Chase Freedom Unlimited®

Freedom Unlimited earns 1.5% on everything, 3% on dining and drugstores, and 5% on travel booked through Chase Travel. This catalog also contains four cards paying a flat 2% on everything with no categories at all: Citi Double Cash, Wells Fargo Active Cash, PNC Cash Unlimited and TD Double Up.

That sets up a clean break-even. Against a flat 2% card, the base 1.5% loses half a point on ordinary spending, and the 3% dining tier gains a point. So Freedom Unlimited comes out ahead only if roughly a third or more of your spending falls in dining and drugstores, or if you book travel through Chase. Below that share, the simpler card wins — and it wins without you having to think about it.

The 5% rate applies to travel booked through Chase Travel, not to travel generally. That distinction does real work: it means the headline rate is only available inside Chase's own booking channel, where prices and cancellation terms are set by the portal rather than the airline or hotel.

It's not a bad deal, but it isn't a 5% travel card in the way the number suggests. Compare against Capital One Savor's 3% on dining, groceries, entertainment and streaming with no portal requirement, which pays less per dollar and applies to more of a normal month.

Dining and drugstores earn 3% with no quarterly cap and nothing to activate — the opposite arrangement to its sibling, Chase Freedom Flex, where 5% is capped at $1,500 a quarter and requires enrolment. A steady uncapped 3% on a category you use every week compounds quietly in a way a conditional 5% does not.

The base rate is 1.5%, which is half a point behind the four cards in this catalog paying a flat 2%. So the card wins on dining and drugstores and loses everywhere else, and which effect dominates depends on how much of your spending those two categories absorb.

18.24% to 29.99% — and that top figure is shared with only two other cards in this catalog, both of them Chase's own Sapphire cards. Nothing else here reaches it except PNC Core's 30.24%.

For a no-fee cash-back card intended to be cleared monthly, the ceiling is theoretical. It stops being theoretical the first month a balance rolls over, and at 29.99% a 3% category rate is not a consolation.

Dining and drugstores earn 3% with no quarterly cap and nothing to activate — the opposite arrangement to its sibling, Chase Freedom Flex, where 5% is capped at $1,500 a quarter and requires enrolment. A steady uncapped 3% on a category you use every week compounds quietly in a way a conditional 5% does not.

The base rate is 1.5%, which is half a point behind the four cards in this catalog paying a flat 2%. So the card wins on dining and drugstores and loses everywhere else, and which effect dominates depends on how much of your spending those two categories absorb.

18.24% to 29.99% — and that top figure is shared with only two other cards in this catalog, both of them Chase's own Sapphire cards. Nothing else here reaches it except PNC Core's 30.24%.

For a no-fee cash-back card intended to be cleared monthly, the ceiling is theoretical. It stops being theoretical the first month a balance rolls over, and at 29.99% a 3% category rate is not a consolation.