Right as Chase announced the revamp of their Chase Sapphire Reserve, Amex announced that there’d be some news about the Platinum card on September 18th, 2025. Before then, Citibank also slipped in and released their new premium card, the Strata Elite, making for quite the premium credit card summer!

So, with September 18th having come and gone, there is now a refreshed Amex Platinum card. The Platinum card is Amex’s premium credit card, and to date is probably the most expensive credit card to have, based on its annual fee, that is open for enrollment (more expensive credit cards are invite only).

In this belated post I want to take a look at the revamped Amex Platinum and see how its value stacks up against its annual fee. Are the benefits worth the highest annual fee of any premium credit card?

1. When do the changes of this refresh kick in?
2. Basics of the Amex Platinum
3. $200 annual fee increase: now $895 per year
4. Variable welcome bonus: currently at a massive ‘up to’ 175.000 Amex Rewards points!
5. A whole bunch of credits: new and elevated
6. A whole bunch of credits: those that remain unchanged
7. The very nice lounge access perks remain unchanged
8. Is the card worth the annual fee?
   1. The bonus categories are not impressive
   2. The credits: only worth as much as you can use them
   3. The lounge access may be the biggest selling point, but how do the lounges stack up to the competition?
   4. So, would I get this card?
9. Summary

When do the changes of this refresh kick in?

Before we get into the details of the refreshed Amex Platinum, when do these changes kick in? The perks and benefits should kick in immediately. As for the annual fee, for members that got their card before September 18th 2025, the new annual fee will be charged as of January 2nd 2026. So if your annual fee gets charged before that for the new card year, you’re in luck: you’ll basically get a whole year at the old, $695 annual fee, while getting to use all the new credits!

Basics of the Amex Platinum

On. the surface, these are some of the Amex Platinum’s basic features:

• $895 annual
• Travel-oriented bonus categories:
  • Earn 5x points on air travel purchase directly with the airline or through American Express Travel.
  • Earn 5x points on hotels booked on American Express Travel.
  • Earn 1x on everything else
• Lounge acces perks:
  • Amex Centurion Lounges
  • Delta SkyClub access when traveling with Delta (not in basic economy)
  • Priority pass Membership
• Various kinds of status:
  • Hilton Honors Gold status
  • Marriott Bonvoy Gold status
  • Leading Hotels of the World Leaders Club Sterling status
• Many different credits:
  • $600 hotel credit for bookings with Fine Hotels + Resorts or The Hotel Collection bookings through Amex Travel (2 semi-annual $300 credits).
  • $400 Resy credit (4 quarterly $100 credits).
  • $300 digital entertainment credit (12 monthly $25 credits).
  • $300 Lululemon credit (4 quarterly $75 credits).
  • $300 annual Equinox credit .
  • $200 annual OURA ring credit.
  • $200 Uber Cash (12 monthly 15$ credits, plus $20 December bonus).
  • $200 annual airline incidentals credit (e.g. booking fees, baggage fees, seat reservation fees, etc).
  • $209 annual Clear Plus membership credit.
  • $120 TSA Precheck/Global Entry membership credit once every four years.
  • $120 annual Uber One membership credit
  • $100 Saks Fifth Ave credit (2 semi-annual $50 credits)

One thing is immediately clear: this is a coupon book with a whole bunch of large and small credits that may or may not be useful to you. Meanwhile, the actual bonus categories of the card are fine, but not particularly inspiring: after all, if you book through the travel portals of Chase, Capital One or Citibank, you can get either the same 5x points per dollar on airfare and hotel bookings, or much more.

Let’s go over the details!

$200 annual fee increase: now $895 per year

The biggest bit of news, and totally not surprising, is the $200 annual fee increase. The truth is that before all the revamps, the Platinum card had already been the most expensive credit card out there, at $695 per year. Then, when the Sapphire Reserve went up from $550 to a $795 annual fee, it was a given that the paltinum card would also hike its annual fee.

The main question becomes whether that $200 increase can be offset with perks or credits, and the truth is that Amex did add a slew of new credits and enhanced a bunch of existing ones. So, on the surface you should be able to get that $200 back. The question is: are the credits useful to you, and are they sufficiently user friendly that you can actually maximize them? I’ll get to that a bit later.

Variable welcome bonus: currently at a massive ‘up to’ 175.000 Amex Rewards points!

American Express has recently been taking a different approach to welcome bonuses. Instead of promising a set amount of points, there is now a maximum and the bonus is dynamically set up to this maximum amount. Currently, the welcome bonus is up to 175.000 Amex Reward points when spending $9000 in 6 months. If you are eligible for the full bonus, that truly is a massive bonus. At my basic validation of 1 point = 1cent, that bonus is $1750, which ‘covers’ the annual fee for 2 years without needing to maximize any of the credits.

The great thing with Amex is that you can see what your actual welcome bonus is without getting a hard inquiry on your credit report: the ‘Apply with confidence’ feature. You will still go through the process of submitting your application, and although you will hit the button to ‘Agree and Submit’, the next step will tell you if you are eligible for a welcome bonus, and if so, what that welcome offer is. You can then choose to accept the offer and submit, or withdraw your application. This is a great way to see what you can expect without running any risk.

