Chase Sapphire Preferred vs Chase Sapphire Reserve are two of the most popular travel credit cards. However, even though there is some similarity between these cards, in my opinion, they’re both very clearly targeted towards different types of people. Unfortunately, you’re either going to end up wasting money and overpaying in annual fees, or you’re just going to be left feeling very underwhelmed by a lack of features to fit your needs.
So, I want to help you guys avoid making those mistakes by comparing these two Chase credit cards head to head so we can cover all you have to know to make the right choice here. Now, first of all, you’re technically only allowed to have one of these two Sapphire cards at a time and not both of them, which is why we got to choose.
Chase Sapphire Preferred®
- Up to 5x Reward Rate
- Welcome Bonus: $300 Chase Travel℠ Credit + 60,000 bonus points
- Annual Fee: $95
- Credit Score: Excellent
- Regular APR: 21.49%-28.49% Variable
Chase Sapphire Reserve®
- Up to 10x Reward Rate
- Welcome Bonus: 60,000 bonus points
- Annual Fee: $550
- Credit Score: Excellent
- Regular APR: 22.49%-29.49% Variable
Chase Sapphire Preferred vs Chase Sapphire Reserve Guide
Annual Fees & Credits
So, let’s start here by looking at the annual fees and annual credits, as well as the welcome bonuses on both of these cards. So, for yearly fees, the Chase Sapphire Preferred is going to cost $95 per year. And then the more premium Sapphire Reserve card is going to come in at $550 per year. Now, right off the bat, a lot of people are going to see that big 550 annual fee on the CSR and then get scared away because it seems very high in comparison to the much cheaper CSP.
But in the credit card world, the general rule of thumb is that usually, when there are higher annual fees, there’s also going to be potential to get even more value from credits, benefits, and other features. So we have to look a little bit deeper here before we just write off the Reserve as being too expensive. So, with the Sapphire Reserve card, we get a $300 travel credit every year, which can be used on a very broad range of travel expenses, which includes common travel stuff here, like hotels, flights, cruises, and car rentals.
But it also includes a lot of other costs like ride shares, taxis, trains, parking, tolls, and a lot more. Now, this $300 annual travel credit is currently based on your account year, meaning that basically, it resets every year around your account anniversary from when you opened the card, so around the same time when you get charged that 550 annual fees, you’re also going to get a fresh new $300 annual travel credit, which obviously helps to offset that fee because that’s such a super easy credit to use for so many different types of travel expenses.
We call this the effective annual fee, which for the Sapphire Reserve is going to be as low as only $250 per year after the credit is used. So that definitely sounds a little bit more reasonable here and more affordable than 550 per year. Now, over on the Sapphire Preferred card, we’re starting with only a $95 annual fee, which is clearly still the cheaper option. Still, we actually get a small credit with this card as well in the form of a $50 hotel credit if we book a hotel stay through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal.
So, if you manage to use this credit here within your normal spending habits, then that basically can save you up to 50 bucks per year, which helps bring the effective annual fee on this card down to as low as $45 per year. But one note here is that you should always compare the prices on travel portals versus other websites first before you book anything because sometimes there can be price differences.
Now, side by side, we can see that the $550 sticker price on the CSR and the $95 price on the CSP are definitely going to come down a bit for most people after they use those main credits. Still, there’s also some other additional partnership value that Chase advertises on their website for these two cards. So Chase claims that you can get up to around $1,200 of extra value on the Sapphire Reserve and then up to $200 of additional value on the Sapphire Preferred.
However, the true value of these partner benefits here really just depends on who you are and whether you would actually pay money for these partner services anyway. So with the Reserve, you’re going to get credits and complimentary memberships to services out there like Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart. Plus, you also get a Priority Pass membership for airport lounge access. That membership actually sort of has a special benefit that not all other travel credit cards out there have, like ones from Capital One and Amex.
And then you also get a credit to cover the cost of Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, or Nexus, which could be super useful for getting through airport security a lot faster. The Preferred, you’re still going to get some partner benefits with those same brands I talked about without as much of the complimentary access to those memberships. Still, you are going to be missing out on a bunch of those premium travel benefits.
