Capital One Venture X vs. Chase Sapphire Reserve vs Chase Sapphire Preferred

That’s right – it’s a three way face-off! Since the Capital One Venture X credit card launched, I’ve been asked a lot of questions that compare it to the Chase Sapphire lineup.

It’s not a super simple answer, as many of the features and benefits of each card are ones that may or may not matter to you. I personally think that the nearly unlimited Priority Pass lounge access feature of the Venture X (wherein you can get Venture X Authorized User cards for up to 4 people in your household at no cost and they can each have their own Priority Pass membership (which, unlike Amex, includes Priority Pass in-airport restaurants as well) is absolutely massive. But if you don’t care about airport lounges, then it’s pretty worthless to you.

Looking for our Venture X Business Card Review?

Comparison: Venture X, Sapphire Reserve, and Sapphire Preferred

First, let’s look at a three way comparison of pretty much every feature of the cards.

Winners By Category

Using the chart above, we easily see that there is no clear winner overall. It’s going to depend on what you value.

But look for the green checkmarks on each line to easily see which card wins feature by feature. In each section below, I’ll state how I view the winners, though you may feel differently and you’d be just as right 😉

You can also easily make the case that you could the Venture X and Chase Sapphire Preferred (for a range of benefits and transfer partners) and ditch the Reserve….

Annual Fee / Credits – Venture X: The Reserve is the clear loser here, as since they raised their annual fee to $550 and still only give a $300 travel credit, it nets to $250 that isn’t getting credited back in any way. The Preferred has a net $45 annual fee after the $50 hotel credit (and that is a bit generous since it does require booking a hotel (not any travel) using the Chase portal which means no status benefits.

Points Earning / Redemption Via Portal – Sapphire Reserve: You still earn 3X on travel and dining with the Reserve and with the travel category so inclusive, you’re earning 3X on a lot – however you get just 1X on everything else (assuming you don’t have a second card from the Chase Trifecta). The Venture X gets 2X on everything, however it has no bonus categories except for when booking travel via their own portal, and if you want to redeem in the portal you are getting just 1 cent per point compared to 1.5 with the CSR and 1.25 with the CSP.

Transfer Partners – Tie: We’ll take a look at the differences in transfer partners later on, but I’ll say that I think it’s a tie due to the variances in the programs. If I was forced to choose, I’d give a slight edge to Capital One Miles for having more useful airline partners, even if their hotel partner, Choice, isn’t nearly as valuable as Hyatt via Chase.

Airport Lounge Access – Capital One Venture X: This one’s not even close. While the Sapphire Reserve has full Priority Pass with 2 guests – including in-airport Priority Pass restaurants – an authorized user costs $75. With the Venture X, you can give your spouse a free AU card and they would get their own full Priority Pass membership.

As well, even though Chase is working on their own lounges, Capital One has already begun opening theirs to pretty solid reviews. And you get that included with Venture X.

Elite Statuses – Capital One Venture X: Neither Chase card confers any status in any program. But the Venture X credit card offers Hertz President’s Circle through December 31, 2024. This is their “Top Tier Elite” status which allows you to select any card from the Ultimate Choice lot when you book a midsize or higher car.

Travel Protections – Chase Sapphire Reserve: It covers up to $10,000 per person for trip cancellation (vs. $2,000 for Venture X), offers $100,000 in medical evacuation coverage, and provides $100 a day (up to 5 days) for lost luggage. It also provides Roadside Assistance for just $50. Sapphire Preferred has some of the same benefits, but not all, while Venture X falls short on trip cancellation and has no medical evac or lost luggage protections.

Cell Phone Protection – Capital One Venture X: Only Venture X has this benefit, defined as The benefit covers up to $800 per claim. There is a $50 deductible. You can make up to 2 claims per calendar year.

Shopping Protections – Chase Sapphire Reserve (by a nose): They are pretty close, but Sapphire Reserve has a higher limit per item on Return Protection than Venture X by $200 (Sapphire Preferred does not offer this) and the same Purchase Protection and Extended Warranty.

