How we actually pick your best card.

What we know about each card

For every card in our database, we track the exact rate it earns on 23 spending categories, any caps that limit the bonus (like a 6x category that stops after $6,000), merchant-specific bonuses (like 5% at Amazon), the annual fee, and the sign-up bonus.

We refresh this data every couple months from RewardsCC (a card data provider) and hand-check the top 20 cards against issuer sites when there's a major refresh.

What we do with your spending

If you shared real spend via Plaid, we take your last 12 months of transactions and bucket them into categories using the merchant category codes each bank sends. If you used the sliders, we take your inputs at face value.

For each card, we multiply your spend in every category by that card's rate for that category. If a category has a cap (say, 6x on the first $6,000 in groceries), we apply the higher rate up to the cap and the base rate above it. If a card has merchant-specific bonuses (like Apple Card's 3% at Apple), we apply those on the exact merchant spend rather than the whole category.

The output is the honest earn rate for you on that card, not the marketing rate.

How points get converted to dollars

Not all points are worth 1¢. Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, and Capital One Miles all have three redemption modes: straight cashback (1¢/point), booking through the issuer's travel portal (usually 1.25 to 1.5¢), or transferring to hotel/airline partners (often 2 to 4¢). We default to cashback because that's the most conservative estimate. You can toggle to see travel portal or transfer values.

Why we don't take affiliate money to change rankings

We earn commissions when you click Apply on a card and get approved. Those payouts vary by card, so ranking by revenue instead of by math would show you the wrong best card for your spending. We don't do that. The math is the math, and if the card that earns you the most has a bad affiliate payout, that's still the one at the top of your list.

This is also why we don't have a "sponsored" tier or paid placement. Everything is ranked by what it would earn you.