So, no Priority Pass, no Global Entry, or TSA PreCheck, or anything like that. Now, I don’t want to cover every single partner benefit in that much detail here because, honestly, these things are always changing and always getting updated. But yeah, just there, you’re getting a lot more partner value over on the CSR compared to the CSP, but again, the true value of this kind of stuff really all just depends on who you are and if you even pay for this kind of stuff anyway.
Welcome Bonuses
I want to compare the welcome bonuses because, in my opinion, they should be looked at as being the same. And that’s because the standard offers on these cards are both for 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 in three months. However, Chase advertises these offers as being worth only $750 on the preferred. In contrast, they say it’s worth $900 on the reserve, which can sound confusing at first because it definitely makes it seem like the reserve has the better offer.
Now, the value of credit card points from a signup bonus like this really all depends on how you are going to use those points. So, the way that I look at it is that credit card points are pretty similar to actual money because, for example, let’s say you had $60,000 instead of 60,000 points. So some people are going to waste that money on useless material stuff like an expensive new car or something like that. Still, other people will look at their finances more strategically through budgeting, saving and managing their money.
Rocket Money
Rocket Money can help you to do just that. Now, I recently saw in the news that another popular budgeting app called Mint, which I’ve used in the past, is shutting down. So because of this, I started looking around for a good alternative, which led me to Rocket Money. And I think this app is actually better because Rocket Money really does more than just budgeting. So, one feature that I really love about this platform is that this app is going to show me all my subscriptions in one single place.
And then, if I see something that I don’t want, I could just cancel that subscription with a tap. So already Rocket Money has helped me to find out that I did not need my Apple TV subscription, and I can cancel that now that I’m done watching Ted Lasso. Rocket Money is also just a great all-in-one finance platform because it can help me reach my savings goals with a smart savings account that I can automatically deposit into. I can link all my other finance accounts into their app as well and then track my net worth over time.
Plus, Rocket Money just does a great job with budgeting because it’s going to monitor all my spending by category and then help me set a custom budget for different expenses as well. On top of all that, Rocket Money is going to be rolling out a bunch of other features shortly, like the ability to import data from another app or spreadsheet, as well as full access to all budgeting features on your desktop. So, if you’re interested, then try out Rocket Money today for free or unlock more features with premium.
Value of Bonuses
Now, back to the 60,000-point signup bonuses here with the Sapphire cards. So the reason that Chase markets this bonus as being worth $750 on the preferred but then $900 on the reserve is because of a differing points boost feature that each of these two cards has. So with the preferred, you’re getting a 25% points boost when redeeming your Chase points for travel within the Chase portal. But then, with the reserve card, you’re going to get a 50% points boost when booking travel through that card.
Essentially, this points boost feature is based on the standard value that Chase points have for cash back, which is a value of one cent per point. So if you have either one of these two Sapphire cards and you got the 60,000 point bonus, but then you just wanted to for cash back, then you could do that. And you would do that at a value of one cent per point for $600, which is just okay. But obviously, we can do better than that because, with the 25% boost on the CSP, we can use those same 60,000 points to book things like hotel stays, flights, or car rentals.
So that’s how 60,000 points become worth $750 on the preferred. Similarly on the Sapphire reserve card with that 50% points boost, we get 50% more value compared to cash back. So 60,000 points for the bonus times 1.5 cents per point is equal to $900. And that’s the value for travel when booked through Chase with that card. Now, the cool thing with Chase credit cards, if you didn’t know this, is that you can combine the Chase ultimate rewards points you earned from certain other Chase cards.
And then you can just pull these points together under whatever Sapphire card you want to hold. So other cards that earn the same Chase UR points include personal cards like Freedom Unlimited and Freedom Flex, as well as Chase business credit cards like Ink Preferred, Ink Unlimited, and Ink Cash. Now, when I was just a beginner with credit cards, and I got the Sapphire Preferred as my first ever premium travel card, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to use all the points that I was earning along with that points boost feature to save money on travel booked through Chase.
But as I learned more and more about the whole credit card game, I found out that I was leaving a ton of value on the table because I could have been transferring points out to many hotel and airline programs instead. The interesting thing here is that both the Sapphire Preferred and the Sapphire Reserve cards have the same ability to transfer points at the same one-to-one rate with the same transfer partners.
