Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card: Premium Benefits
This is the premium Chase Ultimate Rewards® earning card. It has a $550 annual fee but comes with a lot of perks and benefits that may make it worth the high fee for you.
credit card
Current Bonus:
60,000 points
Earn 60,000 Ultimate Rewards® points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee:
$550
The Chase Sapphire card family has some extremely valuable points known as Chase Ultimate Rewards®. As a general rule, I recommend everyone get either a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card early on in their travel points journey.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card have a lot of similarities but some key differences. One is annual fee! The Preferred annual fee is $95 while the Reserve is $550. But for that extra cost, the Reserve gives some extra benefits. Keep reading to see which one makes sense for you.
Will you get approved? Chase and the 5/24 Rule
As a Chase card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card is subject to Chase’s 5/24 Rule. In short, you will only get approved for Chase’s cards if you have fewer than 5 new credit cards (from any issuer) reporting to your credit report in the past 24 months.
The easiest way to check if you are “under 5/24” is to go through your credit report and count how many new accounts show up in the past 24 months. Business cards generally don’t count towards your 5/24, but authorized user cards do.
You can read more about the 5/24 rule here.
Bonus Eligibility: Sapphire Family 48 Month Rule
The fine print of the offer currently states, “This product is available to you if you do not have any Sapphire card and have not received a new cardmember bonus for any Sapphire card in the past 48 months.”
It also means that if you have earned a bonus on either Sapphire card in the past 48 months, you are not eligible to receive another bonus unless it has been 48 months.
This is different from some card families where you can receive bonuses from each card (for example, you can receive bonuses from both the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card.
If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card and earned your bonus more than 48 months ago you can call Chase to downgrade the card to one of the Freedom products (either Chase Freedom Unlimited® or Chase Freedom Flex℠). Wait 14-30 days and then you would be eligible to apply for a new Sapphire card and earn a new sign up bonus.
Keep in mind you are eligible for the card 48 months after you earned the bonus. If you no longer have a record of this date, you can send a Secure Message to Chase’s customer service and ask for the date when you earned your bonus on the card. If you have a record of the date you opened the card (but not earned the bonus), add at least 3-4 months from the date you opened the Sapphire to calculate the date you earned the bonus.
Best Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card Benefits
Premium cards with high annual fees typically come with a lot of benefits. With an annual fee of $550, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card will definitely make up its value the first year with its high welcome bonus. Whether you’ll be able to get ongoing value out of the fee is up to you. Check out our post on when annual fees are worth it.
Here are some of our favorite benefits:
Annual Travel Credit
This $300 travel credit is the easiest travel credit to use of any premium card! Any purchase that you make that codes as as travel expense will automatically trigger the statement credit. This is true for larger purchases like hotel rooms or flights. But also works for parking, bus tickets, or even some campsites.
TSA Precheck or Global Entry Credit
You get a statement credit of up to $100 every four years for purchases made for Trusted Traveler programs.
Priority Pass Membership (Airport Lounge Access)
If you travel frequently by plane, lounge access is a game changer! The Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card will provide access to Priority Pass lounges to the primary cardholder and two guests. If you add an authorized user (for $75) they will also get lounge access for themself and two guests. This is not the cheapest option for airport lounge access for families of 4+ as the Capital One Venture X has a more family friendly policy. Interested in other cards with lounge access? Check out our Guide to Lounge Access for Families.
Instacart+ Membership and Statement Credits
If you use Instacart, this is a great perk! Through 7/31/2024 you will get a $15 per month statement credit when you use Instacart. You can also enroll for for 12 months in Instacart+. That $15 per month is worth $180 of groceries per year!
DoorDash Benefits
You get free DashPass through 12/31/24 or a minimum of 1 year depending on activation date. If activated by 12/31/23, expiration date will be 12/31/24. If DashPass is activated between 1/1/24 – 12/31/24, your expiration date will be one year from activations.
Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card members enrolled in DashPass will receive $5 per month DoorDash credit. If the credit is not used within the calendar month, it will be carried over for a maximum of 2 months.
