4 ms·

Depends on your purchasing. The amex platinum bonus on air travel is worth about 10%.

• CydeWeys 7y ago
  Yeah, if you're buying huge amounts of flights that's probably the way to go (though note that the point return is 5%, and you can't always find good ways to spend MR at a 2 cents/point evaluation). But note that the Sapphire Reserve's effective annual fee is $150, because it's trivial to utilize the $300 travel credit (literally anything in the travel category including flights, hotels, taxis, Uber, parking, public transit, trains, etc., counts). The Amex's annual fee, by contrast is $550, without such easier ways to knock it down. If you take Uber religiously then that's good for a $200 benefit, and it's also good for $200 in airline fees (not flights or seat upgrades) which can be hard to use. In practice, I don't take Uber that often, the airline fees can be hard for me to use, I don't take a huge amount of expensive flights, and there are synergies that the Reserve has with other Chase cards that the Amex Platinum doesn't have (it increases the value of UR points earned by other cards, such as the Freedom's 5% quarterly categories, by transferring them to the Reserve before redeeming them). So the Reserve does appear to be the correct card for me.