The Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Amex Blue Cash Preferred both charge $95 a year, and almost nothing else about them is comparable. One earns points that transfer to airlines and hotels. The other earns cash back at the supermarket, capped.
That is the whole decision, and it turns on a single question: do you want a currency you have to redeem well, or a rebate you never have to think about?
What Each Card Charges and Pays
Both fees come from the issuers' own pages.
The Sapphire Preferred charges $95 a year and is currently advertising 75,000 points after $5,000 in purchases in the first three months.
The Blue Cash Preferred charges "$0 intro annual fee for the first year, then $95." The first year is free; the steady state matches Chase.
Earning, Side by Side
Sapphire Preferred, as Chase states it: 5x on Chase Travel, 3x on dining, 3x on gas stations, EV charging and vacation homes at top brands, 3x on top streaming services and online grocery with exclusions, 2x on all other travel, and 1x on everything else.
Blue Cash Preferred, as Amex states it: 6% at U.S. supermarkets on up to $6,000 per year in purchases, then 1%; 6% on select U.S. streaming subscriptions; 3% on transit, which Amex defines as "taxis, rideshare, parking, tolls, trains, buses, and more"; 3% at U.S. gas stations; and 1% on other eligible purchases.
Read those lists next to each other and the shape is obvious. The Amex pays its best rate on the thing households buy every week. The Chase pays its best rates on travel, and travel is lumpy.
The Cap Is the Amex's Defining Feature
$6,000 a year at U.S. supermarkets is $500 a month. Past that, groceries drop from 6% to 1%.
For a household spending $500 a month on groceries, the cap is invisible and the category is worth $360 a year. For a household spending $900 a month, the first $6,000 earns $360 and the remaining $4,800 earns $48. The effective rate on the year's grocery spend is 3.4%, not 6%.
That is not a criticism, it is arithmetic, and it is the first number to run before choosing this card. Amex publishes the cap plainly; the mistake is reading the headline and not the cap.
One more definition worth internalizing. U.S. supermarkets is not "groceries." Warehouse clubs and superstores do not code as supermarkets at Amex, so Costco, Walmart and Target purchases generally earn 1%, not 6%.
The Sapphire's Value Is Not on the Card
Chase's rates are the smaller half of the case. Ultimate Rewards transfer to airline and hotel partners at 1:1, and a transferred point is routinely worth more than a cent.
That is where the comparison stops being a rate contest. Six percent cash back is exactly six cents on the dollar, permanently, with no work. Three points per dollar on dining is worth three cents at the portal floor and materially more through a good transfer, but only if you actually make the transfer. Our guide to Chase transfer partners covers which of them are worth using.
If you will not do that, the Sapphire's points are worth about a cent each and the Amex wins on almost every category you spend in.
The Credits Each One Ships With
Chase gives the Sapphire Preferred a $100 Chase Travel hotel credit, described as "up to $100 in statement credits each account anniversary year for hotel stays purchased through Chase Travel." Used in full, that takes the effective fee to a shade under nothing.
It is a conditional credit. It requires booking a hotel through Chase's portal, which is a real constraint if you book direct for elite credit. Our statement credits guide makes the general point: value a credit at what you would have spent anyway, not at its face.
Amex's Blue Cash Preferred credits are smaller and more specific, including a Disney streaming credit. Amex lists thirteen benefits on the card; none of them is a travel credit.
Two Households, Run Properly
Numbers make this concrete. Both households spend the same $34,000 a year on the card; only the mix differs.
Household A: groceries and commuting. $500 a month at a real supermarket, $250 a month on gas, $150 a month on transit, $400 a month on dining, $300 a month on travel, the rest general.
On the Blue Cash Preferred: $6,000 of groceries at 6% is $360, $3,000 of gas at 3% is $90, and $1,800 of transit at 3% is $54. Everything else earns 1%, roughly $232 on the remaining $23,200.
Call it $736 in Reward Dollars, less the $95 fee, for a net around $641 in the steady-state year.
