Blue Cash Everyday vs Blue Cash Preferred Calculator
Calculate and compare how much cash back you can earn with the Blue Cash Everyday vs Blue Cash Preferred based on spend, benefits, and annual fees.
The American Express Blue Cash Everyday and American Express Blue Cash Preferred cards share many of the same benefits. The main difference between both is that the Blue Cash Preferred offers a higher earning rate at the cost of paying an annual fee. If you can make use of the higher earning rate, the Blue Cash Preferred can easily be worth the fee, but if you can't then you will want to go the no annual fee route and pick up the Blue Cash Everyday.
Bonus Categories
The Blue Cash Everyday features the categories of U.S. supermarket, U.S. department store, and U.S. gas station purchases while the Blue Cash Preferred features U.S. supermarket, streaming services, U.S. gas stations, and transit categories. Both the Blue Cash Everyday and Blue Cash Preferred have a cap of $6,000 per year on the U.S. supermarket bonus category. After reaching the max, both cards will only earn at the non-category rate of 1% cash back per $1 spent. The remaining categories on both cards do not have a cap. There is no limit to the amount of cash back you can earn overall with either card.
Blue Cash Everyday Card
- 3% U.S. Supermarkets
- Spend cap of $6,000 per calendar year.
- Additional spend after cap has been reached will earn at the non-category rate (1%).
- 2% U.S. Gas Station
- 2% U.S. Department Stores
- You will earn 2% when shopping with these specific stores:
- Bealls
- Belk
- Bloomingdale's
- Bon Ton Stores
- Boscov's
- Century 21 Department Stores
- Dillard's
- J.C. Penney (JCP)
- Kohl's
- Lord & Taylor
- Macy's
- Neiman Marcus
- Nordstrom
- Saks Fifth Avenue
- Sears
- Stein Mart
- You will earn 2% when shopping with these specific stores:
- 1% Non-Category
Blue Cash Preferred
- 6% U.S. Supermarkets
- Spend cap of $6,000 per calendar year.
- Additional spend after cap has been reached will earn at the non-category rate (1%).
- 6% U.S. Streaming Services
- 3% U.S. Gas Station
- 3% Transit
- Includes taxis/rideshare, parking, tolls, trains, buses, and more.
- 1% Non-Category
Perks & Benefits
There are no special benefits or bonuses specific to the AMEX Blue Cash Everyday or Blue Cash Everyday Preferred cards. Both cards feature the standard AMEX perks that come with most of their cards.
Blue Cash Everyday Card
- ShopRunner Membership
- AMEX Benefits
- American Express Experiences
- American Express Presale(s)
- American Express Seating
- AMEX Offers
- Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Car Rental Loss and Damage Insurance
- Purchase Protection
Blue Cash Preferred
- ShopRunner Membership
- AMEX Benefits
- American Express Experiences
- American Express Presale(s)
- American Express Seating
- AMEX Offers
- Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Car Rental Loss and Damage Insurance
- Purchase Protection
- Extended Warranty
- Return Protection
Sign Up Bonus (SUB)
The standard sign up bonus for the AMEX Blue Cash Everyday card is $150 after you spend $1,000 in purchases on your new card in your first 3 months. This is only slightly lower than the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred Card's standard sign up bonus which is $200 after you spend $1,000 in purchases on the card within the first 3 months. Slightly higher sign up bonuses of $200 for the Everyday and $250 for the Preferred can sometimes be obtained by using private/incognito browsing when pulling up the American Express website or by going through referral links.
| Blue Cash Everyday Sign Up Bonus | |
|---|---|
| Bonus | $150-$200 |
| Spend Requirement Within First 3 Months |
$1,000 |
| Blue Cash Preferred Sign Up Bonus | |
|---|---|
| Bonus | $200-$250 |
| Spend Requirement Within First 3 Months |
$1,000 |
| Value | $200-$250 |
Fees
The AMEX Blue Cash Everyday Card does not have an annual fee so you will always earn a solid return when using this card to make purchases. The AMEX Blue Cash Preferred has an annual fee of $95 which has to be justified by running enough spend through the card to bring in a higher return than the Blue Cash Everyday Card.
The authorized user fee for the AMEX Blue Cash Everyday and AMEX Blue Cash Preferred is $0. This allows you to add authorized users to both cards without worrying about additional fees. If you have family or friends that shop in these categories, adding them can assist in build cash back faster and can even help justify the fee of the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred.
The AMEX Blue Cash Everyday and AMEX Blue Cash Preferred both have a foreign transaction fee of 2.7%. Regardless of the fee, both cards have bonus categories that are restricted to the U.S. and there's better AMEX Cards to use for international travel such as the AMEX Gold Card and AMEX Green Card.
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Rewards and Card Value Calculator
You can use this rewards calculator to calculate how many points, miles, or cash back you can earn based on your spend per category across both cards. This calculator will also give you the dollar value of both cards based on rewards earned and how much each benefit is worth to you minus the fees. Do note that you can only compare the cards covered on this page side-by-side. If you want to compare against other cards, you'll need to go to the card's specific page.
All category spend entered in the primary card's column will carry over to all credit card pages on the site so you don't have to re-enter the same information over again.
