When it comes to travel cards, there are a few that stand out in the mix. Here’s an overview of Chase vs Capital One travel cards and why I have both in my wallet!
Thomas and I should be in Mexico right now at the Andaz Mayakoba! This trip is costing us almost nothing thanks to travel rewards! We paid for our flight and hotel with Chase points (before we left) and we’re paying for our food and drinks (charged to the room) with Capital One Venture Reward Miles. This post will explain how these two points currencies work together to cover travel before and during your trip!
Chase vs Capital One Travel Cards
Whenever a friend asks me about using credit card points to travel for free, I always tell them that ultimately they probably want both a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and a Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card in their wallet. While those just getting started are always a little weary of getting multiple new cards, rest assured you don’t need to rush into getting them. You can get one per year and keep them forever as your travel cards.
The main reason I recommend both is because they earn different points currencies and you spend points in different ways. The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is great for before trips and the Capital One Venture is great for on and after the trip.
Premium or Ultra Premium?
Both Chase and Capital One have two levels of their Sapphire/Venture cards:
- Premium Travel Cards: Chase Sapphire Preferred® and Capital One Venture Rewards (both have $95 annual fees)
- Ultra Premium Travel Cards: Chase Sapphire Reserve® and Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card (has $550 and $395 annual fees, respectively)
Which level you get is up to your comfort level of annual fee and how often you travel / how often you’ll use the card. I’m going to focus on the premium level for this post, but know either is an option! The currencies will work together and balance out the same.
Here’s a quick overview of Sapphire vs Venture Rewards:
Chase Sapphire Preferred®
- Currency: Earns Chase points that you can either use to book travel for 1.25 points per dollar in Chase Travel (SM) OR transfer to travel partners like Hyatt, Marriott, British Airways, United, and Jet Blue.
- What to use it on: this card earns 3x points on restaurants, so this is my primary dining out card
- 1x points on everything else
Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
- Currency: Earns Capital One Rewards Miles that you can erase travel with a statement credit with after you travel OR you can book travel in the Cap One portal OR you can transfer to partners like Air France/KLM Flying Blue, British Airways Avios, Choice Privileges and Wyndham Rewards
- What to use it on: everything except dining!
- 2x points on everything else
Both cards have other perks like trip cancellation insurance, perks for rental cars, a $50 hotel credit (Sapphire only), TSA PreCheck credit (Venture only), and a $95 annual fee.
The view at the Four Seasons Anguilla
Booking In The Portals: Chase Wins
Both cards allow you to book in portals and also transfers to their selection of travel partners. In my opinion, Chase wins the portal game because you get 1.25 points per dollar vs. the 1 to 1 with Capital One. Because of this, when we need to book travel – flights, sometimes hotels – we always use Chase! It’s very easy to book in the Chase portal – just search for your hotel or flights and when you check out, you’ll just pay with points. Put any remaining balance on your Sapphire and you’ll earn 5x points on that spend.
If you’re going to transfer points, Chase wins for this too because I’d much rather stay at a Hyatt resort than the hotel choices for Capital One. Travel Freely reports that the value of Chase points go up to about 1.8 when transferring points to travel partners. So you’re getting more than $1 per point. Thus the Chase points are considered very valuable because they are worth so much. That said, it’s a little more complicated to book travel with Chase than with Capital One where you simply erase any travel expenses you incur! See below.
Erase Travel After You Get Home With The Venture Cards
The Purchase Eraser lets you book right on a hotel/airline website and then erase the purchase from your statement with points. That’s ultimate flexibility!
The Venture cards are also great for all expenses that aren’t the base trip costs: shuttles, rental cars, food and drinks on property, and anything you charge to your room (like a massage!). With the Points Eraser, you will find a list of travel expenses in your Capital One app that you’ve incurred in the past 90 days. You select the ones you’d like to erase, select how many points to put towards it, and BOOM you get a refund on your card in a day or so!
