Chase Sapphire Reserve vs Amex Platinum vs Citi Prestige: How To Choose Between Them

The Chase Sapphire Reserve℠, The Platinum Card® from American Express and the Citi Prestige® Card are three of the most popular luxury cards in the U.S. All come with high annual fees and on the surface appear to be similar. This can make choosing between them difficult. The easiest way to determine which card is the right choice for you is to first figure out why you want to pay $450 in the first place. There are many cheaper alternatives, so what do you hope to get out of one of these cards? The answer can help narrow down the search. If you don't know the answer, you can still use this resource to learn about the best parts of each of the cards.

Table of Contents

How Do The Chase Sapphire Reserve℠, The Platinum Card® from American Express and The Citi Prestige® Card Compare to Each Other?

The table below lists out all the relevant information you might want to know about the cards at hand. This can give you a bird's eye view of the most important features and components of each. In the sections below, we take a deep dive into key perks to help you better understand them.

	Chase Sapphire Reserve℠	The Platinum Card® from American Express	Citi Prestige® Card
Best For...	Travelers looking for excellent spending rewards & bonuses	Frequent travelers who want the best airport lounges & customer service	Consumers looking for decent lounge access coupled with great travel credit
Early Spend Bonus	100,000 points ($1,500 value)	40,000 points ($400 value)	40,000 points ($532 value)
Spend Bonus Requirement	Spend $4,000 on purchases within the first 3 months	Spend $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months	Spend $4,000 on purchases within the first 3 months
Annual Fee	$450	$450	450
Earnings Rate	3x points on Travel & Dining at restaurants; 1 point everywhere else	2x points on AmexTravel.com, 1 point per $1 everywhere else	3x points on Air Travel and Hotels; 2x points on dining and entertainment; 1 point everywhere else
Annual Air/Travel Credit	$300	$200	$250*
Air/Travel Credit Can Be Used For...	Travel purchases	Incidentals Only (One Airline Per Year)	Incidentals + Airline Tickets
Rewards Rate	1.5% - 4.5%	1% - 2%	1.33% - 4%
Foreign Transaction Fee	$0	$0	$0
Network	Visa Infinite	American Express	MasterCard®
Credit Background	Excellent credit	Excellent credit	Excellent credit
	Read Review	Read Review	Read Review

*It's been reported that the $250 airline credit on the Citi Prestige® Card can only be applied towards purchases made directly with an airline. If you book travel through a travel service, like Expedia, or even through Citi's own website, it won't be credited.

Comparing Lounge Access

The Platinum Card® from American Express comes with the best airline lounge coverage. This is due to the fact that it provides users with access to Amex’s Centurion lounges and Delta Sky Club®. The former is one of the most highly regarded airport lounges available to travelers. They are well reviewed and come with high quality amenities not seen in most other lounges. The only downside to the Centurion lounges is how few of them there are. Currently, there's just 7 – all located in major U.S. airports, including SFO, LAS and LGA. As we noted, Delta Sky Club® also comes included with The Platinum Card® from American Express. This gives access to 34 lounges, most of them located in the United States. However, you have to be travelling with Delta to receive the free admission to their lounges.

The Citi Prestige® Card currently gives cardholders access to Admirals Club lounges, operated by American Airlines. There are roughly 80 locations worldwide -- 45 in the U.S. Unfortunately, this benefit will be going away July 23, 2017. After that, the card’s lounge access will be reduced down to just Priority Pass™ Select.

All three credit cards, including the Chase Sapphire Reserve℠, come with Priority Pass™ Select membership. The website for Priority Pass™ advertises members receive access to over 900 lounges. The lounges are not standardized, and will vary in terms of the amenities they provide and quality. We estimate the value of Priority Pass™ Select to be around $399 per year.

Comparing Rewards

A primary function of most good credit cards is earning rewards. They achieve this in one of two ways – bonuses and by earning points. When choosing between the premium credit cards discussed here, we generally don’t recommend weighing these too heavily. If earning rewards is all that’s important to you, there are many great rewards credit cards that can do this at a much lower cost to you.

Apart from using the rewards on these cards for cash back, or to book travel directly, they can be moved to participating travel partners. This generally increases their value. We explore this in a section below.

Long-term Rewards: Points Earning

The Chase Sapphire Reserve℠ has one of the best rewards rates of any premium credit cards we’ve reviewed. The card earns you 3x points on travel and dining at restaurants, and 1x points elsewhere. Each point is worth $0.015 when redeeming on travel through the Ultimate Rewards (UR) portal. That works out a rewards rate between 1.5% and 4.5%.

The Citi Prestige® Card has comparable, though slightly lower, rewards. The card provides its users with 3x points on airline and hotel purchases, 2x points on dining out and entertainment, and 1x point on all other spending. The ThankYou points you earn through this card aren’t as valuable as Ultimate Rewards points. This inhibits the card's top rewards potential. The rewards rate on the Citi Prestige® Card will vary between 1.33% and 4.0%, when points are redeemed for flights.

