The Amex Platinum did the thing nobody really wanted it to do. Amex raised the annual fee from $695 to $895 and added a longer list of credits to go with it.
The right question is not "is the Platinum still worth it." The right question is "is the Platinum worth $895 to me, given how I actually live." Those are different questions, and the answer is more interesting than the take you have probably already seen.
Here is the honest version. If you want to skip ahead and check whether you have a targeted welcome offer, you can pull your personalized Amex Platinum offer and come back.
Quick Verdict
Best for: Frequent travelers who book luxury hotels at least twice a year and live in a city where Resy and Uber are part of daily life.
Standout benefit: The hotel credit, up to $300 every six months ($600 a calendar year) on prepaid Fine Hotels + Resorts or The Hotel Collection bookings through Amex Travel.
Biggest drawback: The credit structure is now so complex that maximizing it is closer to a part-time job than a benefit. Five separate calendars to track, several of them quarterly or monthly with no rollover.
Current welcome offer: As high as 175,000 Membership Rewards points after you spend $12,000 in purchases within the first 6 months. The offer is personalized, so yours may be lower or you may not be eligible for one.
What Changed in the Refresh
New credits, bigger versions of old ones, and one big fee increase. In rough order of how much they actually move the needle:
Hotel credit ($600 annually). Up to $300 from January to June and up to $300 from July to December. Must be a prepaid booking through Amex Travel using Fine Hotels + Resorts or The Hotel Collection. FHR stays come with the usual Amex perks: daily breakfast for two, a $100 credit, guaranteed 4 p.m. checkout, and noon check-in and a room upgrade when available. The Hotel Collection is the more flexible tier, two-night minimum, easier to fit into a real travel calendar.
Resy credit ($400 annually). Up to $100 a quarter at qualifying U.S. Resy restaurants, with enrollment required. If you live somewhere Resy is dense (NYC, LA, Chicago, Austin, Miami, SF, DC), this credit pays out every quarter without thought. If you live somewhere it isn't, it doesn't.
lululemon credit ($300 annually). Up to $75 quarterly on purchases at U.S. lululemon stores (not outlets) and lululemon.com, with enrollment required. The quarterly structure is the catch: unused credits expire at the end of each quarter, so this is functionally a "$75 of lululemon I have to spend by March 31, then again by June 30" benefit.
Digital entertainment credit ($300 annually). Up to $25 a month. Enrollment required. Covers services bought directly from the partners Amex lists: Disney+, ESPN streaming services, Hulu, The New York Times, Paramount+, Peacock, The Wall Street Journal and YouTube (including YouTube TV and YouTube Premium). Easy to use because most of us are already paying for at least one of these.
Uber One credit ($120 annually). Up to $120 in statement credits each calendar year on an auto-renewing Uber One membership paid with the card. Useful if you would have signed up for Uber One anyway. A small wash if you wouldn't.
Oura Ring credit ($200 annually). Up to $200 each calendar year on an Oura Ring bought at ouraring.com, with enrollment required. The Oura membership doesn't count. Niche. Real value if you want an Oura, zero value if you don't.
CLEAR Plus credit ($219 annually). Up from $199 to match CLEAR's current pricing. If you fly enough to use CLEAR, the credit fully reimburses the membership.
The fee increase, mathematically: an extra $200 a year against a much longer list of credits (if you use every dollar). That is the case Amex is making.
What This Means for the Math
The credit-stack-equals-value framing is how Amex wants you to evaluate the card. It is a useful starting point, but it has a hidden assumption: that you would have spent on every one of these categories anyway, at exactly these amounts, on this exact cadence. The right way to do the math is to count credits at their incremental value to you, not their face value.
Suppose you're one of these three typical cardholders. Here's how the math might land:
Heavy user (frequent traveler, urban diner). Hotel $600 + Resy $400 + digital $300 + Uber One $120 + CLEAR $219 + lululemon $200 (some breakage) = $1,839 in usable value against an $895 fee, comfortably ahead of it. The card pays you to keep it.
Moderate user (occasional traveler, gets to Resy a couple times a month). Hotel $400 + Resy $150 + digital $300 + Uber One $60 + CLEAR $219 = $1,129 against the $895 fee, still ahead of it. Worth keeping but no longer a slam dunk.
Light user (one or two trips a year, doesn't dine out, doesn't shop lululemon). Hotel $200 + digital $200 = $400 against the $895 fee, well short of covering it. This is not your card.
Two things to notice. First, the math works for the people the card is now built for and is openly hostile to the people it isn't. Second, the hotel credit is the largest single piece in every scenario where the card pencils out. If you can't realistically use Amex Travel's hotel inventory, the rest of the credits won't carry you. That single fact should drive your decision more than anything else in this review.
How the Refresh Compares to the Sapphire Reserve
The Chase Sapphire Reserve refreshed earlier and now sits at $795. The two cards are converging on the same premium-lifestyle positioning, but they make different bets about how cardholders use credits.
Amex Platinum: $895 fee, $600 in hotel credits restricted to Amex Travel, a $400 Resy credit and a $300 lululemon credit, $300 digital, plus Uber One and Oura. 5x on flights booked directly with airlines or through Amex Travel, 5x on prepaid hotels through Amex Travel, 1x on most other spend, Centurion lounge access.
