Best credit card for Home Depot and Lowe's
Home improvement is a category that exists on rotating calendars and pick-your-own-category cards, and almost nowhere else. No general-purpose card in our database pays a standing bonus at Home Depot or Lowe's.
Only one card in our database pays a bonus that applies at home improvement stores — Pro Xtra Credit Card (The Home Depot® Pro Xtra Credit Card) at 4.0¢ per dollar. Everything else earns its base rate, where Capital One Venture Business leads at 2.6¢.
Updated 2026-09-16
Cards with a bonus that applies at Home improvement stores
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 | Pro Xtra Credit Card (The Home Depot® Pro Xtra Credit Card) Citi · business · store card, this retailer only |
4.0¢/$ | 4x | Every $1 spent on the Pro Xtra Credit Card counts as $4 toward earning Pro Xtra Perks (Perks accrue 4x faster than… | uncapped | $0 |
Cards that can reach Home improvement stores through a rotating or chosen category
12 cards can pay up to 5.0¢ per dollar here — but only in the right quarter, or once you've elected the category and kept it there. Powerful when you'll actually manage it, worth nothing when you won't, which is why we rank them separately from printed rates: Bank of America Business Advantage Customized Cash Rewards, Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards, Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards Secured, Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards for Students, Chase Freedom Flex, Citi Strata℠ Card, Discover it Balance Transfer, Discover it Cash Back, and 4 more.
The best flat-rate cards for home improvement stores
General-purpose cards ranked by the real value of the rate they pay on everything — what home improvement stores earns when no bonus category applies. Store cards and single-retailer cobrands are excluded here: rewards you can only spend at one chain can't answer "what should the rest of my spending go on?"
| # | Card | Base value | Base rate | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Capital One Venture Business Capital One · business |
2.6¢/$ | 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 | $395 |
| 5 | Citi Double Cash® Card Citi |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 6 | U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card U.S. Bank |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 7 | Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature Elan Financial Services |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 8 | Wells Fargo Active Cash Wells Fargo |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 9 | Apple Card Goldman Sachs |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 10 | Capital One Spark Cash (Spark 2% Cash) Capital One · business |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $95 |
The store cards are financing products, not rewards products
Both big chains run their own cards, and we do carry them — look at what they actually earn. The consumer store card in our catalog pays no rewards at all; its value is promotional financing on large purchases, which is a different product solving a different problem. The pro card pays in loyalty perks redeemable only within that retailer's own program. Neither is "cash back at Home Depot" in the way a shopper searching this question is imagining, and neither can be used anywhere else.
Rotating and elective categories are where the bonus lives
Home improvement shows up regularly on quarterly rotating calendars, and it's one of the electable categories on several pick-your-own-category cards. That's the real answer for a renovation: check whether one of your cards can be pointed at home improvement for the quarter you're spending, and point it there. Those cards are listed separately below because the rate depends on an election or an activation, not on a printed rate you can count on year-round.
For a big project, the welcome offer probably beats the category
A kitchen or a roof is a large, plannable, one-time spend — the same shape that makes a welcome offer pay. A bonus worth several hundred dollars for spending you'd do anyway will usually beat an extra two or three percent on the same purchase. Just don't let it push the project onto a balance you carry: interest at a rewards card's APR erases the bonus in a few months.
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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