You can really see the differences between the two when you break them down by feature. Let's dive in.
Chase Sapphire Reserve vs. Amex Platinum Card annual fee
Once upon a time, the Chase Sapphire Reserve®'s travel credit made up for most of its annual fee. That hasn't been the case in a while, however. Now, it'll cost you $550 a year. While that's still less than the $695 you'll pay for The Platinum Card® from American Express (see rates and fees), it's still a lot of value to eke out of a card with soon-to-expire statement credits.
Amex's card may cost more on paper, but it makes it much easier to get your money back through credits and perks. You don't even need to use all of the credits to come out ahead with The Platinum Card® from American Express. If you only used the streaming, hotel, airline, and Uber credits each year, you'd still wind up with $840 in value. Terms apply.
Whichever card you choose, make sure you're using those credits on organic spend (spending you'd be doing either way).
Winner: The Platinum Card® from American Express
Chase Sapphire Reserve vs. Amex Platinum Card welcome offer
Both Chase and Amex welcome bonuses can vary depending on how and when you apply. But both the standard and best-ever bonuses for The Platinum Card® from American Express are significantly better than that of its competitor.
The standard welcome offer for the Chase Sapphire Reserve® is 60,000 bonus points with $4,000 spend in the first 3 months. The best I've ever seen? Just 100,000 points.
The Platinum Card® from American Express has a typical offer of 80,000 Membership Rewards® Points points for $8,000 spend in the first 6 months. Terms apply. But the best I've seen? A whopping 150,000 points for $6,000 spend.
The only aspect that Chase wins out on is less restrictive welcome bonus rules than Amex. American Express has a "once per card per lifetime" rule on welcome bonuses, whereas Chase only makes you wait 48 months between Sapphire family welcome bonuses. However, Chase does have the 5/24 rule to keep in mind.
Winner: The Platinum Card® from American Express
Chase Sapphire Reserve vs. Amex Platinum Card intro APR
Neither card has any kind of intro APR offer, so everyone loses this category.
Winner: Nobody
Chase Sapphire Reserve vs. Amex Platinum Card rewards
Alright, so the purchase rewards category is a little harder to call, and will likely come down to whether you prefer the Chase Ultimate Rewards program or the Amex Membership Rewards program. Each has pros and cons.
As far as earnings go, however, neither is all that remarkable. The Chase Sapphire Reserve® earns:
- 10x points on Chase Dining purchases
- 10x points on hotels and car rental purchased through Chase Travel
- 5x points on flights purchase through Chase Travel
- 3x points on other travel
- 3x points on dining
- 1x point on other purchases
Your mileage will vary with your Chase Travel experience. (I'm not a fan.) If you exclude the Chase purchases, you're looking at 3x Ultimate Rewards points on travel and dining. While not bad, it's not very much more than you'd earn with the significantly less expensive Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card.
That said, The Platinum Card® from American Express isn't exactly a great card for purchase rewards, either. It earns:
- 5X points on flights booked directly with airlines or with American Express Travel, up to $500,000 on these purchases per calendar year
- 5X points on prepaid hotels booked with American Express Travel
- 1X points on other purchases
- Terms apply
So, again, a big part of the rewards come from issuer travel portal purchases. I like the Amex Travel portal better than the Chase one, personally, but I prefer to book directly, rather than use either. It's nice that I still get 5X Membership Rewards points on flights booked with the airline, and I've gotten some decent rewards from that over the years.
Winner: Chase Sapphire Reserve®