Should You Cancel Your Sapphire Reserve?
Tl;dr: Despite losing some value in October, Chase points will remain competitive. If the credits outweigh the fee—or you snag a retention offer—it might still be worth keeping.
For years, a major benefit of the Chase Sapphire Reserve was its 50% bonus when redeeming Ultimate Rewards through Chase Travel. It meant that your points were worth 1.5¢ each that way, a solid value that didn’t require points transfers, hunting for a good points deal, or point value calculations. But that benefit is going away thanks to the card’s recent refresh.
If you were an existing cardholder, any points earned prior to October 26 of this year can be redeemed at either the old rate or the new rate, whichever is higher, until October of 2027. But all your new points after that will be worth only 1¢ per point, unless a limited ‘points boost’ applies, usually on premium airfare or hotels. With that guaranteed 1.5¢ value gone, is the card still worth it? If not, what’s the best alternative?
Let’s break it down.
Is the card still worth it?
Annual fee
Previously, the card carried a $550 annual fee, but offered a $300 statement credit toward travel each year, meaning almost anyone who held the card was paying roughly $250 each year to do so.
Now, the fee is $795, but there’s over $2,500 in potential credits. To determine whether you’re coming out ahead, look at the benefits below and consider how much real value you could get from them:
$300 travel credit
$120 in Lyft credits ($10/month)
$300 StubHub credits ($150 twice/yr)
$300 dining credit at Chase’s premium restaurant network ($150 twice/yr)
$250 Apple TV+ & Apple Music subscriptions
$120 DashPass membership
$300 DoorDash promos
$120 Peloton credits
$100 Global Entry / TSA PreCheck / NEXUS (every 4 yrs)
Lounge access (Sapphire Lounges, Priority Pass, select Maple Leaf lounges & Air Canada Cafes)
Big spenders ($75k/yr) also unlock:
$500 Southwest Airlines credit
$250 “Shops at Chase” credit
Southwest A-List status
IHG Diamond Elite
All that is worth about $800 to me, albeit with a migraine from keeping track of it. The mishmash of credits is designed for breakage. But with the right spending habits and Excel spreadsheets, you could get a lot of value. Even at $600 in value, though, you’re not necessarily worse off than the old $250 net cost. The annual fee just comes in as a bigger hit all at once, and earning it back is a bigger pain. Laziness rating: poor.
Point values
Sure, your post-October points won’t be worth a minimum of 1.5¢ in the portal anymore, but if that’s prompting you to consider cancelling the card, you might want to think again, for a few reasons.
First, losing the bonus on portal redemption just puts it in line with its main competitors. Capital One miles, Citi Thank You points, and Amex Membership Rewards are all worth only 1¢ each in those banks’ portals—or less, in the case of Amex’s non-flight redemptions. Only Bilt still has an elevated redemption rate: 1.25¢ per point through the Bilt portal.
Second, you can still get extra value. Chase points are worth up to 2¢ per point for Sapphire Reserve cardholders in the Chase Travel portal. That beats the competition. The catch: it’s limited to select (often fancy) redemptions.
Third, both before and after the change, the best way to redeem Chase points is generally with transfer partners, whether by transferring to Hyatt, redeeming for long haul economy flights with United, booking business class seats with Air Canada, or hunting for bargains with partners like Avianca or British Airways.
In my book, Chase points aren’t really less valuable—they just require more effort to use well.
I don’t think it’s worth it. What should I do?
Ask for a retention offer.
If you don’t think the card is worth keeping, you can cancel or downgrade it. But first consider whether Chase could make you an offer that might make you change your mind. Ask Chase if they’ll give you a retention offer—bonus points or a fee reduction in exchange for more spend. Even if the new points are slightly less valuable than the old ones, that could be more than offset by the value of a good offer. And if you don’t get a good enough offer, you can just go forward with a downgrade or cancellation.
Make a plan for your points.
If you do decide to cancel your Sapphire Reserve, you’ll need to do something with all the points you have in the bank.
You can keep them with Chase by downgrading the Sapphire Reserve. If you downgrade to the Sapphire Preferred, you keep using all the same transfer partners and the Chase Travel portal. With a $95 fee and only a $50 hotel credit to offset it, I’m not a fan, but that’s a fairly low-cost option to use your points with partners like Hyatt and United over time.
Alternatively, you could downgrade to a no-fee card like the Freedom Unlimited or Freedom Flex. You would keep the points, but they would only be worth 1¢ each as cash back. But these are useful cards (the Flex’s 5% cash back in rotating categories is particularly valuable as a wallet option), and this would allow you to burn your points down over time with no annual fees. (You could also apply for a Sapphire Preferred later to regain access to transfer partners and potentially collect another sign up bonus.)
If you want to leave the Chase ecosystem altogether, you’ll need to do something with your points, as you’ll lose them once your account closes. If you have enough spending on the card, you could redeem points for statement credits at 1¢ per point. You could also transfer the points to Chase’s transfer partners. This is a bit of a gamble, as you’d be locking your points into whatever program(s) you chose, risking devaluations.
If they were my points, I would send them to Hyatt–they are easy to redeem, the values are good, and devaluations have historically been fairly slow and mild. Just remember that they will expire after 24 months of account inactivity. United miles never expire, but the value is weaker and devaluations come often. Although many of Chase’s other partners have use cases, there isn’t any other partner I would consider unless I had a specific redemption in mind or I was a loyalist with that program.
What should I get instead?
If you want to replicate the “old” CSR: Get a Bilt Mastercard (referral link) and a Capital One Venture X. The Sapphire Reserve used to have a consistent portal bonus, premium protections, lounge access, and easy redemptions. The Venture X can get you the premium protections and lounge access, all for no net fee, while providing better everyday value than the Sapphire Reserve—the CSR earned 1 point per base dollar, redeemable for 1.5¢ in the Chase Travel portal, while the Venture X earns 2 points per base dollar, redeemable for 1¢ each on any travel purchase. The Bilt, meanwhile, earns 3x on dining and 2x on most travel (compared to 3x on all travel on the old CSR), but has Chase’s best transfer partners (Hyatt, United, Air Canada), plus more and better partners (Alaska, JAL, Accor, among others), and a guaranteed redemption rate of 1.25¢ per point in the portal.
If you want a single card: get a Citi Strata Elite or the Alaska Atmos Summit. The Citi Strata Elite offers the premium features of the CSR but with lower fee and simpler credit structure. Citi points are also more valuable than Chase’s, in my opinion, thanks to Citi’s partnerships with American Airlines and Choice Hotels—and Citi’s bonus categories means you’ll probably earn more points too. The Atmos Summit, meanwhile, is a great single-system card, especially if you can spend $60,000 on the card, unlocking Atmos Gold elite status and a 100k companion award discount—basically a built-in welcome bonus each year if you can hit that spend.
If you want to maximize value. Mix and match the best cards and time your sign-ups for maximum rewards.
Lazy Take 🦥
In my opinion, Chase points are still valuable, but now trail Bilt, Citi, and even Atmos in value—both before and after the CSR loses its portal bonus in October. But losing such a high baseline value on points hurts, especially for those averse to more complicated redemptions with transfer partners.
If you decide it’s time to move on from the Sapphire Reserve, you can preserve your points with a lower-tier Chase card, redeem them for statement credits, or transfer them out to partners like Hyatt. For a replacement, I think my favorite card combo comes pretty close to recreating the old Sapphire Reserve’s magic, while the Citi Strata Elite and Atmos Summit might be great one-card solutions for the right person.
If you want to shop around for a while before committing to a new card, sign up for LazyPoints Weekly for the latest cards and points news and offers.