Up to $15 in credit can be accrued before a $5 credit expires.
Up to 7 authorized users will receive the credit each month while enrolled in DashPass
Free Shipt Membership for 3 Years
With your Reserve card, you are also entitled to a Free Shipt Membership for 3 years! This gives you free delivery on orders over $35. Activate your benefit here.
Lyft Pink
Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card members now get a complimentary Lyft Pink All Access membership for two consecutive years (a value of $199/year). After two years, your membership will automatically renew at 50% off for a third year.
You must include your eligible Chase card as a payment method in the Lyft app to enroll in the complimentary two-year membership and renew into the third year’s discounted membership.
Note: The membership must be activated with your eligible card by 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time on December 31, 2024.
The benefits for Lyft Pink can be found here. One of the best (in my opinion) is unlimited ebike and scooter unlocks — which is great if you live in or travel to cities with these bikes and scooters!
Annual Value of Benefits
| Benefit | Estimated Annual Value |
| Annual travel credit | $300 |
| TSA Precheck/Global Entry/NEXUS statement credit ($100 every 4 years) | $25 |
| DoorDash DashPass (through 12/31/2024) | $96 |
| DoorDash statement credits (through 12/31/2024) $5/month | $60 |
| Instacart+ Membership (12 months) | $99 |
| Instacart statement credits (through 7/31/2024) – $15/month | $180 |
| Priority Pass Select Membership | $150 |
| Lyft Pink All Access Membership (2 years) | $199 |
Other travel and purchase protections
In addition to the above benefits, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card offers some great protections to give you peace of mind when you’re traveling and on those big purchases.
The Trip Delay Reimbursement is an upgrade to a similar benefit you receive on the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. On the Preferred card, this benefit kicks in after a delay of 12 hours. On the Reserve card, it kicks in after a delay of just six hours.
If you like to redeem points through the Chase Travel portal (or through Pay Yourself Back), the break-even point for the cards (due to better redemption rates with the Reserve is 60,000 points. If you plan to redeem 60,000 or more points through the Chase portal in a year, it makes sense to upgrade to the Reserve to take advantage of the higher redemption rates.
Other benefits include:
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver
- Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption Insurance
- Travel and Emergency Assistance Services
- Extended Warranty Protection
- Purchase Protection
For the full details on these protections, consult the guide to benefits.
Earning Points
While you’ll probably get the bulk of your points from your welcome bonus, both the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card and Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card offer opportunities to earn up to 5 points per dollar on travel. You can also earn 10 points per dollar with the Reserve when booking through the Chase travel portal. Points on travel are not earned until after the first $300 is spent annually on purchases in the travel category. The first $300 spent goes towards the $300 Annual Travel Credit.
| Purchase Type | Earning Rate (Reserve) | Earning Rate (Preferred) |
| Flights purchased through Chase | 5x | 5x |
| Hotels and car rentals booked through Chase | 10x | 5x |
| All other travel purchases | 3x | 2x |
| Lyft (through March 2025) | 10x | 5x |
| Dining | 3x | 3x |
| Online grocery purchases | 1x | 3x |
| Select streaming services | 1x | 3x |
| All other purchases | 1x | 1x |
Chase Ultimate Rewards®
The Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card, like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, earns Chase Ultimate Rewards®. For more on some of my favorite options to redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards®, check out our post on sweet spots for families here.
Chase Ultimate Rewards® can be redeemed in a number of ways, including through Chase’s travel portal or through any of Chase’s 13 travel partners.
Travel Portal
If you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card, Chase Ultimate Rewards® can be redeemed through the travel portal at a rate of 1.5x. It is easiest to think about it as 10,000 points will get you $150 of travel. This is the highest value you can get for your points booking through an online travel portal and one reason to consider the card. Travel portals are essentially online travel agencies like Expedia or Orbitz.
Booking through the travel portal allows you to book flights, rental cars, hotels, tours and even vacation homes with your points.