Chase Sapphire Reserve: $795 fee, $300 flexible travel credit (any travel purchase, no portal required), Points Boost offers worth up to 2x on the hotels and flights Chase flags in Chase Travel, Priority Pass plus Chase's own lounges, 3x on dining and travel.
If your travel is structured enough to fit Amex Travel's inventory and your lifestyle includes Resy and a lululemon habit, the Platinum returns more credit value. If your travel is unpredictable or you book direct because you care about hotel loyalty status, the Sapphire Reserve's flexibility is worth the lower headline value. The Platinum demands you live a specific kind of life. The Sapphire Reserve adapts to whatever life you actually live.
That is the real distinction, and it has nothing to do with the lounges.
Who This Is Now Built For
Amex has stopped pretending the Platinum is a travel card. It is a premium-lifestyle card that includes serious travel benefits, and the difference matters. If you treat it as a travel card and try to use the credits passively, you will leave value on the table and conclude the card is overpriced. If you treat it as a lifestyle subscription with travel benefits attached, the math works.
Concretely, the Amex Platinum makes sense for:
- Travelers who book at least two luxury hotel stays a year through Amex Travel
- Urban professionals who already eat at Resy restaurants without thinking about it
- Active Membership Rewards point earners who use Amex's transfer partners
- Anyone who values Centurion lounge access
It does not make sense for:
- Travelers who care about hotel loyalty status and book direct
- Anyone who lives somewhere Resy and Uber One don't have density
- People who prefer flexible travel credits over portal-restricted ones
- Light travelers taking one or two trips a year. The Amex Gold at $325 is the better fit.
If you are in that last bucket, take a look at the Amex Gold ($325 annual fee, 4x on dining and groceries) or the Amex Business Platinum if you have legitimate business spend. Both earn the same Membership Rewards currency, the Gold at a much lower fee.
What to Actually Do
If you're paying the $895 fee, the play is straightforward: enroll in every credit you can realistically use, schedule the hotel stays before the calendar gets away from you, and decide before your next annual fee posts whether you want to renew.
A short action list:
- Enroll every credit in your Amex account. Most of them require activation. The Resy, digital entertainment, lululemon, Oura and Equinox credits all need enrollment, and the airline fee credit needs you to pick an airline. The Uber One credit needs no enrollment, just the card set as your Uber One payment method.
- Book one Amex Travel hotel stay per six-month window. Use the H1 credit by June 30, the H2 credit by December 31. Don't try to bank both for one big trip. The system resets at the calendar mid-year. The Hotel Collection is more flexible than FHR for this. FHR is the better choice when you have a luxury weekend planned anyway.
- Set up streaming on the card. Pay a service you already use, such as Hulu or YouTube TV, directly with the Platinum so the $25 monthly credit doesn't go unused.
- Use the lululemon credit on a quarterly cadence, not at year-end. Q1 ends March 31, Q2 ends June 30, Q3 ends September 30, Q4 ends December 31. The "We Made Too Much" sale section is the budget-friendly way to consume $75 a quarter without overpaying.
- Track the Resy credit quarterly. Up to $100 a quarter, no rollover. One nice dinner a quarter covers it. Skip a quarter and that $100 is gone.
If, before your next renewal, the credits you have actually used fall well short of the fee, downgrade to the Amex Gold or product change to a no-fee Amex card. Don't cancel. Keep the account history.
If you don't have the card yet and the math above looks like your life, the welcome offer is the cleanest way in. Amex tells you your exact offer, if any, after you apply and before you accept the card.
What We'd Like to See Amex Fix
The card has real gaps. The earning structure has not kept up with the fee. The Platinum earns 1x on most purchases outside flights and prepaid hotels, so most of its value sits in the credits and lounge access. There is no obvious reason an $895 card should earn 1x on groceries when the $325 Gold earns 4x.
The quarterly credit structure also creates predictable breakage. The lululemon credit at $75 a quarter assumes you will shop there every quarter at exactly the right amount. Credits you don't use are worth nothing.
A flexible travel credit (Sapphire Reserve-style) would close the gap for people who don't fit the Amex Travel mold, and a single annual credit cadence rather than five different calendars would make the card meaningfully easier to live with. Neither is in the refresh. Maybe next time.
Bottom Line
The refreshed Platinum is worth $895 if you are the person it is built for, and it is a stretch at any price if you are not. The card has graduated from "aspirational travel card" to "premium-lifestyle membership with travel benefits." That repositioning is sharper and more honest than the marketing acknowledges, and it is the actual decision framework cardholders should use.
If you travel frequently, dine at Resy restaurants without thinking about it, and want broad lounge access, apply and see what Amex offers you. A welcome offer near the top of Amex's range (as high as 175,000 points after $12,000 in purchases in 6 months) makes the first year much easier to justify, but the offer is personalized and yours may be lower. If you don't, the Sapphire Reserve, the Amex Gold, or the Amex Business Platinum are all better fits for a different traveler.
Either way, the Platinum is a card that demands an answer to one question: are you the kind of person who lives the life this card is priced for? If the answer is yes, it can earn its fee. If the answer is no, the math will not save you.
Updated October 9, 2026: the Sapphire Reserve's Chase Travel uplift, which Chase replaced with Points Boost in June 2025, read from Chase's Points Boost page that day. Earlier: October 4, 2026, Amex Platinum.
