Amex Green vs. Chase Sapphire Preferred: Which Mid-Tier Travel Card Wins in 2026?

Key Points

  • The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the stronger default pick at this fee tier with a $95 annual fee, a 60,000-point welcome bonus, and the most valuable hotel transfer in the points game (World of Hyatt at 1:1).
  • The Amex Green Card costs $189 annually but offsets the entire fee with a $189 CLEAR Plus credit and a $100 LoungeBuddy credit, which makes it effectively cheaper than the Sapphire Preferred for travelers who actually use both.
  • Pick the Sapphire Preferred if you want a single travel card you do not have to manage and a Hyatt-friendly transfer chart. Pick the Amex Green if you fly enough to value CLEAR and want lounge access through LoungeBuddy without paying for a premium card.

TL;DR

Sapphire Preferred is the simpler, cheaper card in raw dollars. Amex Green is cheaper after credits if you use CLEAR. Most travelers should buy the Sapphire Preferred.

Introduction

The Chase Sapphire Preferred and the American Express Green Card sit in the same shelf at the credit-card store, but they are built for different travelers. The Sapphire Preferred is the no-management mid-tier pick. The Amex Green is the credit-stack mid-tier pick. The annual fees suggest the Sapphire Preferred is cheaper, and on paper it is, but the Green's credit structure flips that result for the right user. The rest of this review is the math.

Both cards earn flexible transferable points (Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards), both run welcome bonuses worth $750 or more in transferred value, and both deliver a meaningful slice of travel-insurance benefits. They are not the same product. Sapphire Preferred earns broadly through Chase Travel and dining and pairs cleanly with the Hyatt transfer. Amex Green earns flat on travel and dining and asks you to use coupon-style credits to make the math work. Pick the framing that fits how you live.

The Headline Math

This is where the comparison gets decided, so it goes first.

Chase Sapphire Preferred. $95 annual fee. The card includes a $50 annual hotel statement credit on stays booked through Chase Travel, plus a 10 percent points bonus on each cardmember anniversary based on your prior-year spend (one point per dollar of total purchases, paid as a bonus). For a cardholder spending $25,000 a year on the card, that anniversary bonus alone clears $250 of points value, which is more than twice the fee. Use the $50 hotel credit on a single Chase Travel booking and the card pays for itself before the points stack ever lands. Net cost in the first year: positive value for almost any active user.

American Express Green Card. $189 annual fee. The card carries two real credits: a $189 CLEAR Plus statement credit (which fully offsets the annual fee for any cardholder enrolled in CLEAR) and a $100 LoungeBuddy statement credit usable at participating airport lounges with no membership required. If you use both, your $189 fee is covered with $100 of lounge access remaining, which makes the Green a net-negative card to carry. If you use neither, you are paying $189 for travel and dining multipliers you can get for $95 elsewhere.

Two takeaways. First, the Sapphire Preferred is the easier card to keep year over year because the math works without effort. The $50 hotel credit applies the moment you book through Chase Travel, and the anniversary bonus arrives automatically. Second, the Amex Green can be cheaper than the Sapphire Preferred in net terms if you are the right person. CLEAR is the dividing line. If you already pay $189 a year for CLEAR Plus, the Green covers it for free and the rest of the card is upside.

Earning Structure

Two different philosophies, and you should know which one fits how you spend.

Sapphire Preferred earns category-heavy. 5x points on travel booked through Chase Travel, 3x on dining (including takeout and eligible delivery services), 3x on online grocery purchases (excluding Walmart, Target, and warehouse clubs), 3x on select streaming services, and 2x on all other travel purchases. Everything else earns 1x. The 5x rate on Chase Travel is the headline, and it stacks well with the $50 hotel credit. The 3x dining category covers a lot of real spend.

Amex Green earns flat. 3x Membership Rewards points on travel (flights, hotels, vacation packages, car rentals, cruises, transit, and rideshare) and 3x on restaurants worldwide. Everything else earns 1x. There is no 5x portal category, and there is no grocery or streaming bonus. The travel category is broader than the Sapphire Preferred's, which catches things like subway fare and rideshare that do not always code as travel on Chase. For someone whose travel spending skews heavily toward transit and rideshare rather than booking sites, the Green's 3x flat structure earns more on those purchases than the Sapphire Preferred's 2x non-portal travel rate.

