Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card review

Travel Rewards Card

Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

Top Features

• Rewards
• 2 Miles per dollar on every purchase, every day. 5 Miles per dollar on hotels, vacation rentals and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel.
• Welcome Bonus
• 75,000 Miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening
• Annual Fee
• $95

5.0

Credit Score: Excellent, Good

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ALTERNATE CARD TO CONSIDER

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card_name benefits

Do you travel frequently? The CardName is an attractive option for the serial wanderluster; that’s why it’s regularly recognized among our best credit cards for travel.

The CardName offers you:

• Earn 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within three months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel!
• 2X miles per $1 spent on every purchase, every day
• 5X miles on hotels, vacation rentals and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel
• Rewards don’t expire for the life of the account
• Enjoy the flexibility to redeem rewards to offset any eligible travel purchase
• Transfer your miles to 15+ leading travel loyalty programs

Just because the rewards are called "miles," don’t restrict your thinking to only airlines. Rewards can be redeemed for a variety of travel expenses, such as hotel accommodations, auto rentals and theme park tickets, or turned into cash and merchandise credit if you don’t intend to travel (more on that below). 

The 75,000 miles bonus offer starts things off on a nice foot, but the real star power of the Venture card is that it enables you to earn 2X the miles on every dollar spent, on every purchase, with no cap and no expiration on miles earned for the life of the account, and the redemption options are very flexible, too. This makes it one of the most compelling rewards cards on the market.

Another wildly popular personal travel rewards card– the CardName – also offers plenty of perks for cardholders, but neither of these cards has to be the only travel credit card in your wallet. It could be an excellent strategy to carry both the Chase card, so you can earn bonus points that can redeemed through Chase Travel℠ for 25% more value and the Venture card, so you have travel rewards that can be redeemed as statement credit to cover virtually any travel purchase, even those that aren’t available through Chase Travel. We compare these two cards further later in this article.

Since you’re earning two miles for every dollar you spend on the card, you’re essentially claiming a 2% rebate. That’s better than many cash-back credit cards on the market. And because you control your own travel bookings, you’re not subject to the whims of airline restrictions.

In fact, redeeming rewards with the Venture card is as simple as earning them. You can use the Capital One travel portal to make a booking or transfer your rewards to a travel partner, or, you can simply choose the "cover your travel purchases" option to get reimbursed for a recent travel purchase. This allows you more flexibility in how you travel with rewards. Plane tickets (even on lesser-known or budget airlines), cruise lines, taxi cabs, travel agents, rail lines and limousine services are just a handful of categories covered. This means you can use rewards to cover more specific things such as an Airbnb stay, or a National Park campsite booking.

And just because the Venture card is advertised as a travel card doesn’t mean you can’t redeem rewards for other things, too. Say this is your go-to card, and thanks to the welcome bonus, you end up racking up 150,000 miles your first year as a cardholder. That’s worth $1,500 in travel! Problem is though, you aren’t really planning on traveling anytime soon. Say, perhaps, you have home renovation projects you need to tend to instead. Venture miles can be great for this too thanks to the option to redeem for gift cards.

From Amazon, to Barnes & Noble to Sephora, the gift card choices are plentiful. What’s really applicable to this example though is gift cards to places like Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, West Elm, Pottery Barn and other home good stores (*gift card options subject to change). Take the Home Depot gift card, for example. At the time of this writing, 100 miles equals $.80, meaning, 150,000 bonus miles are good for $1,200 in Home Depot gift cards. That can go a long way towards updating your hall bathroom.

In short, truly one of the greatest things about the card_name is the flexibility that it offers— both in earning rewards, and redeeming them.

card_name travel benefits

Regardless of whether your travel is domestic or international, this card has you covered. Some of the top CardName travel benefits include:

• Up to $120 credit towards Global Entry or TSA PreCheck costs
• 24-hour travel assistance services
• No foreign transaction fees (See Rates and Fees)
• And more

And let’s not forget about the ability to fly any airline, stay at any hotel, anytime, as well as the ability to transfer miles to over 15 leading travel loyalty programs.