Keep in mind that the expenses need to be defined by Capital One as travel before they can be erased. A few things you might think are travel but aren’t: airport parking and gas. But anything hotel related will be. And I’ve had several shuttles come through as travel (our Disney shuttles, our Mexico shuttles, and the BHI ferry!)
The Purchase Eraser is also key if you love staying at Airbnbs! Anything coded as travel counts – from Airbnb to Uber rides to the Bald Head Ferry. This is a HUGE perk of the Venture X if you love boutique hotels or staying in houses.
The Balance: Chase Before + Venture After Travel
I love the balance between accumulating Chase points for flights and bigger hotel stays and using my Capital One points to erase smaller travel expenses that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to use points for. Paying for food on trips has always been a drawback to the free travel world because if you’re like us, you can rack up some food and drinks! Sure having your flight/hotel be free might mean you can put more budget towards food, but being able to charge the food to your room and then erase the cost is kind of like staying at an all-inclusive : ) For example, we book our hotel and flights to Mexico in the Chase Portal and then charged all of our food and drinks to our room and used Capital One points to erase that cost! This means our trip was totally free minus a few incidentals!
Lunch at The Half Shell, Anguilla
How To Earn More Points
After you get the initial $750 sign up bonus, there are a few ways to earn more points so you can keep this runway going:
- Refer friends – You’ll get 15,000-25,000 points per friend up to 100k points per year (this varies per card). That’s up to $250 per friend/family member.
- Spend money – Obviously when you use your cards for everyday things you’ll earn money. I’m the friend to drop my card at a restaurant and have people Venmo me back. Gotta earn those points! Remember I use Chase for all things food/groceries and Capital One for everything else because it earns 2x as much as Chase for everything else (medical bills, taxes, subscriptions, Christmas gifts, etc.)
- Mix in business cards – See below! This is the best way to travel a lot if you have a business owner in your family.
Chase + Capital One Business Cards
If you have a business, and the word business is very loosely defined, you can earn even more points. Thomas and I are both business owners, so we have both gotten several Chase Ink® business cards and tons of points that way. You don’t need to have a storefront or need a EIN to be considered a business. If you drive for Uber or make jewelry, you have a business. The business cards usually have higher spending requirements to get the sign up bonus, but the bonuses are usually higher too.
Here is the best part: You can transfer your business points to your Sapphire or Venture and then use them for your trips! So because you’re earning the points for buying printer ink for your home office, you can move them to the Venture card and then erase a pina colada you charge to your room on your vacay.
Chase Business Card
- Chase Ink Business Cash® (no annual fee)
Capital One Business Cards:
- Capital One Spark Miles for Business
- Capital One Venture X Business
More Cards To Get
Chase has a handful of other cards (like the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card) that earn travel points and you can transfer those to your Chase Sapphire Preferred®. So if you have a Sapphire and a Venture and want to boost your points, you can apply for more cards and then move those points to your primary travel card (since the Sapphire gets that 1.25-1.8 point valuation!)
The Must Have Travel Card App
If you’re starting out in this travel card world, you need the Travel Freely Card Tracker. It’s free to use, and it will tell you a summary of each card’s perks which will help you know which cards to use and when. You can put in the cards you have and it will keep track of your application date, annual fees, and when it’s time for a new card. The card genie is also a nice perk to recommend which card to get next. You can also put in personal and business to best stagger those as well.
What About Amex?
I have yet to dabble in Amex, so I can’t speak much to how it would fit into this plan. If and when I feel that we’re low on points and could use a boost, I may work my way into the world of Amex. I’ve heard the Amex Gold is a very good card.
In Summary
- Before a trip: Use all cards that earn Chase points to pool points to the Sapphire and book flights and hotels either in the portal or transfer to partners
- After a trip: Use your Capital One points to erase food, drinks, and transportation costs you incurred during your trip!
- Consider getting the Chase Sapphire Reserve® or Capital One Venture X too! (I have the Venture X and love the extra perks that come with it like lounge access).