When the cash rate of a hotel or flight is cheap, it makes more sense (and cents!) to book through the Chase portal. In fact, this is one of the easiest strategies for booking flights with points! What I love about booking through the portal is that your taxes and fees get wrapped into the points costs so the flight really can cost $0. I like to use Google Flights to find cheap fares and then book this way. When we flew Barcelona in January 2020, tickets were just $150 one way. We booked through the Chase portal and used just 10,000 points each!
In places like Europe, you’ll have more luck with finding hotels that can accommodate families with the Chase portal than with many chain hotels. You can ready about a few places a reader went with points this way on her month long trip to Europe. Similarly, our family had great redemption rates when using Chase Ultimate Rewards® to book an independent hotel in Gili Air, Indonesia.
Transfer Partners
Chase Ultimate Rewards® has 11 airline transfer partners:
- Aer Lingus
- Aeroplan (Air Canada)
- British Airways
- Emirates
- Flying Blue (Air France/KLM)
- Iberia
- JetBlue
- Singapore Airlines
- Southwest
- United Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic
Chase Ultimate Rewards® has three hotel transfer partners:
- Hyatt
- IHG
- Marriott
Points must be transferred in increments of 1,000 points. You can transfer to your own loyalty accounts or to the loyalty accounts of any authorized users on your card.
All transfers are final- so make sure you really want to transfer. Once you transfer your points to a partner, you cannot turn those points back into Chase Ultimate Rewards® points.
Learning about award sweet spots is where you can really begin to maximize the value of your points. You can use 26,000 points (+taxes), for instance, to book a round trip flight on Aer Lingus from Chicago to Dublin on most dates. You can transfer 25,000 points to Hyatt to book a night at the Hyatt Ziva Cancun, which can cost as much as $500 per night!
Other Redemption Options
Redeem for cash back
The cash back rate is 1 cent per point, so 10,000 points will get you $100 cash back.
Pay Yourself Back
With Pay Yourself Back, your points are worth 50% more through December 31, 2022 when you redeem them for statement credits against existing purchases in select categories – currently Airbnb, dining, annual membership fee, and select charities.
This offers the same rates as the Chase Portal — so 10,000 points will get you $150.
How To Apply
Interested in applying? Please use my affiliate link! It helps support my site and doesn’t cost you anything!
Other Tips
Combining Points From Other Cards
If you have other cards that earn Chase Ultimate Rewards®, you can combine them onto one card. This is particularly useful if you have one of the Chase Freedom cards or Chase Ink Business Cash® Credit Card or Chase Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card.
All of those no annual fee cards earn Chase Ultimate Rewards® that can only be used for cash back. However, if you have Chase Ultimate Rewards® from a no annual fee card, you can combine them with your Sapphire’s Chase Ultimate Rewards® for a higher portal redemption rate and the ability to transfer them to airline and hotel partners.
Refer a Friend (or Spouse)
If you already have a Sapphire card, another great benefit is that you can refer a friend — or a spouse to the card! Visit https://www.chase.com/referafriend/catch-all to create your link.
The Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card doesn’t always offer a referral bonus. When it does, the typical referral bonus is 10,000 points.
Options After One Year
After you’ve held the card for one year, you need to decide how to proceed. You should generally never cancel a card before holding it for a whole year. Banks frown on this and it won’t help get you in their good graces. Some banks will even claw back bonus points or won’t approve you for additional cards in the future.
Keep Your Card and Ask For a Retention Offer
If you like the card, great! You should still call the number on the back of your card and ask if any retention offers are available.
Downgrade to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, Chase Freedom Unlimited®, or Chase Freedom Flex℠
You can also choose to downgrade your card to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® ($95) or a no annual fee card like the Chase Freedom Unlimited® or Chase Freedom Flex℠.
If you downgrade to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, you’ll continue to be able to redeem your points through the travel portal (at a rate of 1.25x) or transfer your points to any of the Chase transfer partners.
The Freedom cards will allow you to keep your Chase Ultimate Rewards® points, but you will only be able to redeem them for cash back. You’ll no longer be able to transfer them to travel partners and you’ll get a 1x rate through the travel portal.