The Platinum Card® from American Express has the weakest rewards offering by-far. This is not something the card specializes in. For the most part, the card will earn 1 point per $1 on all purchases. The only exceptions are bookings through AmexTravel.com, which give 2 points. Even then, however, the card produces a 2% rewards rate at best -- much lower than its competitors.

Short-term Rewards: Bonuses

In terms of welcome bonuses, the Chase Sapphire Reserve℠ is once again the clear winner. Not only does the card provide the highest value among the three cards compared here, it’s also one of the best bonuses available on any credit card.

Bonuses can be a good way to offset the cost of the high annual fee. The Chase Sapphire Reserve℠ offers up a $1,500 value when you redeem your Ultimate Rewards points on travel through its online portal. That’s enough to cover your annual fee for a little over 3 years.

Rewards Program Value: Transfer Partnerships

The Platinum Card® from American Express, the Citi Prestige® Card and the Chase Sapphire Reserve℠ all belong to one of the three major credit card rewards programs. Each of these has their own set of airline and hotel transfer partners, that gives the rewards you earn a little extra juice.

The value of these will depend on where you travel the most. Overall, we consider Chase’s Ultimate Rewards program to be the most powerful. It has a good range of international and domestic airlines, and the world’s largest hotel chains. You can also transfer your points to these programs at a favorable 1:1 ratio. That isn't the case with the other programs. For example, you need 3 Membership Rewards points to get 1 Starwood Preferred Guest point – which is a bad deal.

If you’d like to know more about each of these programs, check-out our comprehensive guide.

In-Depth Look At Each Card

In case you want to find out more about the three biggest luxury cards, this section talks about each in more detail.

Chase Sapphire Reserve℠

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The newly released Chase Sapphire Reserve℠ quickly rose to the top of the “best credit cards” list. The combination of above-average rewards rates on travel and dining coupled with the $300 annual travel credit make it extremely valuable. As we underscored above, one of the biggest strengths of this card the fact that it belongs to the Ultimate Rewards family of credit cards. We already covered how that means you can move your points to popular airline and hotel programs. Another big advantage of this is the fact that you can combine it with other UR cards and pool your points together. For example, if you get the no-annual-feeChase Freedom®, you can earn 5 points per dollar on up to $1,500 in combined purchases in bonus categories each quarter you activate.

The one thing missing from the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard® are brand-specific luxury perks. Some of the other $450 credit cards will typically throw in elite status with some airline or hotel chain, which can be invaluable to travelers. For example, The Platinum Card® from American Express gives their cardholders automatic SPG & Hilton HHonors Gold status.

Highlights

The Platinum Card® from American Express

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The Platinum Card® from American Express has long been the top-premium credit card, for many years acting as a status symbol. Today it’s less special. As we see with cards like the Citi Prestige® Card and the Chase Sapphire Reserve℠, many banks have imitated the formula. The new cards have, in many ways, improved on the old model. However, there are still some things The Platinum Card® from American Express hasn’t been matched on – namely customer service and luxury. Cardholders often exhibit loyalty to the card and issuer that’s been cultivated through Amex's care and effort. For example, one cardholder we spoke with lost his card. Amex shipped a replacement card overnight. The Platinum Card® from American Express throws in extra to make cardmember travel more luxurious, such as free Boingo WiFi plans, and bookings through their Fine Hotels and Resorts program. Though nothing major, these extra touches do a lot for the overall user experience.

The Platinum Card® from American Express is a charge card– not a credit card. This comes with some important distinctions. First, you are not allowed to carry a balance month-to-month. You need to pay your bill in full every time. The up-side is that the card has no pre-set spending limit. This can be particularly useful to anyone who likes to make big purchases on their card, and doesn’t want to be constrained. Note that ‘no-preset spending limit’ doesn’t mean you can charge anything you want to the card. You still have a limit, though it’s flexible.

Highlights

Citi Prestige® Card

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For the right consumer, the Citi Prestige® Card can have the most value. This is because of the card’s unrestrictive travel credit and hotel benefits. Some other premium credit cards, like The Platinum Card® from American Express, allow their annual credit to be used only towards incidentals – that means baggage fees, seat upgrades, etc. This can be limiting for individuals who pack light and always want to fly economy. The $250 credit you get with the Citi Prestige® Card, can be applied towards airfare, in addition to airline incidentals. Therefore, even though the total value isn't as high as what we see on some other cards, you are likely to find more opportunities to use it.

Citi Prestige® Card cardholders can also get a free fourth night on hotel stays. You need to make the booking through the Citi Concierge and pay for it entirely using the Citi Prestige® Card. Depending on where you stay, this benefit can be worth hundreds of dollars. There is no limitations on how many times you can use it throughout the year.

Highlights