Chase Sapphire Preferred VS Capital One Venture Rewards

There are plenty of credit cards in the mid tier category with annual fees under $100. However, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card are probably on the top of the list. Both cards have an annual fee of $95 and offer tremendous value. In this post I’ll compare both cards for you across a few categories; welcome bonus, points earning, points redemption and other perks.

Welcome Bonus

Points Earning

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card: 2X on dining and travel. Those are two broadly defined categories and are generally high spend categories especially if you like to eat out a lot and do some traveling every year. Otherwise it earns 1X on everything else. Earn 5X points on Lyft rides through March 2022. That’s 3X points in addition to the 2X points you already earn on travel.

Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card: 2X miles on anything and everything which is great. 

Without taking into consideration the redemption value, the Capital One Venture easily wins this category since it earns 2X not only on dining and travel but on everything.  

Points Redemption

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card: The minimum value to redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards Points with the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card should be at a 1.25 cents/point value. You can achieve this by booking all different types of travel through the Chase Travel Portal. This gives the welcome bonus a minimum value of $750.
Otherwise, to get maximum bang for your points, Chase Ultimate Rewards Points can be transferred at a ratio of 1:1 to several airline and hotel partners. My current favorite transfer partner of Chase is Hyatt hotels where you can get a free night at high end Category 7 Hyatt hotels for only 30,000 points per night. The paid rate at these hotels can easily reach upwards of $1,000 per night. Other great transfer partners are Singapore Krisflyer Miles, United Mileage Plus and British Airways Avios.

Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card: Even though Venture Miles can now be transferred to 15 airline partners, they transfer at a ratio of 2:1.5 or 2:1 which is not very favorable. You can otherwise book travel through Capital One’s travel portal using Venture Miles at a rate of 1 cent/mile. The card has a unique Purchase Eraser feature which allows you to redeem your points at a 1 cent/mile value to erase travel purchases that were made up to 90 days back.

The winner of this category has to be the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card due to the more favorable transfer ratio to travel partners and the higher redemption value through the travel portal.

Travel Perks

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card: Has strong travel protection and trip delay and baggage delay reimbursement benefits. Also, offers primary auto rental insurance.

Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card: Being a Visa Signature card, it offers travel accident insurance, lost luggage reimbursement and secondary Auto Rental Coverage which are not as strong as the benefits with the Chase Sapphire Preferred. In addition to that, it has a benefit that’s usually associated with premium cards and that is a $100 statement credit for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application fees. This benefit alone might make the venture card the winner of this category.

Bottom Line:

These are both fantastic starter credit cards. Choosing the better one for you really has to do with your personal travel and spending habits. The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is great for redeeming points at a higher value and the Capital One Venture Card is awesome for giving the option to use miles to erase travel purchases up to 90 days back and the $100 Global Entry/TSA PreCheck credit. I personally see both cards working great together and every wallet should have room for both of these cards to add some diversity in the way you use the different types of points. You should also know that Chase added a couple of new benefits in partnership with Doordash and Lyft. You can get unlimited deliveries with a $0 delivery fee and reduced service fees on orders over $12 for a minimum of one year on qualifying food purchases with DashPass, DoorDash’s subscription service, must activate by 12/31/21. Don’t think these benefits are deciding factors to get either card. I personally don’t use Doordash or Lyft.

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