On the Sapphire Preferred: $4,800 of dining at 3x is 14,400 points. $3,600 of travel at 2x is 7,200. $3,000 of gas at 3x is 9,000. The rest at 1x is about 22,600. Call it 53,200 points. At a cent each that is $532; at 1.8 cents through a transfer partner it is $958. Add the $100 hotel credit if used, subtract $95.
The Amex wins outright unless the Chase points get transferred well. That is the pattern, not a coincidence.
Household B: dining and travel. $250 a month at supermarkets, $900 a month on dining, $1,000 a month on travel, the rest general.
On the Blue Cash Preferred: $3,000 of groceries at 6% is $180, and everything else is 1%. The card's best category is half-used and its second-best is not in this budget at all.
On the Sapphire Preferred: $10,800 of dining at 3x, $12,000 of travel at 2x or 5x depending on how it is booked. The gap is not close, and it widens every time a point is transferred rather than cashed out.
The lesson from both: the winner is decided by which of your categories is largest, and the cap decides how much of it counts.
What Each One Does Not Do
The Blue Cash Preferred does not earn transferable currency. Amex states plainly that "cash back is received in the form of Reward Dollars that can be redeemed as a statement credit." Reward Dollars are not Membership Rewards points. They do not move to an airline, and holding an Amex Platinum alongside does not change that.
The Sapphire Preferred has no supermarket rate. Chase lists 3x on "top streaming services and online grocery, exclusions apply." Online grocery is not the same as walking into a supermarket, and Chase says exclusions apply without publishing them on that page.
Neither card has lounge access, and neither has a checked-bag benefit. These are $95 cards. The Sapphire's travel value is redemption, not airport experience, and Chase Ultimate Rewards is where that redemption happens.
Which One, For Whom
Take the Blue Cash Preferred if your grocery spending is at or under $500 a month at actual supermarkets, you want the rebate to arrive without a decision, and you do not intend to learn transfer partners. The first year is free, which makes the trial cheap.
Take the Sapphire Preferred if you will transfer points at least once a year, you book travel often enough to use a $100 hotel credit, and dining is a real category in your budget. Its case rests on the redemption, not the earn rate, and our Sapphire Preferred review works through the fee math.
Take both if the household grocery bill and the travel budget are both real. They barely overlap: groceries and transit on the Amex, travel and dining on the Chase. Two $95 fees against two non-competing category sets is a defensible wallet, and our travel card annual fee framework is how to decide whether it is defensible for you.
The First Year Is Not the Steady State
Amex waives the Blue Cash Preferred's fee for the first year. Chase does not waive the Sapphire Preferred's.
That makes a first-year comparison misleading in the Amex's favor by exactly $95, and it makes the Amex a genuinely cheap way to test whether your grocery spending is where you think it is. Twelve months of statements will tell you whether you actually cleared the $6,000 cap, and whether the store you shop at codes as a supermarket.
Chase's offer runs the other way. The 75,000-point bonus is front-loaded and the fee is not, so the Sapphire Preferred's first year is its best year and every year after it has to stand on the $100 credit and the transfers.
Judge both on year two. Year one is a promotion on one card and a waiver on the other, and neither is the card you will be holding in 2028.
The Honest Tiebreaker
If you are not sure, the question is not which card earns more. It is whether you will ever log in and move points to an airline.
People who will do that should hold the Chase Sapphire Preferred, because that single act is where its advantage lives. People who know they will not should hold the Blue Cash Preferred and spend the saved effort somewhere else. A 6% rebate you collect beats a 2-cent redemption you never make.
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Sources
- Chase — Sapphire Preferred product page, stating the $95 annual fee, the 75,000-point offer after $5,000 in three months, the 5x/3x/2x/1x earning structure and the $100 Chase Travel hotel credit each account anniversary year
- American Express — Blue Cash Preferred product page, stating "$0 intro annual fee for the first year, then $95", 6% at U.S. supermarkets on up to $6,000 per year then 1%, 6% on select U.S. streaming, 3% on transit and U.S. gas stations, and that cash back arrives as Reward Dollars redeemable as a statement credit
- Chase — Ultimate Rewards, for the redemption and transfer mechanics the Sapphire Preferred's case rests on
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