Extras: Chase Sapphire Reserve earns 10X on Lyft rides through March 2025 and the Chase Sapphire Preferred earns 5X on Lyft rides through March 2025. Venture X provides once per four years reimbursement of Global Entry/PreCheck. Venture X provides an annual $300 travel credit for use in their portal and 10,000 bonus miles every account anniversary (equal to $100 towards travel)

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Comparing Chase Ultimate Rewards and Capital One Miles for Airline and Hotel Transfer Partners

In this chart, you can see at a glance that they have just 5 transfer partners in common: Air Canada Aeroplan, Air France Flying Blue, British Airways Avios, Emirates Skywards, and Singapore Kris Flyer. The transfer rations for all of these are the same at 1:1.

Beyond that, it will depend on what you like to redeem for.

Hyatt is, for me, Chase’s killer (and unique) transfer partner and a main reason why I value Chase points 0.1 cent higher than Capital One Miles (1.7 cents each to 1.6 cents each). However, that’s close enough and subjective enough that I can’t call it for Chase here. Virgin Atlantic has great redemptions on Delta to Europe (excluding England) at 50k each way and of course the fabled ANA redemptions in Business and First. United is nice, but they keep devaluing their program.

Of the unique Capital One transfer partners, I would rate Turkish Miles&Smiles at the top. Especially if you don’t care about hotels that much, Capital One may actually win due to having Turkish as a transfer partner (unique to Capital One here, though its also a Citi ThankYou transfer partner, and Turkish is just about the best way to book business class to Europe (45,000 miles one way) and is the absolute best for business class award travel within North America (12,500 – 15,000 miles one way).

Capital One also has Choice Hotels, which has some stellar values in both their Preferred Hotels tie-up as well as Nordic Choice Hotels, however Citi ThankYou transfers 1:2 (yes, you get twice as many Choice as you transfer) while Capital One is 1:1.

Notably, Capital One has a few more unique partners like Wyndham (which allows booking vacation rentals for 15,000 points per bedroom, including via Vacassa), Avianca Lifemiles (great for booking Star Alliance but with some major caveats), and Qantas (they often release premium cabin seats to their own members but not to oneworld partners). They also have Etihad Guest but in most cases you are better off booking Etihad via AA or Air Canada since these partners can book mixed cabin awards on Etihad while Etihad Guest cannot.

Application Links

If reading this helped you decide on any of the three cards as your next card (and I really mean “if it helped you decide” as I’m not picking a clear winner here), you can learn how to apply via these links, which all support MilesTalk and make more long form articles like this possible:

Capital One Venture X: (Learn How to Apply)

Chase Sapphire Reserve: (Learn How to Apply)

Chase Sapphire Preferred: (Learn How to Apply)

Bottom Line

Like I said at the outset, I don’t see one absolutely clear winner here and I don’t see it as my role to push you one way or another. I do think that Venture X is extremely compelling. The full version of Priority Pass for you and authorized users with no additional annual fee is amazing for a card that has a net annual fee of around zero (after factoring in $300 in travel portal credits and the 10,000 annual Capital One miles) and the Hertz President’s Circle status has real value (I just took a Mercedes A220 for a week in Arizona while paying for a normal mid-size car). And the early spend bonus offer for 75,000 points is worth at least $1,000 if not closer to $1,500 if you transfer the points. Notably, although Capital One checks all three credit bureaus and is known to have some “interesting” approval criteria, I’m seeing lots of people get approved for Venture X that didn’t fit past traditional assumptions for Capital One approvals.

If you already have a Sapphire Reserve or Preferred, there’s really no reason to not add a Venture X, both for the bonus and the additional benefits. And you may decide to ultimately keep that Venture X and downgrade your Reserve to a Preferred.

Also, I want to point out that while a Chase Sapphire Preferred clearly did not win any of the categories above, that was to be expected with the lower annual fee. However, you might still consider the Venture X / Chase Sapphire Preferred combo. The main reason would be that, for just the extra $95 fee on Preferred, you can maintain the ability to use all of Chase’s transfer partners like Hyatt. You could, for example, use the Sapphire Preferred for dining and maybe some non-portal travel (perhaps paired with a Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited) to add in 3X on drugstores, and use the Venture X on non-bonused spend. That would enable you to build up both transferable point balances and, like airline programs, it’s always better to diversify!

Whatever you do, I’d love to hear it in the comments!

Thoughts?

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