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No Annual Fee Airline Cards
There's a handful of no annual fee airline credit cards on the market. Get the list, calculate value based on spend and perks, and compare side by side!
When it comes to finding a no annual fee airline card, you have a small amount to choose from. These cards will typically earn you lower rewards and offer the least amount of perks compared to their annual fee counterparts, but can still be worth it if it fits your spending profile.
There's only a few airline cards that have no annual fee. Those cards are listed in the table below.
Top Picks
Listed below are a few great options worth considering if you're looking for a no-annual fee airline card.
Barclays JetBlue Card
The no-annual fee Barclays JetBlue Card earns 3 JetBlue Points per $1 spent on JetBlue, 2 points per $1 spent at restaurants and grocery stores, and 1 point per $1 on everything else. It offers 50% off in-flight (in the form of a statement credit) for purchases of cocktails and food purchases.
Citi AAdvantage MileUp Card
The Citi AAdvantage MileUp Card is a great no-annual fee card that earns 2 AAdvantage Miles per $1 spent on American Airlines and grocery purchases. If offers 25% off in-flight puchases (in the form of a statement credit).
Delta SkyMiles Blue AMEX Card
Delta offers it's own no-annual fee card called the Delta SkyMiles Blue AMEX Card. It earns 2 Delta SkyMiles per $1 spent on Delta Airlines and restaurant purchases and 1 SkyMile per $1 on everything else. The card offers 20% off in-flight purchases, access to Delta's Pay with Miles, and ShopRunner membership.
United Gateway Card
United offers the United Gateway Card if you're looking to earn United Miles without paying an annual fee. The card earns 2 United Miles per $1 spent on United, gas station, and transit purchases. All other purchases earn 1 mile per $1 spent. Card benefits include 25% off in-flight purchases, access to the Luxury Hotel & Resort Collection, and some pretty great travel and purchase protection (especially for a card with no annual fee).
Free Spirit Travel Mastercard
The Free Spirit Travel Mastercard is a no-annual fee card that earns 2 Spirit Points per $1 spent with Spirit and 1 point per $1 spent on everything else. It comes with a good amount of benefits including bonus points after spending $10,000 during the year, access to point pooling, 25% in-flight savings on food and beverage purchases, and Zone 2 boarding.
Alternative Options
If you have no interest in the cards above or you would prefer to earn rewards that aren't tied to a specific airline, there's a great amount of no-annual-fee options you can choose from. Some of my top picks for spending tied specifically to airfare include:
Earns 3 Go Far Rewards Points per $1 spent on travel (includes gas), dining, and streaming services.
Points are worth 1 cent each meaning this is equal to a 3% return when spending across bonus categories.
Pair this with the no-annual fee Wells Fargo Visa Signature Card to bump up the point value to 1.5 cents each for a 4.5% return across bonus categories and 1.5% on all non-category spend.
Earns 4% back on gas, 3% back on travel and restaurant, 2% back with Costco, and 1% back on everything else.
If you already shop at Costco, this is a great way to easily maximize your Costco Rewards on travel spend.
If you want to calculate which credit cards earn you the best return across airline spend, you can check out the Best Credit Cards For Airline Purchases calculator. If you want to find the best cards across any category of spend, you can check out our most popular tool Search For Credit Cards By Spend.
Best Cards By Spend Calculator
The Best Credit Cards By Spend Calculator will find the best credit cards based on the spend and selected filter options. Results will be sorted by net return which is the average value of the total rewards earned, plus annual credits, and minus annual fees. For any of the results listed, you can click on 'More Info' to calculate more accurate results. You'll be able to enter spend for as many categories as you want, toggle annual fees, add authorized users, specific elite status and memberships, incorporate sign up and welcome bonus, view rewards as if you transferred them to partners, and much more.
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.
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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'.
Redemption Options
Currencies may have different values depending on how you plan on redeeming your rewards. Most reward values reflected on this site (and countless others) lists the average redemption value based on travel. If you don't plan on using your points/miles for travel, this changes what program may be the best option for you. Listed below are a few popular alternative redemption options that you can base your search on.
Adjust Transferrable Points is not available if this is not set to general.
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. Selecting the First Year Free (FYF) / First Year Reduced (FYR) option will calculate FYF/FYR credit cards with their free or reduced annual fee.
Income Requirements
Some credit cards require a certain amount of annual individual or household income. Enter a max income or enter 0 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 'More Info' for any of the cards listed in the results to calculate even more accurate results. You can also click Apply to apply for the card.
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