At Travel Freely, we’re all about maximizing your free travel in the easiest way possible. So, start here with the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. It’s the easiest recommendation for beginners who are looking for the best travel rewards credit card. With its spot at the top of ‘best rewards cards’ lists, this credit card is designed for beginner free travelers looking for simple ways to get great value. Why? Chase Ultimate Rewards points are highly valued and incredibly flexible.

Link: Learn How to Apply: Chase Sapphire Preferred

Here are some great reasons to love the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card:

1) $1,000+ in free travel!

When you hit your minimum spending required of $5,000 in the first 3 months, you’ll earn 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points.

For select flights and hotels booked through the Chase Travel℠ Portal with the Chase Sapphire Preferred, there is the Points Boost feature, where you can get up to 1.5 cents per point (up to 1.75 cents per point for premium cabin tickets on select airlines). For anything not covered by Points Boost, it drops to 1 cent per point.

At a minimum, you’re getting $1,000+ in free travel with your bonus.

If you transfer to partners, you could get a value of 2 cents per point or more, and that is over $1,500 in free travel.

For those who do not like annual fees, you can actually use points to cover the annual fee by redeeming 9,500 points for cash.

2) It’s EASY to redeem

You can redeem your points in the following ways:

1) Book travel directly through the Chase travel portal (or by calling). 

2) Transfer points to their loyalty travel partners (Examples include Southwest, United, Hyatt, Marriott). This is where the best value is. For example, booking expensive domestic or international travel with United can bring in redemption rates at 4-5 cents per point.

Get to Hawaii with the signup bonus from the Chase Sapphire Preferred!

3) Redeem points for cash If you’re looking for a travel card that gives you added flexibility for cash back and not just for travel redemption, then the Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great card for you. With a redemption rate of 1 point = 1 cent, you can easily convert 100,000 Chase Points to $1,000 cash for anything you want to spend on.

1,000 points = $10 cash
10,000 points = $100 cash
100,000 points = $1,000 cash

Link: Learn How to Apply: Chase Sapphire Preferred

3. Earn big on everyday spending

Beginners and experienced free travelers both use the Sapphire Preferred Card, because you rack up points on the spending you’re already doing. You’ll earn 3x points on dining worldwide (including takeout and eligible delivery), gas and EV charging, online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), top streaming services, and vacation home rentals at brands like Airbnb and Vrbo.

On top of that, you’ll earn 2x points on travel worldwide (5x when booked through the Chase Travel℠ portal), covering everything from hotels, airfare, and rental cars to everyday rides and parking. The best part: there’s nothing to track. These are categories you spend in anyway, so the points pile up without any extra effort.

Earning 3x points at restaurants can supercharge your earning.

4. Awesome travel benefits.

First of all, you get a $100 hotel credit to use annually. You can use this whenever you want. This one benefit effectively covers your annual fee.

Second, this card now offers $120 statement credit for an application to Global Entry, TSA PreCheck® or NEXUS every 4 years.

Traveling abroad? There are no foreign transaction fees. This is huge. Avoiding the 3% fee is big time savings. Plus, you can avoid using a debit card or cash. Credit cards often get the best exchange rate abroad, and you don’t even have to worry about carrying around extra cash.

Waive your rental car coverage. Primary car rental insurance is also covered when you pay for your rental car with this card. Waive the fee and save an extra $15-30 per day!

Other benefits include trip delay, trip cancellation, emergency evacuation and transportation and baggage delay insurance. These benefits alone could be super helpful right when you need them.

Going to Europe? Save on rental car insurance and waived foreign transaction fees. You’ll still earn 2x on travel expenses and 3x points at restaurants, too!

5. Transfer to Southwest, United, Hyatt and more

You are missing out if you think that an airline or hotel card is all you need. Normal rewards enthusiasts miss out on extra rewards and flexibility because they don’t know about this amazing benefit of the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card allows you to transfer points to its partners. For example, United Airlines is a transfer partner. You can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points to United at 1:1. Because of the travel partners and ease of transferring rewards, this card can act like a United, Marriott, and Hyatt card rolled into one. Whenever you need those rewards, you can transfer them. So, you can stay flexible and only make a transfer when you need to transfer.

Update: New cardholders who apply on or after June 15, 2026 transfer to Hyatt at 4:3 (4 Chase points become 3 Hyatt points); all other partners stay 1:1. Our perspective: Even at 4:3, Hyatt is still often a solid deal: a 25,000-point Hyatt night costs about 33,400 Chase points, which can beat cash rates of $500 or more.

6. The Chase 5/24 Rule

Beginners may not realize that Chase has an “unofficial” rule of denying credit card applications if someone has opened 5 cards in the previous 24 months. Some cards don’t count towards this, but most personal cards do. (p.s. the Travel Freely app has a 5/24 counter feature). When you are starting out with rewards cards, you need to get this card sooner than later. The Chase Sapphire Preferred is subject to the 5/24 rule, so you want to make sure you get it before some of the other great cards.

Bottom Line 

This is an excellent all-around card. The #1 card for beginners, and one of THE best cards for any type of traveler. The Chase travel portal and transfer partners make it very flexible. At a minimum, this card’s value is $1,000+ when using the travel portal, but we value Chase points at 1.5 cents per point because of their value when transferred to travel partners like United, Hyatt, or Marriott.

If that wasn’t enough, this card includes 3x points on dining, 5x on travel purchased in Chase Travel portal, 2x on all other travel purchase, and a $100 hotel credit annually with no foreign transaction fees and primary rental car coverage.

Ready for free travel? Don’t miss out!

Learn How to Apply: Chase Sapphire Preferred