Great Card If
- You fly for business and pleasure
- You spend a lot in the travel category
Don’t Get If
- You rarely travel
- You want access to a wide variety of airline loyalty programs
Citi Premier Card — Is It Worth It?
The Citi Premier card is a stellar option for award travelers in large part due to how well-rounded its bonus categories are. With the Citi Premier card, you’ll earn 3x points per $1 at restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations, airfare, and hotels.
Plus the Citi ThankYou Rewards points you earn are transferable, meaning they can be transferred to some of the top Citi ThankYou Rewards transfer partners, including Avianca Lifemiles, Air France-KLM Flying Blue, Turkish Airlines, and Virgin Atlantic.
Put simply, if you’re looking for a great workhorse travel rewards credit card that can really help you rack up points quickly for a reasonable annual fee, then the Citi Premier card would likely be very worth it for you.
Citi Premier Card Top Benefits
Annual Hotel Savings Benefit
To help offset the Citi Premier card’s $95 annual fee, the card offers $100 off a single hotel stay of $500 or more, excluding taxes and fees, when you book through thankyou.com and pay with your card each year. If you know you’ll have at least 1 hotel stay per year that costs $500 or more, then holding the Citi Premier card can be a no-brainer.
Citi Entertainment
Through Citi Entertainment, you can receive special access to tickets, including presale tickets and exclusive experiences, for concerts, sporting events, dining experiences, and more. This can be a massive benefit anytime you want to go to an event that is likely to sell out quickly.
Best Ways To Earn and Redeem Your Citi ThankYou Points
Read our guide full of tips to see how to get the most out of the Citi Premier card by earning as many Citi ThankYou Points as possible.
Once you’ve built up a balance, you have quite a few options for redeeming your ThankYou Points. For travel, you can redeem your ThankYou Points for flights through the Citi travel portal or (our preferred method) make direct transfers to Citi’s airline and hotel partners.
Alternative Cards to the Citi Premier Card
Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express
If you want a card that rewards you more for everyday spending, you could explore the Amex Blue Cash Preferred card. It has an annual fee of $0 intro annual fee for the first year, then $95, and an introductory APR on purchases and transfers (see rates and fees).
This card earns 6% cash-back at U.S. supermarkets (on up to $6,000, then 1%) and select U.S. streaming subscriptions, 3% cash-back at U.S. gas stations and transit, and 1% everywhere else.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
If you travel frequently, you may want to consider the Chase Sapphire Preferred card‘s higher bonus category of 5x points on travel purchased via the Chase travel portal.
The card also has a superior collection of travel benefits and protections, such as a $50 hotel credit, primary rental car insurance, and trip and baggage insurance.
Read more about these 2 cards here: Citi Premier card vs Chase Sapphire Preferred card
See our comparisons of the Citi Premier card to these popular cards:
For rates and fees of the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express, click here.
Disclaimer: Any comments listed below are not from the bank advertiser, nor have they been reviewed or approved by them. No responsibility will be taken by the bank advertiser for these comments.
11 comments
tamra l dann
September 19, 2019
Please correct your false information on this site. They do not waive the first year annual fee of $95. I was charged the fee and they also got rid of all travel insurance. I called Citi Bank and told them of our false advertising and the direct link to their web site. If you do not take this false info down you will deal with Citibank and my attorney. Either you or both you and Citibank are conducting false advertising and are a scam.
Jarrod West
September 20, 2019
Hi Tamara,
We have updated the post to reflect the correct offer, and I am sorry for the frustration this may have caused you. I can assure you that our website is in no way a scam. As you know, credit card offers can change sporadically. Our team here at Upgraded Points works incredibly hard to deliver great content and keep that great content as up to date as possible. We have close to 1,000 pieces of content available to readers so, unfortunately, things can fall through the cracks at times. We highly encourage all of our readers to look closely at the offer terms stated on a banks application page before submitting an application for a credit card. But we are very grateful to have loyal readers like yourself who point out when updates need to be made.
So thanks again for pointing out that an update needed to be made and thanks for reading!
Kevin
December 01, 2022
At the time when this article was written, they did waive the $95 AF but that is no longer the case because people don’t keep the card after 1 year or so.
Gaius Gracchus
July 01, 2021
The offer itself for the Citi Premier card is pretty good if you can get the $60k bonus, but it is dealing with Citibank that has been a horror.
First, they declined my application. Which is insane. Why? My FICO scores range from 835-850. Yearly earnings vary from $230,000 – $260,000 per year. We have NO DEBT. I have a number of credit cards but they are paid off every month. No loans, just paid off our million dollar home. Assets in the range of millions.
Then, after I complained, they opened the credit card with a limit of $2000. LOL! Really?! The same day I applied to Chase Sapphire and got a very large limit and a few months later with Fidelity Signature Visa and got an even larger limit. (Just sayin’.)
But it gets better! Even though I have had a Citi Double Cash card for over a decade and have a flawless record with that, they refused to apply my payments to the Premier card for weeks. That’s right – they take the money from my bank and refuse to allow me to use the credit line even though they have the money for weeks. It is the same payment account being used to pay the Citi Double Cash card, by the way.
This is a form of theft, is it not? Think about it. They take the money from my bank account and, in effect, create a forced loan from me to them because they don’t make the money available to me to use, but they have it. Somewhere, right? Free interest for them using my funds in a forced loan every time I make a payment and wait for weeks for it to be applied to my credit line.
They are treating me like a brand new customer they have never met before – after over 10 years with them as a customer they act like this 5 month old account is suspect and I am engaging in criminal activity that needs close monitoring. And the credit limit of $2000 makes the card virtually UNUSABLE.
Working with their customer service has been an exercise in frustration. I despise Citibank and me and my family members are closing all accounts with them ASAP.
John
July 28, 2021
How can you have had the Double Cash card for over a decade? It launched in 2014.
EB
August 14, 2022
Tolls are no longer considered travel for the 3x points allotment. It’s just 1x.
Jarrod West
August 24, 2022
Hi EB,
Thanks for pointing that out, I’ve corrected the post.
James
August 23, 2022
Hi Alex! Hasn’t Citi cancelled all Citi Price Rewind benefits a few years years ago?
Jarrod West
September 06, 2022
Hi James,
Thanks for pointing that out. I’ve just corrected the post.
Maria
October 05, 2022
Hopefully, this offer will be around early next year which will be when I need a card with this spend amount. Any idea how long these offers usually stay around?
Jarrod West
October 06, 2022
Hi Maria,
The offer has been around for a while now, but we haven’t received any word yet as to when it will end.
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