Julie says
My issue with the Capital One portal is everything is more expensive than booking directly, so it’s not even worth the extra points. But, I have to use the portal sometimes to use the $300 travel credit with the Venture X.
Is Chase’s portal similar?
Kath Younger says
I haven’t necessarily found that to be the case. And often when booking through either portal, they add free breakfast and other perks. That said if the prices are exactly the same and I’m gonna pay cash either way, I usually just book direct with the hotel.
Denise says
I’ve always been curious about travel cards and would love to take advantage of their perks. But I just cannot wrap my head around the amount of spending I’d have to do to earn a “free” vacation like this one! Even at 3x restaurant purchases (doing quick math on a generic $5000 trip), I’d have to spend upwards of $125,000? It’s not like I can use the card to pay my mortgage. I’d be most curious how long it takes someone to accumulate enough points for a decent trip with regular normal spending habits.
Kath Younger says
That is a totally valid concern! Most of the points you earn will come from the sign up bonus. You definitely don’t want to be spending more than you usually would just to earn points – totally agree with that. It is true that if there is just one of you and neither has a business that it would take longer to go on a $5k trip, however, if you have a partner who can also get SUB (even if you and a friend are planning a joint trip) and/or if you add business cards to the mix, you can definitely speed up the pace! Most people should be able to do one free trip a year. Multiple trips is hard to pull off without a bigger spend (usually from a business) or getting more cards than is reasonable.
Kristen says
I have repeatedly heard people having bad experiences with the travel portal. If there are no delays etc, then everything is fine, but if place flights get cancelled etc, then they have found the customer service less than helpful. This has made me too wary to use it. I always book directly with hotel and airlines, not through 3rd party sites. Maybe I would consider using the portal for a low stakes, nearby driving trip, but not a trip involving airplanes, foreign countries etc
Kath Younger says
You can always transfer points to all of the transfer partners, and then book direct with them! This is actually a better way to use your points anyways because often you can get a better valuation by transferring out vs shopping directly in the portal.
This trip we’re on right now we booked direct through Hyatt. You can transfer out to airlines too.
Kim Sabey says
Hello, I so appreciate your summaries. What do you mean ’erasing charges’ & why would I (or anyone) want to use a that option?
Kath Younger says
Basically a statement credit! Free money!
Noah says
Hey there! Love this, super useful. I have both cards (venture x and chase preferred) and heading to Italy for our first trip using them. You mention you use Chase for dining out (3x rewards) and Cap One for everything else, but the Chase Rewards tells me it’s 3x dining, 3x streaming and groceries, 2x travel, 3x Chase travel where Cap One is just 2x points on everything unless you book travel through their portal where you may get 5 or 10x. Seems like Chase is the better option for general spending then…? But you say the opposite, can you expand a bit more?
Kath Younger says
For me it says “online groceries” so I do have my Blue Apron orders on it, but for the actual grocery store I think it’s just 1x points. I don’t appear to have that 3x streaming benefit on mine. I have the Chase Freedom Flex and right now their quarterly promo is 5x on dining, so I’m using that for dining this quarter! So sure, you might tweak those categories – look up what you have and adjust as needed, but in general, I still use the Venture for “everything else” 🙂
Rebecca N says
Is there any advantage to using the capital one travel eraser versus applying points for regular statement credit from chase? For example if I spend $1,000 for food on a trip. If I charge the bills to the hotel room, I can “erase” the charges later by cashing 100,000 C1 points. Can’t I essentially do the same thing with 100,000 UR points from Chase?
Kath Younger says
Chase has had similar points erasers in the past, but they only work on certain rotating categories. For a long time it’s been charitable donation. I think they did have an Airbnb one once. If you do cash back with Chase, you’ll get much less value for your points.
FZ says
I have noticed that the Chase portal offers excellent deals on flights and car rentals, often matching Expedia’s prices. However, hotel rates tend to be 15%-30% higher.