The advantage to downgrading to a Freedom card, instead of canceling, is that the card remains on your credit report, lengthening your credit history, which in turn, improves your credit score.
The Freedom cards have some great benefits, too – like the Chase Freedom Flex℠ offers cell phone insurance if you pay your bill with the card.
And don’t forget – you can combine points across your household, so you could transfer your points from a Freedom card to your spouse’s Sapphire card and still get all the Sapphire benefits.
Cancel
Your last option is to cancel the card. Don’t forget to use or transfer all your points if you decide to do this because you will lose them when you cancel the card.
Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card vs. Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card
The Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card and Capital One Venture X Rewads Credit Card are both premium cards worth considering. Trying to decide which one to get?
Both of these cards include great benefits like a TSA PreCheck/Global Entry statement credit every four years, no foreign transaction fees, primary rental car insurance, trip insurance coverages, and extended warranty and purchase protections.
However, there are some notable benefits that may make one card a better option for you than the other.
| Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card | Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card |
| Higher annual fee ($550) | Lower annual fee ($395) |
| Authorized user fee ($75) | Up to four free authorized users |
| Easy to use $300 travel credit | $300 travel credit must be used through Capital One travel portal like a coupon |
| Points are worth 1.5x when redeemed through the Chase travel portal | Points are worth 1x when redeemed through the Capital One travel portal |
| Transfer partners include domestic airlines | No domestic airline partners |
| Transfers to Hyatt for great value all inclusive and hotel stays | Transfer to Wyndham, which can be used for Vacasa vacation rentals |
| Access to Priority Pass lounges and experiences. Access to Chase Sapphire lounges. | Access to Priority Pass lounges and Premium Plaza and Capital One Lounges |
| One year of complimentary Instacart+ and $15 in Instacart statement credits each month through July 2024 | 10,000 mile bonus every year, starting on your card anniversary |
| Complimentary DoorDash DashPass membership and $5 in DoorDash credits each month | Six months complimentary museum membership through Cultivist |
| Up to $10,000 per person and $20,000 per trip trip cancellation and interruption insurance | Up to $2,000 trip cancellation and interruption coverage per eligible person |
| No cell phone protection | Cell phone protection |
Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card vs. Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Both the Reserve and Preferred offer a lot of the same benefits – trip insurance, extended warranty protection, purchase protection, rental car insurance, etc.
However, with its higher annual fee, the Reserve understandably comes with some higher earning rates and a higher redemption value when booking through the portal. It also includes a $300 statement credit for travel, a TSA PreCheck/Global Entry statement credit every 4 years, and Priority Pass membership.
| Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card | Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card |
| Higher annual fee ($550) | Lower annual fee ($95) |
| Authorized user fee ($75) | Free authorized users |
| Easy to use $300 travel credit | $50 hotel credit must be used through Chase travel portal |
| Points are worth 1.5x when redeemed through the Chase travel portal – 10,000 points = $150 | Points are worth 1.25x when redeemed through the Capital One travel portal – 10,000 points = $125 |
| Same transfer partners and rates | Same transfer partners and rates |
| Access to Priority Pass lounges and experiences. Access to Chase Sapphire lounges. | No lounge access |
| One year of complimentary Instacart+ and $15 in Instacart statement credits each month through July 2024 | Six months of complimentary Instacart+ and $15 in Instacart statement credits each quarter through July 2024 |
| Complimentary DoorDash DashPass membership and $5 in DoorDash credits each month | Complimentary DoorDash DashPass membership |
| Trip Delay Reimbursement if your common carrier travel is delayed more than 6 hours or requires an overnight stay | Trip Delay Reimbursement if your common carrier travel is delayed more than 12 hours or requires an overnight stay |
To learn more about the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, check out our Complete Guide to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card.
If you like to redeem points through the Chase Travel portal (or through Pay Yourself Back), the break-even point for the cards (due to better redemption rates with the Reserve is 60,000 points. If you plan to redeem 60,000 or more points through the Chase portal in a year, it makes sense to upgrade to the Reserve to take advantage of the higher redemption rates.
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