Search Results Display Here
Select a country:

Best Credit Card For United Miles

Earn the most United Miles with our top-rated credit card, designed to help you reach your travel goals faster.
By Robert Flowers III - 2023-12-29

Looking for the best credit card to help you earn United Miles? Look no further! United has partnered with Chase to offer an array of co-branded credit cards that can help you rack up miles on all your everyday purchases. Additionally, take advantage of cards offered through partners like Chase Ultimate Rewards to unlock even more ways of efficiently earning plenty of miles.

Here are our top credit card picks for earning United miles:

Use Our Calculator To Maximize Your United Miles

Discover personalized credit card options that match your spending habits and maximizes your miles.

Simply input your monthly and yearly spend amounts into our easy-to-use calculator to find the best United credit card options for you!


Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

Best For Flexible Rewards
  • Earning Rate: Earn 5X Ultimate Rewards points on travel purchases through Chase Ultimate Rewards, 3X on dining, online grocery purchases, and select streaming services, 2X on other travel purchases, and 1X on everything else.
  • Annual Credits: $50 credit towards hotels booked through Chase Ultimate Rewards portal.
  • Main Highlights: 10% bonus points annually based on how much you spent the prior cardmember year and a 25% boost to point value when redeemed for travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards.
  • Transfer Ratio: 1,000 Ultimate Rewards Points = 1,000 United Miles.
  • Intro Bonus: Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards®.
  • Annual Fee: $95.
  • Summary: The Chase Sapphire Preferred is one of the best flexible travel rewards credit cards available. Not only can you transfer points to United and other programs, but you can also redeem points for 1.25 cents each through the Chase Travel portal. This provides an alternative way to get solid value out of your points if you can't find good redemption value booking with United or their partners.

United℠ Explorer Card

Best For Occasional United Travelers
  • Earning Rate: Earn 2X points on United purchases and hotel stays, and at restaurants. Earn 1X on all other purchases.
  • Main Highlights: Free checked bag, priority boarding, annual United Club passes, in-flight discounts and up to $100 towards a Global Entry or TSA PreCheck credit.
  • Intro Bonus: Earn 50,000 bonus miles after you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months your account is open.
  • Annual Fee: $0 for the first year, then $95.
  • Summary: The Explorer Card is a great entry level card if you fly United a few times per year. While it features a handful of great benefits, the most notable benefits for this card is the free checked bag benefit. If you normally pay for bags, this will save you and one other person traveling with you a lot of money over the course of the year.

Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Best For High Value
  • Earning Rate: Earn 10X points on Chase Dining and both hotel and car rental purchases through Chase Ultimate Rewards, 5X on airfare through Chase Ultimate Rewards, 3X on dining and other travel purchases, and 1X on everything else.
  • Annual Credits: $300 travel credit.
  • Main Highlights: Priority Pass Select membership, up to $100 towards a Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application, top-notch travel insurance, and a 50% boost to point value on travel redemptions made through Chase Ultimate Rewards.
  • Transfer Ratio: 1,000 Ultimate Rewards Points = 1,000 United Miles.
  • Intro Bonus: Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $900 toward travel when you redeem through Chase Travel℠.
  • Annual Fee: $550.
  • Summary: High annual fee, but offers excellent value and solid benefits. If you can't find solid redemption value with United, you can redeem points through Chase Travel for a very nice 1.5 cents each. Great option if you still want access to lounges before and between your United flights.

United Quest℠ Card

Best For Frequent United Travelers
  • Earning Rate: Earn 3X miles on United purchases, 2X miles on dining including eligible delivery services, select streaming services, and all other travel, and 1X miles on everything else.
  • Annual Credits: $125 United Credit.
  • Main Highlights: Earn 500 Premier Qualifying Points (PQPs) for every $12,000 you spend on the card (up to 2X per year), free first and second checked bag when you use the card to pay for your flight, get 5,000 miles back when you book award travel (up to 2X per year), and top-notch travel insurance.
  • Intro Bonus: Earn 60,000 bonus miles and 500 Premier qualifying points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months your account is open.
  • Annual Fee: $250.
  • Summary: If you fly United often and you're looking for maximum benefits, this will be the card you're looking for. It has a hefty annual fee, but you'll easily make up for it between the $125 credit, free checked bags, and reimbursements.

Chase Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

Best For Flexible Business Travel Rewards
  • Earning Rate: Earn 3X points on up to $150,000 on travel, shipping, internet, cable services, phone services, and advertising purchases each account anniversary year. All other purchases earn 1X.
  • Main Highlights: 25% point value boost towards travel booked through Chase Ultimate Rewards.
  • Transfer Ratio: 1,000 Ultimate Rewards Points = 1,000 United Miles.
  • Intro Bonus: Earn 100k bonus points after you spend $8,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $1,000 cash back or $1,250 toward travel when redeemed through Chase Travel℠
  • Annual Fee: $95.
  • Summary: The Ink Business Preferred is the best business credit card for earning points on business purchases and travel. Points earned with the card can be transferred to United and other partners as well as be redeemed for 1.25 cents each towards travel booked through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal.

United Miles Calculator: Which Card Is Best For You?

Use the United Miles Calculator to find out which credit cards will earn you the most miles based on the spend amounts you enter.

Results will be sorted by net return which is the average value of the rewards earned, plus annual credits, and minus annual fees. You'll want to take into consideration the benefits a card offers as well on top of the estimated value calculated.

Results will consist of top-rated credit cards that either earn United Miles directly or earn rewards that can be transferred directly to the United MileagePlus program.

Loading Calculator...
If the calculator doesn't load after a few seconds, click here to re-load calculator.
Calculator Options
What Type of Rewards Do You Want To Earn?
This calculator can output the best credit cards for a general rewards type or compile a list of the best credit cards for earning rewards with a specific loyalty program.
Frequent Flyer Programs
Select the frequent flyer program that you want to earn rewards for. Results will include all co-branded credit cards offered by the selected airline and all credit cards partners that allow you to transfer rewards to the selected airline.
Hotel Loyalty Programs
Select the hotel loyalty program that you want to earn rewards for. Results will include all co-branded credit cards offered by the selected hotel program and all credit cards partners that allow you to transfer rewards to the selected hotel program.
Other Loyalty Programs
Select the program that you want to earn rewards for. Results will include all credit cards offered by the selected program and all credit cards partners that allow you to transfer rewards to the selected program.
Personal Or Business?
Are you looking for personal (consumer) credit card or business credit cards? You can also include both in the results.
Include Intro Bonuses?
If set to yes, intro bonuses will be included for a card's calculation ONLY IF you have met the monthly spend criteria based on what's entered into the tool.
Do note that we do not have intro bonuses for all credit cards and we cannot calculate intro bonuses for some cards due to the complexity of some spend requirements.
Enter Your Monthly & Yearly Spend Amounts
Resets all fields in the Category Spending section for all columns. Also clears all saved spend values that carry from calculator to calculator.
Deletes all categories in the Category Spending section so you can start fresh.
Add Categories
Search for categories and click 'Add Category' to add it to the calculator. If you want to be more specific, you can specify domestic or international spend.
Type at least 3 characters.
Category Currently Selected:
Spend Region:
About Spend Region: Some credit cards feature categories that only earn rewards when spending in a certain region. Changing this category to Domestic or International spend will calculate such for those cards, otherwise it's assumed by Default.

No Results. This is usually due to:

  • There's no good card options based on the spend entered.
  • The calculator is having a brain-fart and is not calculating rewards properly.

Enter different values or try again later.

Results

These estimates are to help guide you towards making the best decision when it comes to picking up a rewards credit card. They should be used for illustrative purposes only.