A $79 gap between two mid-tier airline cards
Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority and United Explorer are both Chase's mid-tier airline co-brand cards — a step up from a no-fee starter card, a step below the premium tier. But they don't charge the same fee, and the gap ($229 vs. $150) isn't fully explained by the earn-rate difference.
What each card bonuses
| Southwest Priority ($229) | United Explorer ($150) | |
|---|---|---|
| Home-airline purchases & airfare | 4x | 3x |
| Dining | 2x | 2x |
| Gas | 2x | — |
| Hotels | — | 2x |
| Everything else | 1x | 1x |
Both bonus dining identically. Past that they split: Southwest adds 2x gas, United adds 2x hotels instead. Southwest's home-airline rate is higher (4x vs. 3x) — the one place Southwest actually out-earns United on the rate table.
The credit lists don't match the fee gap
Southwest Priority carries one credit: a bundled Instacart+ membership (three months, activate by 12/31/2027) plus $10/month in Instacart credits, worth up to $120/year on paper, alongside a complimentary one-year DashPass. We model the whole thing at $0/year — it requires ongoing Instacart purchases to capture and doesn't clear our bar for reliably usable value.
United Explorer carries six credits: an Instacart credit, a rideshare credit, Global Entry/TSA PreCheck, a threshold-gated $100 United travel credit, an Avis/Budget credit, and a United Hotels credit. Five of the six are modeled at $0 for the same reasons — merchant-gated, threshold-gated, or too narrow to count on. But Global Entry/TSA PreCheck — up to $120 every four years, about $30/year — is the one credit on either card we flag as genuinely easy to use, since most people who travel internationally can capture it without extra spend or enrollment friction.
What that means for net cost
In modeled terms: Southwest Priority nets close to its full $229/year fee, since none of its credits clear our reliability bar. United Explorer nets to roughly $120/year after its one usable credit. That's a real ~$109/year gap in modeled cost, stacked on top of United's fee already starting $79 lower — even though Southwest pays a full point higher on its home-airline spend.
Who should pick which
- Southwest loyalist with meaningful gas spend: the 4x home-airline rate plus 2x gas can close part of the gap, but only if that spend is large enough to matter — run your real numbers through the optimizer to size it.
- United loyalist, or no strong airline preference: United Explorer's lower fee, usable Global Entry credit, and hotel bonus make it the stronger modeled value of the two almost regardless of airline loyalty.
- No loyalty to either airline: a flat-rate no-fee card like Citi Double Cash will out-earn either of these on the categories this app optimizes, without a three-figure annual fee.
Run the optimizer with your real spend to see how these compare against your actual wallet, not just the rate table.
Data verified as of August 19, 2026.
Want the live numbers side by side? See the Southwest Priority vs. United Explorer comparison page — it renders current rates and fees straight from our verified card data.