The best premium credit cards

Featured cards

All 23 cards in this ranking, with what each one is actually best at. Tap any card to jump to its row.

1. 1 The Platinum Card from American Express — Best overall for a premium card: 5x on flights, $895 a year — 5.5¢ back per dollar
2. 2 The Platinum Card from American Express Exclusively for Charles Schwab — 5x on flights, $895 a year — 5.5¢ back per dollar
3. 3 The Platinum Card from American Express Exclusively for Morgan Stanley — 5x on flights, $895 a year — 5.5¢ back per dollar
4. 4 Robinhood Platinum Card — Best for straight cash back: 5% on dining, $695 a year — 5.0¢ back per dollar
5. 5 Sapphire Reserve for Business — Best for business spending: 4x on flights, $795 a year — 5.0¢ back per dollar
6. 6 Chase Sapphire Reserve — 4x on flights, $795 a year — 5.0¢ back per dollar
7. 7 Bank of America Atmos Rewards Summit Visa Infinite — 3x on dining, $395 a year — 4.2¢ back per dollar
8. 8 Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card — 7x on flights, $550 a year — 3.5¢ back per dollar
9. 9 Citi Strata Elite℠ Card — 3x on dining, $595 a year — 3.3¢ back per dollar
10. 10 Capital One Venture X Business — 2x on everything else, $395 a year — 2.6¢ back per dollar
11. 11 Capital One Venture X — 2x on everything else, $395 a year — 2.6¢ back per dollar
12. 12 JetBlue Premier Card — 2x on dining, $499 a year — 2.6¢ back per dollar
13. 13 United Club Business Card — 2x on travel, $695 a year — 2.5¢ back per dollar
14. 14 United Club Infinite Card — 2x on travel, $695 a year — 2.5¢ back per dollar
15. 15 Wyndham Rewards Earner Premier Card — 4x on dining, $395 a year — 2.4¢ back per dollar
16. 16 Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite Mastercard — 2x on travel, $499 a year — 2.4¢ back per dollar
17. 17 Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card — 3x on dining, $650 a year — 2.1¢ back per dollar
18. 18 Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite — 2x on dining, $550 a year — 2.0¢ back per dollar
19. 19 Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card — 1.5x on transit, $650 a year — 1.7¢ back per dollar
20. 20 Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® — 1x on everything else, $595 a year — 1.4¢ back per dollar
21. 21 Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card — 1x on everything else, $650 a year — 1.1¢ back per dollar
22. 22 The Business Platinum Card from American Express — 1x on everything else, $895 a year — 1.1¢ back per dollar
23. 23 Centurion Card from American Express — 1x on everything else, $5,000 a year — 1.1¢ back per dollar

The ranking

What these actually pay on a year of dining

A rate is a promise about one dollar. This is the same ranking run over 145 real dining charges totalling $4,789 — our sample year — scored one charge at a time by the same engine the app uses on your own statement. Caps, category rules and point values all apply; nothing is annualised or rounded up.

On this spending the gap between top and bottom is $125 a year — the effective rate, after caps and point values, runs from 2.40% to 5.00%. Your own charges are what matter, and the app scores those rather than a sample.

How we rank

One arithmetic rule, applied by code to our maintained card database. There is no editorial pick, no hand-ordering and no sponsored slot.

• Printed earn rate. Each card's strongest printed earn rate — the highest flat rate it actually publishes, base rate included — taken from our maintained database. That is what places a card here, so a card leads on the category it is genuinely built for.
• Conservative point value. That rate is multiplied by our conservative mid-range value for the currency it pays, which is why a hotel card printing a large multiplier can finish below a plain cash-back card. Every point value we use, published →
• Annual fee. Printed against every card and used to break ties. Every card in this pool charges one. We never net the fee out of the rate for you — whether it is worth paying depends on how much you spend.
• Caps and limits. Where a card's headline rate stops after a spending cap, that cap is on the card's own page and in the relevant category guide. This ranking uses the printed rate, so a heavily capped bonus should be checked against the cap before you act on it.
• Pool and cutoff. 221 open US cards are in our database; 23 of them are cards with an annual fee of $395 or more and qualify. All 23 are ranked above — that is under the 24-card cutoff, so nothing was left off.
• Rotating and pick-your-own categories. Kept out of the headline ranking, because they only pay in the right quarter or with the right election. Issuer-travel-portal-only rates are excluded for the same reason: they pay only if you book through the portal.
• Commission. The ranking code has no access to which cards pay us a commission — the ordering function never reads the affiliate file. Any apply link is attached after the order is already fixed, so it cannot move a card up or down. How that works.

Full methodology, including how each point value is set: how we value points and rank cards →

The honest caveat

Earn rate is the smaller half of the argument for most of these cards. The larger half is whether you will really use credits that arrive monthly, a lounge you have to route through, or insurance you hope never to claim — none of which a rate ranking can answer. The break-even pages take each card's printed credits at face value and show what is left.

Common questions

More guides

Every guide on this site is built by the same code from the same card database, so the numbers on one page mean exactly what they mean on another. Jump sideways:

All 70 best-card guides → · Best card for a specific store or bill →