What changed
The update to Freedom Flex we flagged back in July is now confirmed live: as of September 20, 2026, the card's 3% foreign transaction fee is gone, and so is its cell phone protection benefit (the coverage for phone damage or theft when you paid your monthly bill with the card). Chase's own newsroom announcement, corroborated by independent reporting from NerdWallet and Doctor of Credit, confirms both changes shipped together as one update, alongside a refreshed welcome offer and new card art that don't affect this app's modeling.
Why it matters
Freedom Flex had been an awkward pick for international spending — its strong 3x dining and drugstore rates, plus its 5x Chase Travel portal rate, came with a 3% surcharge the moment a purchase posted in a foreign currency or ran through a non-U.S. processor. With the fee gone, those same category rates now apply cleanly to dining and drugstore purchases made abroad, with nothing clawed back at settlement. That closes a real gap against no-annual-fee competitors like Discover it Cash Back, which has never charged a foreign transaction fee.
The tradeoff is cell phone protection — a benefit that reimbursed covered damage or theft on a phone when its monthly bill was paid with the card, up to a per-claim limit after a deductible. It was a real, if situational, perk: valuable if you actually used it, worthless if you never paid your phone bill on the card or never filed a claim. Losing it is a genuine cost for a subset of cardholders, even as it's paired with a fee removal that benefits a much larger group — anyone who spends internationally.
What the catalog assumes right now
This app's card catalog has been updated to match: Freedom Flex now models a 0% foreign transaction surcharge on the foreign_spend category, so the optimizer and Freedom Flex's card page already reflect the fee removal. No stale surcharge is being applied to international spend calculations.
What this doesn't change
This doesn't touch our comparison of Freedom Flex against Freedom Unlimited or against Discover it Cash Back — both were written around domestic category rates, which are untouched here. It also doesn't change how the solver's category-routing math treats Freedom Flex for domestic spend. Foreign transaction fees do enter the calculation for spend you enter under "Purchases abroad / in foreign currency", where the solver subtracts the card's fee, which is now 0% on Freedom Flex.
Updated October 2, 2026: this section previously said foreign transaction fees were not part of the calculation. They have been since September 14, 2026.
If you're planning international spending now
Freedom Flex is a genuinely reasonable no-annual-fee option for spend abroad today, particularly if dining and drugstore purchases make up a meaningful share of what you'll spend. If cell phone protection was a benefit you relied on, weigh that loss against the fee savings for your own situation — it's gone either way, whether or not international spend applies to you.
Confirmed effective September 20, 2026, via Chase's official announcement and independent reporting from NerdWallet and Doctor of Credit. This app's catalog was corrected to match on September 22, 2026.