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Best by audience

Best credit cards for the cashback

Cashback cards trade ceiling for floor. You won't extract aspirational value from them, but you also can't forget how to redeem, miss a transfer window, or watch your points get devalued. The right cashback card matches your top spending categories and has no annual fee, or a small one that you offset on category spend alone.

Top pick

From the current catalog

Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card

Capital One · no annual fee

The Savor is Capital One's no-fee dining and entertainment card, and it earns its keep at the table and the box office: 3% cash back on dining, groceries, entertainment, and streaming, 8% on tickets bought through Capital One Entertainment, and 5% on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel. Everything else earns 1%.

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What we look for

  • Earns cash (not points) so the value of your reward never moves.
  • Either flat 2%+ on everything, or category bonuses that match how you actually spend.
  • Annual fee is zero, or low enough that ~$2,000 of category spend pays for it.

What to watch for

  • Quarterly rotating categories sound great until you forget to activate. Check whether the card auto-enrolls.
  • Some 'cashback' cards pay in proprietary points redeemable for cash; redemption math may not be 1:1.

The full list

30 cards from the catalog

Ranking is formulaic, not editorial. The criteria above are the score function in plain English; you can see the exact weights in src/lib/best-topics.ts on GitHub.

Different audience?