The headline numbers
Premium travel cards got dramatically more expensive over the past year:
- Chase Sapphire Reserve: now $795/year, paired with an 8x rate on Chase Travel bookings and a deeper stack of partner credits (what the $700 gap over the Preferred buys; whether it pays for itself against a free 2% card)
- Amex Platinum: now $895/year for renewals on or after January 2, 2026, with a refreshed credit lineup (is the Platinum worth it at that price?)
- United Explorer: raised from $95 to $150/year
- Amex Gold: $325/year following its earlier increase (is the Gold worth it?)
- IHG One Rewards Premier: raised from $99 to $150/year for new applicants in October 2026
Issuers are betting that bigger credit bundles justify bigger fees. Sometimes they’re right — but only for spending patterns that actually use those credits.
Sticker price vs. effective fee
The number that matters is the effective annual fee: sticker price minus the credits you would have spent money on anyway.
Take the Sapphire Reserve at $795. The $300 travel credit is nearly automatic for anyone who travels at all, bringing the practical cost to ~$495 before considering the other credits (about $465 once the Global Entry credit is counted, which is the figure the optimizer uses). If you’d genuinely use the dining and entertainment credits, the effective fee keeps falling. If you wouldn’t, you’re paying $795 for earn rates you can approximate with a $95 card.
That conditional — would you have bought it anyway? — is exactly where most people fool themselves. A $300 StubHub credit is worth $0 if you don’t go to events.
How to decide
- List the credits you’d use at face value. Be honest: only count things you bought last year too.
- Subtract from the sticker fee. That’s your effective fee.
- Compare the earn-rate gain against the next-best cheaper card. The Reserve’s 3x dining only beats the Preferred’s 3x dining by $0. The premium is in travel rates and credits.
Or skip the spreadsheet: the optimizer does this arithmetic across every card simultaneously, using conservative credit valuations you can customize. When a $795 card genuinely beats a $95 card for your spending, the solver will show the margin — and when it doesn’t, it won’t.
The bottom line
Fee increases aren’t automatically bad news, but they reset the math for everyone. A setup that fit the 2024 inputs may no longer fit today’s inputs. If you’re holding a premium card out of habit, this is a good time to re-run the numbers.
Updated October 10, 2026: added the IHG One Rewards Premier's October 2026 fee increase to the list, and noted that the optimizer's effective fee for the Sapphire Reserve is about $465 because it also counts the Global Entry credit.