wholesale clubs. Shares the SAME combined $2,500-per-quarter cap with the 3% choice category above --… | first $2,500/quarter | $0 |
| 4 | Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards Secured Bank of America |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | Also covers wholesale clubs; shares the same combined $2,500/quarter cap with the 3% choice category above. | first $2,500/quarter | $0 |
| 5 | Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards for Students Bank of America |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | Shares the same combined $2,500/quarter cap with the 3% choice category. First 12 months at promotional 6%. Issuer… | first $2,500/quarter | $0 |
| 6 | U.S. Bank Altitude Connect Visa Signature Card U.S. Bank |
2.0¢/$ | 2x | excludes wholesale clubs and discount stores/supercenters such as Target and Walmart | uncapped | $0 |
| 7 | U.S. Bank Altitude Go Visa Signature Card U.S. Bank |
2.0¢/$ | 2x | excludes wholesale clubs and discount stores/supercenters | uncapped | $0 |
If you don't hold one of those: the best flat-rate cards
General-purpose cards ranked by the real value of the rate they pay on everything — what Costco earns when no bonus category applies. Store cards and single-retailer cobrands are excluded here: rewards you can only spend at one chain can't answer "what should the rest of my spending go on?"
| # | Card | Base value | Base rate | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Capital One Venture Business Capital One · business |
2.6¢/$ | 2x | $95 |
| 2 | Capital One Venture Rewards Capital One |
2.6¢/$ | 2x | $95 |
| 3 | Capital One Venture X Business Capital One · business |
2.6¢/$ | 2x | $395 |
| 4 | Capital One Venture X Capital One |
2.6¢/$ | 2x | $395 |
| 5 | U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card U.S. Bank |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 6 | Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature Elan Financial Services |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 7 | Wells Fargo Active Cash Wells Fargo |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 8 | USAA Eagle Navigator USAA |
2.0¢/$ | 2x | $95 |
| 9 | Chase Ink Business Premier Chase · business |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $195 |
| 10 | U.S. Bank Business Altitude Power Visa Signature Card U.S. Bank · business |
2.0¢/$ | 2x | $195 |
The network filter comes first
U.S. Costco warehouses and Costco.com accept Visa only. Every card ranked on this page is therefore a Visa — we filter the catalog on the network before we rank anything, because a card you can't hand over has no rate. This one fact eliminates most of the best grocery cards in our database, including every Amex and every Mastercard.
Costco codes as a wholesale club, and wholesale clubs are what bonuses exclude
The second filter is coding. Costco doesn't code as a supermarket — it codes as a warehouse club, and grocery bonuses are written to exclude exactly that. Read the exclusion language on the grocery cards in our database and you'll see "excludes wholesale clubs and discount stores/supercenters" over and over. So a card's grocery rate almost never follows you into the warehouse, which is why the honest list here is short.
The Costco cobrand's best rate isn't inside the warehouse
Worth knowing before you judge the Costco cobrand card on its warehouse rate: its highest printed rate is on gas, not on anything you put in the cart, and it pays a middling rate on the warehouse itself. If you fill up at Costco gas regularly that changes the arithmetic considerably — see its full earn table and our gas card ranking before deciding.
The honest caveat
Merchant coding is set by the payment networks, not by us: a store can change how it codes, a franchise can code differently from a corporate location, and an issuer can revise its exclusions without announcing it. Everything above comes from the printed terms in our maintained database, valued at our conservative point values — but the only way to know what a specific card pays on your charges is to score them. That is exactly what the optimizer does.
Which card should this spending actually be on? The demo re-scores a year of realistic spending against every card in a wallet — free, no signup. See it on sample data →
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