A simple rule of thumb. If you book most travel through Chase Travel and you eat out regularly, the Sapphire Preferred earns more total points. If your travel spend is heavy on transit, rideshare, and direct-with-airline bookings, the Green's flat 3x catches more of that. The dining categories are functionally tied (both 3x), so the deciding factor is non-restaurant spend.

Transfer Partners

Both cards plug into proprietary transferable-points programs. Both have international airline partners. The breadth differs, and so do the headliners.

Chase Ultimate Rewards transfers to 14 partners at 1:1: Aer Lingus AerClub, Air Canada Aeroplan, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, British Airways Avios, Emirates Skywards, Iberia Plus, JetBlue TrueBlue, Singapore KrisFlyer, Southwest Rapid Rewards, United MileagePlus, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, and World of Hyatt. Hyatt is the marquee partner. A standard category one Hyatt room runs 3,500 points per night, which means a 60,000-point welcome bonus covers up to 17 nights at a category-one Hyatt or 12 nights at a category three. There is no other 1:1 hotel transfer in the points game with redemption value this strong.

Amex Membership Rewards transfers to 21 partners, mostly at 1:1, with a few at 1:0.8 (Marriott Bonvoy) or 5:4 (Virgin Atlantic in some windows). The headliners that the Sapphire Preferred cannot match: ANA Mileage Club at 1:1 (a Star Alliance powerhouse for cheap business-class redemptions to Asia), Delta SkyMiles at 1:1 (the only flexible-points way into Delta), Avianca LifeMiles, and Cathay Pacific Asia Miles. The list also includes most of the airline partners Chase has, sometimes with the same ratio.

Hyatt is the dividing line. If you book Hyatt regularly, or you want the option to (a Park Hyatt aspirational redemption is genuinely worth the membership), the Sapphire Preferred's transfer chart is materially more useful. If you fly Delta, fly Star Alliance carriers regularly, or value transfer breadth over hotel redemptions, the Amex Membership Rewards chart is broader. For a deep dive into the head-to-head currency comparison, see our Amex Membership Rewards vs. Chase Ultimate Rewards breakdown.

Bundled Benefits Worth Naming

This is the place where the Green's credit-stack approach gets interesting.

Chase Sapphire Preferred benefits.

  • $50 annual statement credit for hotels booked through Chase Travel.
  • Primary rental car coverage (collision damage waiver) when you decline the rental company's coverage and pay with the card.
  • Trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance up to $10,000 per person.
  • Trip delay reimbursement up to $500 per ticket after a covered delay of 12 hours or more.
  • Baggage delay reimbursement up to $100 per day.
  • Purchase protection on new purchases against damage or theft for 120 days.
  • No foreign transaction fees.
  • 10 percent anniversary points bonus.

Amex Green Card benefits.

  • $189 CLEAR Plus statement credit (annual).
  • $100 LoungeBuddy statement credit (annual).
  • Trip delay insurance after a covered delay of more than 12 hours.
  • Baggage insurance up to $1,250 for carry-on and $500 for checked baggage.
  • Secondary rental car loss and damage coverage when you pay with the card.
  • Global Assist Hotline for emergency assistance abroad.
  • No foreign transaction fees.

The credit math is the entire point of the Green Card. Without using the CLEAR credit, the Green is hard to justify against the Sapphire Preferred. With it, the Green's net cost drops below the Sapphire Preferred's gross cost. The rental car insurance is worth flagging: the Sapphire Preferred provides primary coverage, which means it pays before your personal auto insurance. The Green's coverage is secondary, which is meaningfully less useful if you actually need to file a claim.

Welcome Bonuses

Both cards run aggressive welcome offers. Confirm the active offer on each issuer's application page before you apply, since these numbers move.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred has consistently run 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points after $4,000 in spend in the first three months in recent windows. Transferred to Hyatt, that is roughly 17 nights at a category one property, or one premium long-haul flight in business class on partner airlines like Air France or Virgin Atlantic. Realized value lands between $750 and $1,500 depending on how you redeem.

The Amex Green Card welcome bonus has typically been 40,000 Membership Rewards points after $3,000 in spend in the first six months, with occasionally higher public offers showing up in some windows. Transferred to ANA or Avianca LifeMiles, that is enough for a one-way economy ticket to Europe or a substantial chunk of a business-class redemption with stacking. Realized value lands closer to $500 to $800.

