BestCashCow routinely ranks the Sapphire Preferred Card and the Sapphire Reserve Card, personal credit cards offered by Chase, and the Ink Preferred Card, its sister for business use, among the top cards for both the value of the sign-up bonuses and the value of the points you can accumulate through spend. The personal cards come with a 50,000 sign-up bonus after hitting certain spend limits, while the Ink Preferred Card has an 80,000 point bonus after after spending $5,000 in your first 3 months. Since the Sapphire Preferred gives you 2x points on restaurants and travel (the Reserve gives 3x), and the Ink gives you 5x points at office supply stores and on telecommunications spend, the most savvy point gurus routinely advise their readers to get both (by providing their social security number as a business EIN in the Ink Plus application).

We rank the Chase points much higher than other points because Chase offers 1-to-1 transfer with more valuable travel partners than Citibank or Amex do through their comparable programs. Whereas all offer transfer to Singapore Krisflyer (which today is among the most valuable programs in the travel universe for those seeking the rewards outlined in this article), Chase also offers transfers to British Airways, United and Hyatt. You can also redeem your points directly for travel through Chase's own travel portal.

Those seasoned at accumulating Chase points often hold the Chase Freedom card and/or the Chase Freedom Unlimited Card in addition to their Sapphire and Ink cards. The Freedom card is designed as a cash back card to compete with the Citi Double Cash and the Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards cards, and offers 5x points per dollar spent on a rotating quarterly category. Ordinarily, the categories are gas and local transportation from January to March, groceries stores from April to June, and restaurants from July to September. Back in 2014 and 2015, in the fall quarter, Chase offered 10x points for spend on Amazon, and in 2016, Chase offered 10x points for spend at Costco. Since it is a cash back card, your Chase Freedom points cannot be transferred directly to Singapore, United, British or Hyatt, but if you have a Sapphire or an Ink card, you can transfer the full balance to that card and then on to your travel partner of choice.

Chase, in a further effort to compete in the cash back market, has now unveiled its Chase Freedom Unlimited card. This card gives 1.5x points on all spend. This card is also designed as a cash back card, and at 1.5% falls short of the 2% cash back you can get in the Citi Double Cash card or the 2.625% you can get if you are a Merrill Lynch account holder with the Bank of America Travel Rewards Credit Card. Yet, if you use it for your ordinary spend in conjunction with a Sapphire or Ink card, and transfer your point balance through those cards on to one of Chase's partners, you can achieve substantially more value from your ordinary spend than through any other credit cards rewards program.

Hint: Some readers are reporting that the Sapphire, Freedom and Freedom Unlimited Cards are tougher to get, and that Chase is rejecting all applicants that Equifax reports have applied for more than 5 credit cards in your last 24 months. If you are new to the credit card travel rewards game, you may want to consider applying for these three before any other cards.

A number of readers who have visited BestCashCow’s tables on the best sign up bonuses and best overall cards have written in to ask which card is better – the Chase Sapphire Preferred card or the American Express Platinum card.

The American Express Platinum card is an excellent card to consider. New card members are eligible to receive 60,000 Amex Membership Rewards points if they spend $5,000 in their first 3 months of card membership targetted offers may be higher). The Platinum card has a $550 annual fee (not waived the first year), but comes with all comes with all sorts of benefits. These include a $200 annual Uber credit, a $100 annual Saks credit, and $200 each calendar year in airline reimbusements for incidental fees (limited to a single airline that you designate). You'll also get a Global Entry credit for the primary card member and as many as three additional card members (you can add three additional card members for $150 total). In addition, you'll get access to Delta lounges and Amex’s own new Centurion lounges that are already in Hong Kong, Dallas, Las Vegas, Seattle, San Francisco, Miami and La Guardia. We find that Amex points can have a value as high as 3 cents per point, but that is only if you transfer these points to Singapore Airlines’ Krisflyer program. Those inclined to make that transfer can extract as much as $4,500 from a 150,000 point sign up bonus (see this article on great Krisflyer redemptions). Unfortunately, card members looking at other redemptions are likely to find Amex points less valuable, perhaps much less valuable.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred cardgives you 60,000 points after you spend $4,000 in the first three months of card membership. However, your usage of the card will deliver more points more quickly as the card delivers 2 points per dollar spent on restaurants and travel. The card also carries a $95 annual fee.

While the card itself gives fewer benefits that the Amex card, one important feature is that it provides primary insurance coverage on rental cars (something that no Amex card does any longer). It also has great customer service and no foreign transaction fees. However, the real shining benefit of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card when compared to the Platinum card or even to Citibank’s ThankYou cards is that Chase points offer more transfer opportunity that are more valuable than any other credit card. In addition to Singapore which is also a 1-to-1 transfer partner of Amex and Citi, Chase points can be transferred to United, Hyatt, British Airways and Amtrak at a 1-to-1 rate. The wealth of valuable transfer partners leads BestCashCow to put a value of Chase points as high as 3.4 cents per point (versus only 3 cents on Amex and Citibank points assuming they are transferred to Singapore only). In turn, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card figure prominently on point our lists of the best cards for the sign up bonus and the best cards for continual spend.

These days many flip or churn credit cards in order to get multiple sign up bonuses. Neither of these cards is particularly good for flipping. Amex’s rules prohibit card applicants from getting a sign up bonus a second time on the same product (their rules are slightly more lax for business cards). Chase now rejects all Sapphire Preferred applicants who have applied for more than 5 credit cards in the prior 24 months regardless of their credit scores. Therefore, people should view either of these credit cards as a core card to use for many years, and not one to be flipped or churned.

Ideally, we think it is best to get both cards, but if you can only get one, we think the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is the one to choose.