Capital One Venture travel partners

• Accor Live Limitless
• Aeromexico Club Premier
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Air France- KLM Flying Blue
• Asia Miles
• Avianca LifeMiles
• British Airways Avios
• Choice Hotels
• Emirates Skywards
• Ethiad Guest
• EVA Infinity MileageLand
• Finnair Plus
• Qantas Frequent Flyer
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
• TAP Air Portugal
• Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles
• Wyndham Rewards
• Virgin Red

card_name foreign transaction fee

Foreign transaction fees are an easy way to waste money while traveling internationally. There are two ways that travelers can get hit with these fees: a foreign transaction fee, that usually averages around 3%; and a dynamic currency conversion fee, which can range up to 7%. The foreign transaction fee is tacked onto a bill whenever a transaction is made out of the United States. Some credit card’s will charge this fee, but others, like the CardName, will not. The DCC fee is one that hits when foreign merchants offer you a conversion price so you know more about how much an item would cost if you were to buy it in the United States. This is not a free service, but for Capital One card holders, the fee is waived. With both of these fees waived for CardName cardholders, up to 10% can be saved.

In short, each time you make a purchase with your Venture card abroad, you’ll save yourself a nice chunk of change. Think of it this way: if you travel to France using a card that charges a 3% foreign transaction fee, and you spend $5,000 on your trip, you’ll tack on an additional $150 just in fees. However, if you were to travel with the CardName, that’s $150 you could save and put towards something like a nice souvenir or one last delicious Michelin-star meal.

Potential downsides of the card_name

The annual fee (annual_fees) can be a turnoff — cardholders need to be consistent travelers and card users to redeem enough miles to offset the annual fee. (See Rates and Fees)

Because this card is not a cash-back reward program, the perks lie within its travel benefits and not its cash-back features. If a cardholder redeems their miles for something other than travel perks, options and rates are subject to change without notice — meaning you may not get the same dollar-for-dollar value as with redeeming miles for travel. As you saw in the example above though, redeeming for things other than travel can pay off, but the rates just aren’t guaranteed.

How do cardholders rate the card_name?

CardRatings conducts a survey annually to learn what actual cardholders think of their cards. Here are the results for the card_name:

How the card_name compares to other cards

card_name vs. CardName

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Both cards offer travel-friendly features and the value of their bonuses is similar. To qualify for the CardName signup bonus of up to $1,050 in Chase Travel℠ value. Earn 60,000 bonus points after $4,000 in purchases in your first three months from account opening. That’s worth $750 when redeemed through Chase Travel. Plus, get up to $300 in statement credits on Chase Travel purchases within your first year.

When it comes to earning rewards, however, the structures are a bit different and if you are someone who just wants a straightforward rewards structure, the Venture card is likely better for you. With the CardName, you earn 5X points on travel purchased through Chase Travel; 3X on dining, select streaming services and online groceries; 2X on all other travel purchases; 1x on all other purchases; a $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit; plus more. That’s compared to the two miles per $1 spent on all your purchases with the Capital One card.

These cards are both travel rewards credit darlings, so if travel rewards are your goal, you might want to consider carrying both. To learn more about how they line up side-by-side, check out our in-depth Capital One Venture vs. Chase Sapphire Preferred® comparison.

card_name vs. CardName

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When you look at the all-around benefits of each card, the card_name comes out on top— but that doesn’t mean it’s best for everyone. The biggest stand out is that the CardName charges an annual fee, whereas the CardName does not. If you’re not going to spend $10,000 or more in a year, the CardName is probably not worth the annual fee.

The CardName offers unlimited 2X miles per $1 on every purchase, every day, whereas the CardName card offers 1.25X miles per $1 on every purchase, every day.

The CardName does not offer a credit for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck and it only offers 20,000 bonus miles to new cardholders who spend $500 on purchases in the first three months of account opening, compared to 75,000 bonus miles when you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening , with the annual fee version.

One thing that the CardName offers is an introductory 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for 15 months (then, RegAPR; balance transfer fee applies; See Rates and Fees), which is a nice benefit that the CardName does not offer.

Is the card_name a good card?

The CardName is a good card for general travel rewards, especially if you don’t want to worry about spending caps and categories, as it earns 2X miles on every purchase made, with no caps on the amount you can earn. Remember, though, that you want to do better than just break even on the annual fee. Since the annual fee is annual_fees and your miles can be redeemed for at least $.01 each on travel, the CardName is a good card for people who plan to spend at LEAST $5,000 each year on their card in general purchases ($5,000 x 2 miles per $1 spent = 10,000 miles). See Rates and Fees

For Capital One products listed on this page, some of the benefits may be provided by Visa® or Mastercard® and may vary by product. See the respective Guide to Benefits for details, as terms and exclusions apply.