American Express
On $1,000 a month of spending, split evenly across restaurants, travel, groceries and everything else: yes.
24,000 points a year at 1.00¢ = $240, $500 of credits you'd actually use, minus the $895 annual fee = -$155 a year. The 80,000-point welcome bonus adds $800 in year one. A targeted offer of up to 175,000 exists but not everyone gets it, so it isn't in the figure above.
That is a worked example, not a figure about you — we have no idea what you spend. Put your own numbers in and the same arithmetic runs on those.
| On | Rate | Cap |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurants and takeaway | 1× Amex Membership Rewards | none |
| Flights, hotels and transport | 5× Amex Membership Rewards | $500,000 a year, then 1× |
| Groceries | 1× Amex Membership Rewards | none |
| Everything else | 1× Amex Membership Rewards | none |
5x on flights booked direct or through Amex Travel, and on prepaid hotels through Amex Travel. Everything else, including restaurants, earns 1x.
Amex Membership Rewards points are worth about 1.00 cents each on our published table, our own. What Amex Membership Rewards points are worth →
80,000 Amex Membership Rewards — about $800 — after $12,000 of spending in 6 months. The example spending above does not clear that, so it is left out of the sum.
A targeted offer of 175,000 exists but lands in some people's accounts and not others, so it is shown as upside and never counted in the sum.
Targeted; the public offer is usually lower. Check your own offer before applying.
Credits count for $500 in the sum above — what a typical holder actually redeems, not the sticker value of every credit on the page. $400 Resy dining credit in four quarterly pieces, plus $200 hotel credit on FHR bookings. The airline fee, Uber, Walmart+ and Saks credits are real but most people trigger only some of them, so they are not counted here.
We may earn a commission if you apply through us, and it does not change the arithmetic above — a card that pays us nothing is scored identically. How we make money. Card terms as of 2026-09-18; check the issuer's page before applying.