So, for me, now I aim to get at least two to three cents per point or more whenever I want to redeem my Chase points for travel by transferring them instead. So that makes the 60,000 points signup bonus worth between $1,200 and $1,800 or more for either one of these cards. And that is well above whatever Chase advertises when you redeem in the Chase portal. Now, what that means in terms of this comparison and what Sapphire card you should have is that if you plan to redeem points by transferring them, then either Sapphire card is going to work for you.
And for a lot of people they might just want to go with the cheaper Sapphire Preferred card because it has the lower annual fee. And it’s pretty much because of this reason here that I decided to use the Sapphire Preferred over the past four years. But suppose you’re someone who does not want to take the time to learn how to transfer points, or you just want the simplicity of the points boost feature in the Chase travel portal. In that case, the more expensive Sapphire Reserve card might be the better option for you because you are going to get more value with that 50% points boost.
Multipliers
Now, obviously, you’re going to be able to earn points from the signup bonus on whatever Sapphire card you get. But the other major way to earn points comes from the everyday spending multipliers that I want to go over next here. So, starting with the Sapphire Preferred, you’re going to be able to earn 5x on travel booked through Chase and 2x on any other travel booked outside of Chase, which covers a really broad range of travel expenses. And then you’re also going to earn 3x on dining, 3x for online groceries, excluding target Walmart and wholesale clubs, and 3x for select streaming services.
There’s also a small bonus feature here on the Preferred that some people get confused by and overvalue, where every year, you earn bonus points that are equal to 10% of the total purchases you make on this card in the year. An example that Chase gives on their website is that if you spend $25,000 in a year, you’re going to receive 2,500 bonus points. Doing the math on that example, that works out to be a bonus of 0.1 points per dollar on top of any spending multipliers. So effectively, that’s going to be things like 3.1x on dining, online groceries, and streaming. So, honestly, it’s not that much extra, but at least it’s something.
There’s also a category for earning 10x on Chase dining, but that’s only for select restaurants in certain cities. So it’s not really that common just yet. Plus, along with some of those other partner benefits that I talked about earlier, part of those benefits are going to include earning 5x on lift rides and 5x on Peloton equipment and accessory purchases through the end of March 2025 with the Sapphire Preferred. Then you’re also going to earn 10x for those same things with lift rides and Peloton equipment and accessories on the Sapphire Reserve card, again, through the end of March 2025.
Switching to CSR
I talked about the fact that I was going to be switching over from the Preferred card to the more expensive Sapphire Reserve in the near future. So let me explain why I’m doing that and then also go over a few other important features and benefits of these cards that are going to help you choose one.
Now, a few months ago, I was traveling through Boston for a summer trip up to Cape Cod. On my flight back home from Boston to Philadelphia, I was able to stop in at the brand new Chase Sapphire Lounge at Logan International Airport, which is one of the few Chase lounges that have opened up so far. And from my first impressions, I really liked this lounge a lot.
Honestly, to me, it kind of seemed like a slight upgrade from a lot of the overfilled Amex lounges that I’ve been to lately in the U.S. And don’t get me wrong, I still like the Amex lounges, but the one that I have at my home airport here in Philadelphia is definitely way too small if you’ve ever been to it. However, the good news here is that Chase is going to be bringing a lounge to Philly as well in the very near future. And it’s going to be massive at over 20,000 square feet, which I think is going to make it one of, if not the largest, Chase lounges in the world.
And to get into the lounge an unlimited number of times while bringing up to two free guests, I’m going to have to have the more expensive Sapphire Reserve card because the Sapphire Preferred card that I currently have right now, that’s not going to get you into any of these lounges. So for me, as somebody who’s been travelling more and more every year over the past few years, I really like to take advantage of these airport lounges because they definitely enhance the whole travel experience, in my opinion. And I love that Boston Sapphire lounge.
And suppose you’re going to travel through some other airports like Hong Kong, Las Vegas, New York’s LaGuardia, Phoenix, San Diego, or even Austin, Texas, where there’s a Sapphire Terrace. In that case, you also might want to consider picking up or switching over to the Sapphire Reserve card like I am right now. Now, on top of access to the Chase Sapphire lounges, I also mentioned that the CSR gives you a complimentary Priority Pass Select Membership.
