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Best by audience

Best credit cards for the cashback

Cashback cards trade ceiling for floor. You won't extract aspirational value from them, but you also can't forget how to redeem, miss a transfer window, or watch your points get devalued. The right cashback card matches your top spending categories and has no annual fee, or a small one that you offset on category spend alone.

Top pick

From the current catalog

Blue Cash Preferred Card from American Express

Amex · $95 annual fee

Blue Cash Preferred is the suburban-grocery-and-streaming card: 6% cash back at U.S. supermarkets up to $6,000 a year (the highest grocery rate on any major card) and 6% on select streaming services with no spend cap.

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What we look for

  • Earns cash (not points) so the value of your reward never moves.
  • Either flat 2%+ on everything, or category bonuses that match how you actually spend.
  • Annual fee is zero, or low enough that ~$2,000 of category spend pays for it.

What to watch for

  • Quarterly rotating categories sound great until you forget to activate. Check whether the card auto-enrolls.
  • Some 'cashback' cards pay in proprietary points redeemable for cash; redemption math may not be 1:1.

The full list

8 cards from the catalog

Ranking is formulaic, not editorial. The criteria above are the score function in plain English; you can see the exact weights in src/lib/best-topics.ts on GitHub.

Different audience?