A list of the 50 best credit cards for gas, grocery, and dining purchases based on your spend. Compare results against 250+ top cards side by side.
You won't typically find cards that feature gas, grocery, and dining, but there's still several cards that can provide you a solid return if you're looking to have one card that rules them all. If you don't mind picking up more than one card, there's various combinations that can help you build up your rewards at a great rate.
One of the top cards for gas and supermarket purchases is the AMEX Everyday Preferred Card. It earns up to 4.5x Membership Rewards Points on supermarket purchases, up to 3x on gas station purchases, and up to 1.5x on everything else. You could run the dining through this card as non-category spend or pair it with the AMEX Green to earn 3x on your dining as well as 3x on travel and transit purchases as well.
Another great option in the Membership Rewards department is the AMEX Gold Card which earns 4x on both dining and grocery purchases. You can pair it with the Blue Business Plus if you're looking to earn 2x on gas and all other purchases.
American Express has the grocery and restaurant categories on lock when it comes to great returns which makes other rewards cards seem not as good. If you shop at Costco or Sam's Club, the Costco Anywhere Visa Card and Sam's Club Mastercard both earn great returns on gas and restaurant purchases. The only drawback is that you only receive your earned rewards once per year.
Any none of these cards interest you, you can always go the simple route and pick up a flat rate earning 2% cash back card like the Citi Double Cash or PayPal CashBack Mastercard.
Best Cards By Category Calculator
The Best Credit Cards By Category Calculator below will find the best credit cards for the listed categories based on your spend and the filter options selected. This will output a list of up to 50 credit cards sorted by total return.
Compare credit cards side by side based on spend, benefits, and fees.
I recommend using the Rewards Calculator which allows you to compare results side by side other cards, factor in sign up bonuses, add authorized users, select elite status (hotel cards), and much more.
Category Spend
Enter your spend per month, year, or quarter for the listed categories. You can then click Get The Best Cards to get the list of results.
You can set the duration of the spend for the categories listed above. If you're looking for the best card for only n-months worth of spend, this is where you change the option. If you want to calculate based on a full year, you can leave it set to a duration of 'year'.
Adjust Transferable Points
Some rewards programs allow you to transfer your earned points to airline, hotel, and other loyalty programs. These programs will generally have higher point values when doing such. Since these matter so much when choosing a credit card, you can enter your own point value for these programs to include in the calculations. You can set any of the currencies listed below to 0 to calculate based on the non-transfer value (in which most are 1 cent per point with the exception of Chase's 1.25/1.5 cent redemptions).
When transferring to other programs, you should be able to get 1 to 2 cents in value for most of the programs listed below, so I defaulted most to a low average of 1.5 cents. You can click on the to learn more about the value of the currency (opens in a new tab/window).
Include Annual Credits/Bonuses
Several credit cards feature annual bonuses. These are usually anniversary bonuses for having the card, airline credits, hotel credits, and more. If you want these included in the calculation, you can check thy box below.
Bank
The bank that issues the card. De-select the banks that you do not want in the results.
Network
The network that the card is tied to such as VISA, Mastercard, Discover, or AMEX.
Card Type
The type of card such as a co-branded airline card, bank rewards card, or cash back card. Do note that some store cards will appear under cash back if you're able to redeem cash back like a normal cash back credit card.
Reward Type
The type of rewards the card earns. This will either be points, miles, or cash back.
Personal/Business
Toggle the showing of personal or business cards in the results. Card combinations are also featured on this site. The combo option is only available if it's more than one category you're enter spend for.
Annual Fee
The range of fees you're willing to pay to wield such awesome credit cards. The First Year Free (FYF) / First Year Reduced (FYR) option will only show FYF/FYR cards that has an second year (and onward) annual fee that falls within the range you entered.
Income Requirements
Some credit cards require a certain amount of annual individual or household income. Enter a max income or enter -1 to show all cards.
Foreign Transaction Fees
Toggle whether to include credit cards that have a foreign transaction fee, foreign conversion fee, or any other type of charge that has to do with making purchases outside of the region.
Do note that results may take a few seconds to generate after doing a search.
You can click on the 'Rewards Calculator' for any of the cards listed in the results to calculate even more accurate results. You'll be able to enter spend for other categories, toggle fees, add authorized users, and more.
