Best credit card for Sam's Club
Sam's Club takes every major network, unlike Costco — but that's the good news and roughly all of it. Warehouse clubs are the category most rewards cards are written to exclude.
Chase Sapphire Preferred leads at 3.8¢ back per dollar at Sam's Club — 3x, against a $95 annual fee. AAA Daily Advantage Visa Signature follows at 3.0¢.
Updated 2026-09-16
Cards with a bonus that applies at Sam's Club
Ranked by real value — the printed rate multiplied by our conservative value for the currency it pays, so a big multiplier in a weak currency can't win on the number alone. The "what the rate covers" column is the issuer's own printed wording, because that is what decides whether the bonus reaches this merchant at all.
| # | Card | Value | Rate | What the rate covers | Cap | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chase Sapphire Preferred Chase |
3.8¢/$ | 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 | $0 |
If you don't hold one of those: the best flat-rate cards
General-purpose cards ranked by the real value of the rate they pay on everything — what Sam's Club earns when no bonus category applies. Store cards and single-retailer cobrands are excluded here: rewards you can only spend at one chain can't answer "what should the rest of my spending go on?"
| # | Card | Base value | Base rate | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Capital One Venture Business Capital One · business |
2.6¢/$ | 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 |
Why the bonus list is this short
Sam's Club codes as a wholesale club. Search our database for grocery bonuses and you'll find exclusion after exclusion: "excludes wholesale clubs and discount stores/supercenters", "warehouse clubs may not qualify", "grocery at gas/convenience/warehouse/superstore earns 1% instead". Very few cards pay a bonus on warehouse clubs at all, and we're not going to pretend a grocery card does.
Sam's Club's own cobrand isn't in our catalog
We only rank cards we've verified line by line against issuer terms, and the Sam's Club cobrand card isn't in our database yet. If you shop there heavily it's worth checking directly — a store cobrand that pays a real in-club bonus would beat everything below. We'd rather tell you a card exists that we haven't verified than quietly rank a card we have and call it the winner.
Gas is the exception worth planning around
Club fuel usually codes as a gas station rather than a warehouse club, so a gas card generally does earn its bonus at the pump even when it earns nothing inside. That makes "one card for fuel, a flat-rate card for the cart" the practical answer for most people — see the gas ranking.
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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