Review: Chase Sapphire Preferred®

Who is the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card for?

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Review

If you’re looking to get your feet wet in the world of credit card points and airline miles, you’ll need a good starter credit card with which to learn the ropes. 

That card should have three things: the annual fee needs to be affordable, whatever that means to you; the shopping categories on which the card offers bonused spending need to match your spending habits; and the points should be transferable to travel partners that you would actually use. 

Earning points with the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card

Here are the points you can earn with the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card:

• Earn 5x total points on travel purchased through Chase Travel(SM), excluding hotel purchases that qualify for the $50 Annual Ultimate Rewards Hotel Credit.
• Earn 2x on other travel purchases.
• Earn 3x points on dining, including eligible delivery services, takeout and dining out.
• Earn 3x points on online grocery purchases (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs).
• Earn 3x points on select streaming services.
• Plus, earn 1 point per dollar spent on all other purchases.

First, the travel category. You get two points per dollar spent—or “2x”—on travel, such as plane tickets or Airbnb stays. But keep in mind that Chase defines the “travel” category broadly. It counts the obvious (“car rental agencies, cruise lines, travel agencies”) and the less obvious (“buses, taxis, limousines, ferries, toll bridges and highways, and parking lots and garages”) as travel expenses, so you have the opportunity to earn more points on more everyday purchases.

On top of that, you earn 5x on purchases made using your card through the Chase Travel portal. Paying for flights or hotels through a travel portal with a credit card is a great move if you see a price that’s cheaper or costs the same as if you’d book directly with the airline or hotel. However, I strongly recommend that you only ever pay with actual money in a travel portal; redeeming your credit card points through travel portals will limit the value of your points. 

Next, the categories that I like to call the “food” categories. With the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, you earn 3x on the following: dining at restaurants (including takeout and eligible delivery services) and online groceries (excluding Target®, Walmart® and wholesale clubs). Similarly, “dining” and “restaurants” include establishments like bars, cafés, and fast food joints. That means $2 for a coffee at a diner gets you 6 points, $20 dollars on a fancy cocktail at a bar gets you 60 points, and $100 on groceries delivered gets you 300 points. Just watch all that add up over time as you get rewarded for simply feeding yourself.

There’s also the small but mighty category of “select streaming services.” These days, all those TV subscriptions can get expensive. You may as well earn 3x on that Netflix log-in you most certainly do not share with all your family members and friends. 

Finally, the Sapphire Preferred offers a 10% points bonus on your card anniversary. What does that mean? After your first year of card membership, and on every anniversary after that, you’ll get bonus points equivalent to 10% of the points you earned in the last twelve months. For example, if you earned 60,000 points in one year, you get 6,000 more points (as a reminder, that’s 10% of 60,000) added to your account on your card anniversary.

Redeeming points with the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card

There are several ways to use your points, but the best redemption method is to transfer them to one of Chase's airline or hotel partners. 

Chase transfer partners

You can transfer Chase points to these airlines. 

• Aer Lingus AerClub
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Air France / KLM Flying Blue
• British Airways Executive Club
• Emirates Skywards
• Iberia Plus
• JetBlue TrueBlue
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
• Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
• United MileagePlus
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

All points transfer at a one to one (1:1) ratio, which means that one Chase point is equivalent to one mile or point with all of these loyalty programs, once transferred.

Anecdotally, transfers to all these partners are relatively instantaneous, with one exception: transfers to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer usually take 24 hours to process. 

Chase hotel transfer partners

Chase points transfer at a 1:1 ratio to the following hotel partners.  

• IHG One Rewards
• Marriott Bonvoy
• World of Hyatt

On the whole, transferring points to hotels rarely maximizes the value of your points, with the exception of transfers to World of Hyatt. You’re better off sticking to points transfers to airlines to get the most value out of your points.

Welcome offer on the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card

Here are some ideas of what to do with them (based on past Going with Points deals):

• One roundtrip, business class ticket to Amsterdam or Paris on KLM or Flying Blue. (Or, two roundtrip economy tickets for the same price!)
• Four roundtrip, economy tickets to the Bahamas on JetBlue or United (family trip, anyone?)
• Two or three roundtrip, economy tickets to Hawai’i on United (honeymoon idea?)
• One roundtrip, economy ticket to Beijing on Air France
• Three nights stay at a Hyatt all-inclusive resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Additional benefits of the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card

In addition, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card comes with several other perks:

• Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance: Up to $10,000 reimbursed per person if your trip is cancelled or cut short by sickness, severe weather or other covered situations. 
• Auto rental collision damage waiver: Primary coverage
• Baggage delay insurance: Reimburses baggage delays over 6 hours up to $100 a day for five days.
• Trip delay insurance: Up to $500 per ticket when your carrier is delayed more than 12 hours or requires an overnight stay. Can include meal and lodging expenses.
• Extended warranty and purchase protections.
• Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
• Instacart+ subscription for six months. (Activate by July 31, 2024.)

Chase Travel Portal vs. Transferring points

This is one of the big benefits that Chase loves to advertise: When you hold the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card, each of your Chase points are worth "25% more" in the Chase Travel (SM) portal. Let me give you some context. 

In most travel portals offered by credit card issuers, a credit card point is worth one cent (1¢). They’re essentially offering you a way to use your points as you would cash-back: If you pay off the $2,000 on your credit card bill, you get $20 in cash back, at a rate of one cent earned per dollar paid off. 

So if you have 100,000 credit card points, valued at 1¢ each in a travel portal, you have $1,000 you can use to purchase flights, lodging, or other travel experiences.

Put into practice: Say you want to buy a plane ticket that costs $500. At any other credit card travel portal, that would cost you 50,000 points because each point is worth 1¢. But if you book through the Chase Travel portal and you hold the Preferred, you’d only need 40,000 points because each of your points is worth 1.25¢ (40,000 x $0.0125 = $500).

Again, I cannot emphasize enough that this will rarely get you the bang for your buck you deserve. If you transfer those 40,000 points to an airline loyalty program, you could book flights easily worth more than $500, thus stretching the value of your points.

All that said, there’s at least one other reason to use the Chase Travel portal: the annual travel credit of $50. When you use the Preferred for hotel accommodations purchased through the Chase Travel portal, a statement credit worth $50 will automatically be applied to your account within one or two billing cycles. This effectively reduces the annual fee; just be sure you use the credit every year on a purchase worth at least $50. (For what it’s worth, I like to use the credit to knock $50 off the bill for airport transit hotels, since they’re relatively cheap anyway.)

Alternatives to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card 

If the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card isn't right for you--or you already have it in your wallet--there's a few other options to consider.