More Features
And there’s going to be one important feature of this specific Priority Pass Membership that comes with this card. And that is restaurant credits. Basically, in certain airports, there are going to be restaurants that have partnered up with Priority Pass, where they’re going to give you a credit to cover the cost of food for you and any eligible guests.
So, for the type of Priority Pass you get with the Sapphire Reserve card, you’re going to be allowed to bring up to two free guests. And for many of these restaurants that you get access to at certain airports through Priority Pass, your credit is usually going to be around $28 per person. So, for my fiance, if we’re ever travelling together and we need something to eat, we can get up to $56 in value per meal.
Still, you can go ahead and do a quick Google search yourself to see what restaurants offer this deal. But the big thing here is that even though other personal travel credit cards like the Capital One Venture X and the American Express Platinum card also have Priority Pass, those cards basically have a slightly different version of Priority Pass that does not come with this restaurant credit like the Sapphire Reserve card has.
So, if you travel a lot and you know you’re going to use this Priority Pass benefit, you can really start to see savings add up and begin to chip away at that $250 annual fee. I also wanted to quickly mention here that both the Sapphire Preferred and Sapphire Reserve come with some other really great travel benefits, including no foreign transaction fees and primary coverage for theft and damage to rental cars if you decline coverage from the rental company.
And you’re going to want to read the terms and conditions for all these coverages for yourself. Still, in general, for some of these travel protections, they’re going to be better on the Reserve, just slightly better, at least when you dive into the details, but still very good on both cards. Obviously, you never want to have to use these insurance protections, but the Sapphire Reserve definitely does cover at least a little bit more overall here with better terms, limits, and that kind of stuff.
CSP vs CSR
Based on my own opinion, as well as everything we’ve covered so far here, there are really going to be four main things that give the Sapphire Reserve the edge over the Sapphire Preferred for some people. Still, then there’s also going to be four main things that should make the cheaper Sapphire Preferred more appealing to other people.
First, if you’re going to be flying a lot out of airports that are going to have a Chase Sapphire lounge and you value lounge access like I do, then you’ll want to pick the Sapphire Reserve card. Second, if you’re going to get good value by saving money with the credits for eating out at airport priority pass restaurants, then not only do you want to pick the Reserve over the Preferred, but you also might want to consider picking the Sapphire Reserve card over other premium travel credit cards out there from other issuers like Capital One and American Express.
Third, suppose you think that you’ll earn a lot of Chase points from bonuses and spending multipliers on the Sapphire Reserve as well as other Chase cards, and you don’t want to figure out that whole transfer partner thing because you just want to use the 50% points boost feature. In that case, you’ll also want to go with the Sapphire Reserve.
And fourth, if you want more peace of mind with better travel insurance and protections when you’re travelling far away from home, then again, the Sapphire Reserve card is going to be the better card to have here, even though the Sapphire Preferred card, as I said, is still pretty good in terms of its coverages and protections that it has, especially for that cheaper annual fee compared to other cards on the market.
Second, if you want slightly better everyday spending multipliers, then the Sapphire Preferred card could be the better pick, considering it gets the same 3x on dining as the Reserve. Still, it also earns 3x on streaming and online groceries, so if you like shopping for online groceries, then this could be a decent pick. Still, I have not found much value in that online grocery category just yet.
Third, if you want some basic but still decent travel protections like primary auto rental coverage, trip cancellation, interruption insurance, and some other stuff like that, but you don’t really care as much about those other higher-end travel protections that I mentioned on the Reserve. Again, the Sapphire Preferred card is still going to get the job done pretty well for a $95 per year credit card.
And fourth, if you know what you’re doing with transfer partners to get more value from redeeming your chase points by transferring out to airline and hotel programs compared to just using points boost features, then the Sapphire Preferred card might be the better pick for you because it has the same transfer partners and the same one-to-one transfer rate as the more expensive Reserve, so again for me this was the main reason that I was using the CSP over the CSR for the past few years.
However, now if I switch over to the more expensive Reserve card, I still get the same transfer partners while also adding lounge access to the upcoming Philadelphia Sapphire Lounge, as well as a few other more premium travel benefits on the Reserve card.