The Sapphire Preferred has the better welcome bonus by a meaningful margin in normal windows. If welcome-bonus value is your primary decision factor, the Sapphire Preferred wins.

How They Compare to a Few Alternatives

Worth naming the cards that sit on either side of these two so the framing is clear.

Capital One Venture Rewards. $95 fee, 2x miles flat on everything, simpler than either card here. Outclassed by the Sapphire Preferred for users who value 5x portal earning or Hyatt transfers, and outclassed by the Amex Green for users who already pay for CLEAR.

Amex Gold Card. $325 fee, 4x at U.S. supermarkets (capped at $25,000 per year), 4x at restaurants, and dining and grocery credits. The right pick for a household with serious supermarket and restaurant spend, but the dining-and-grocery focus puts it in a different category than the travel-focused Green.

Chase Sapphire Reserve. $795 fee (after the 2025 refresh), with broader lounge access and a higher portal multiplier. The premium-tier upgrade from the Sapphire Preferred for travelers who value Priority Pass and the growing Chase Sapphire Lounge network.

For travelers comparing two-card setups rather than single-card choices, the Chase vs. Amex points for European summer travel analysis is a useful companion read.

Pros and Cons

Chase Sapphire Preferred.

  • Pros: $95 fee that lands well below the Green. The $50 hotel credit through Chase Travel covers more than half the fee on a single booking. World of Hyatt transfer at 1:1 is the most valuable hotel partner in the points game. Primary rental car coverage. 60,000-point welcome bonus is the largest available in the mid-tier.
  • Cons: 1x on non-portal, non-dining, non-grocery, non-streaming spend, which is most everyday purchases. No CLEAR credit. No lounge access of any kind. Chase 5/24 rule applies, which can block applicants who have opened too many cards in the past 24 months.

American Express Green Card.

  • Pros: $189 CLEAR Plus credit fully offsets the annual fee for any CLEAR member. $100 LoungeBuddy credit adds airport lounge access without a membership. 3x flat on travel covers transit, rideshare, and direct-with-airline bookings that the Sapphire Preferred catches at only 2x. Membership Rewards transfer chart is broader, including ANA, Delta, and Avianca LifeMiles.
  • Cons: $189 fee feels expensive against the Sapphire Preferred unless you use the CLEAR credit. Smaller welcome bonus (40,000 vs 60,000). No 5x portal category. Secondary rental car coverage rather than primary. No grocery or streaming bonuses. LoungeBuddy availability is limited to participating lounges and not a true Priority Pass replacement.

Who Should Get Each Card

Chase Sapphire Preferred is the right card if:

  • You want a single travel card you do not have to manage.
  • You book travel through Chase Travel or want the option to.
  • World of Hyatt is in your hotel rotation, or you want a path toward it.
  • You rent cars regularly and want primary rental coverage.
  • You are not already paying for CLEAR.
  • You are under 5/24 with Chase.

Amex Green Card is the right card if:

  • You already pay $189 a year for CLEAR Plus.
  • Your travel spending leans toward transit, rideshare, and direct airline bookings rather than portal purchases.
  • You want LoungeBuddy access without a premium-card fee.
  • You value transfer breadth, especially the ANA, Delta, and Avianca partners that Chase does not offer.
  • You are already past 5/24 and cannot get approved for new Chase cards.

A note for travelers stuck between them. There is no rule against holding both. The combined annual fees are $284 before credits and $95 after the CLEAR credit, which is the price of two flexible-points engines feeding two different transfer charts.

The Bottom Line

Most travelers should buy the Chase Sapphire Preferred. The fee is the lowest of any travel card with serious transfer value. The Hyatt transfer is genuinely best-in-class. The 60,000-point welcome bonus is the largest in the mid-tier. The card does not require credit-stack management, the math just works.

A specific subset of travelers should buy the Amex Green Card. If you already pay for CLEAR Plus, the Green covers the membership for free and gives you 3x flat on travel and a $100 lounge credit on top. The card pays you back in the form of pre-existing CLEAR spend you were going to make anyway. That math does not work for everyone, but when it works, it works decisively.

Both cards are solid picks. The decision is about how you travel, not which product is better in the abstract. Run your own credits-and-spend math, pick the one that lands on the better net number, and apply through the Sapphire Preferred application page or directly with Amex. If the points game is new to you, our Chase Sapphire Preferred 2026 review goes deeper on that single card.

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