If you canceled the Chase Sapphire Reserve when it hit $795 a year, the card Chase wants you to land on just added 3x on gas and doubled its hotel credit. The annual fee stayed at $95. The current sign-up bonus is 100,000 points, which has only happened twice before in the card’s 17-year run.
Chase announced the Sapphire Preferred refresh on June 15. It looked routine on paper. Same $95 fee, a few new earning categories, a bumped credit. Read the fine print and there’s more to it.
Preferred now earns 3x points on gas and EV charging, 3x on vacation homes at Airbnb, Vrbo, and the rest of the aggregator crowd, and the annual Chase Travel hotel credit doubled to $100. Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, or NEXUS reimbursement up to $120 every four years got added too. So did a one-year complimentary Apple TV subscription for anyone activating by December 31, and emergency evacuation coverage up to $100,000.
Then the sign-up bonus. On July 9, Chase brought back a 100,000-point welcome offer at $5,000 in spend over three months. Per Upgraded Points, that’s only the third time in the card’s history. The last two windows, in 2021 and 2025, closed inside months.
The context matters. Chase already lifted the Sapphire Reserve to $795 this year, roughly a 45% jump. It nerfed the Hyatt transfer ratio from 1:1 to 4:3 in April, which stung anyone parked in Ultimate Rewards for cheap hotel redemptions. Then it loaded up the Preferred. The read for anyone paying attention: the Reserve became a high-end product for a smaller crowd, and the Preferred is where Chase wants regular travelers to sit.
The math on the $95 fee is easier now than it was a month ago. The doubled hotel credit alone covers it. Add 3x gas on a household running $2,400 a year at the pump and that’s another 4,800 points a year that used to be 2,400. The Global Entry credit takes another $30 off the average annual math when you amortize it across four years.
The 100,000-point bonus is where the real number lives. At Chase’s roughly 2-cent-per-point valuation for portal redemptions, that’s about $2,000 of travel. Transferred to United, Southwest, or Hyatt (Hyatt at the worse 4:3 ratio now) it can still hit close to that on the right redemption. The $5,000 spend requirement is the qualifying condition, not the goal. If you were already going to charge it to something, this is real money.
Check where you sit on Chase’s 5/24 rule before you apply. If you have opened five personal credit cards from any issuer in the past 24 months, this bonus is out of reach. If not, apply while the offer is live. Historical windows on this card close in months, not years.
If you already carry the Preferred, use the new categories starting now. The 3x on gas and EV charging is uncapped. The doubled hotel credit resets on the card’s anniversary date.
If you canceled the Reserve, this is the natural landing spot. Same Ultimate Rewards points, one-tenth the fee.
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