A whole bunch of credits: new and elevated

As the list above makes clear, the Amex Platinum is a coupon book of credits. Altogether it repreents massive value, but there is little chance you’ll actually be able to maximize all of them. Some of them existed before and others are new or enhanced, so let’s go over the ones that have changed:

• $600 hotel credit: This is a credit that existed previously and has been enhanced, doubling its value from $300 annually to $600 annually, available as 2 semi-annual $300 credits for bookings with Fine Hotels + Resorts or The Hotel Collection through Amex Travel. Note that a minimum stay of 2 nights is required. The catch here is that a lot of these hotels are ratehr expensive, so that $300 credit every half year will likely cover just 1 of the required minimum 2 nights that you’ll need to stay at that hotel.
• $400 Resy credit: This credit is entirely new, and is made available to you as 4 quarterly $100 credits. If you live in or near a major city, this should be easy to use since any purchase made at a restaurant that is affiliated with Resy will trigger this credit. Indeed, you do not need to enroll or even make a reservation through Resy to trigger this credit.
• $300 digital entertainment credit: This will offset membership fees with selected streaming entertainment services paid with Amex Platinum, in the form of 12 monthly $25 credits. This credit was enhanced from a previous $20 every 12 months. Partners include: Disney+, ESPN, Hulu, The New York Times, Peacock, The Wall Street Journal, Paramount+, YouTube Premium, and YouTube TV. I reckon everybody should be able to maximize this credit, unless you happen to already get these services through existing phone or cable agreements.
• $300 Lululemon credit: this new credit covers purchases with Lululemon, made available as 4 quarterly $75 credits.
• $200 annual OURA ring credit: this new credit is one of two credits made available at an annual basis, and covers an OURA ring as well as membership fees for the associated service. Purhases should be directly with OURA.
• $200 Uber Cash: this new credit is not so much a credit, as it is a monthly cash deposit into your Uber account, to be used for any Uber service, including rides, dining, groceries, etc. December will provide a $20 extra bonus on top of the regular 15$ credit. In my mind this should not be hard to maximize, as long as you remember to use it – that’s where the challenge will be.

A whole bunch of credits: those that remain unchanged

Besides the new and enhanced credits, a variety of them were available before, and those have not changed:

• $300 annual Equinox credit:
• $200 annual airline incidentals credit (e.g. booking fees, baggage fees, seat reservation fees, etc).
• $209 annual Clear Plus membership credit.
• $120 TSA Precheck/Global Entry membership credit once every four years.
• $120 annual Uber One membership credit
• $100 Saks Fifth Ave credit (2 semi-annual $50 credits)

The very nice lounge access perks remain unchanged

One of the big benefits of the Amex platinum ah always been the lounge access it provides. For this benefit nothing changes, meaning that you will still be able to access all lounges you were able to access before, but there’s also no new benefits here either. These are the lounge networks you can access:

• Amex Centurion lounges: At the time when Amex started with its own lounge network, this was very much a novel idea for a card issuer. In the meantime, Chase and Capital One are also opening their own lounges, but Amex is way in the lead with a comparatively massive network of global lounge locations. Yes that’s right: while many are in the US, there’s a lot of locations internationally as well, with one of the newest locations being in Tokyo Haneda.
• Priority Pass lounges: Well-known to most traveler sin the US by now, Priority Pass is a network of global lounge locations. Most any large International airport has a Priority Pass lounge, so this membership nearly guarantees access to a lounge in most major destinations that you might frequent. A handy benefit to have, but note that these days so many cards offer a Priority pass membership, that crowding is also becoming a real issue.
• Delta Sky Clubs: The Amex Platinum provides 10 Delta Sky Clubs every membership year that you can use when traveling with an eligible Delta flight.

• US Escape Lounges: a lounge network with locations mostly in the US, UK and Australia. The Amex platinum benefit will provide you access to the US locations only, though.
• Select Plaza premium lounges: Another global lounge network, similar to Escape lounges. Note that some Plaza premium lounges can be accessed through Priority Pass as well
• Select Lufthansa Lounges: Amex Platinum can provide access to a selection of Lufthansa Lounges if you’re on a same-day Lufthansa Group flight (including Lufthansa, Swiss, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways and Austrian Airlines and their various subsidiaries). Note that you can enter the Lufthansa Business Lounges with any ticket class, but to enter the Lufthansa Senator Lounge you must fly in business class.

For exact details on which lounges you can enter, Amex has a handy online tool to find global lounge locations that participate in Amex’s Global Lounge program.

Is the card worth the annual fee?

The ultimate question is: is this card worth the annual fee? my thoughts on this are two-fold: given that the card has some useful lounge access perks, the card should be able to give you at least a return on your $895 investment through the credits that are offered, but, as with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, those credits are not always easy to maximize.

The bonus categories are not impressive

The Amex Platinum is not a card you should get for its bonus categories. While 5x points on flights purchased directly with airlines is of an industry leading category, you can easily get better yields by buying through other card issuer’s travel portals using their credit cards. It just means that you have to book through the travel portal, which I’m not a fan of by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s very hard to justify getting a card with a $895 annual fee, to maximize points earning in a single category where, quite frankly, you probably don’t spend all that much.

The credits: only worth as much as you can use them

I’ve mentioned the problem with credits before: they are only worth as much as you can extract benefit from for your particular situation. While there may not be a need to maximize every single credit, the single best way to ‘earn back’ the annual fee is by using the credits: that means earning at least $895 worth of credits. Let’s see how easy that is:

• The $600 hotel credit looks great on the surface, but the problem is you need to book at least 2 nights with a hotel that’s part of Amex’s Hotel Collection or Fine Hotel + Resorts program. These hotels are not cheap and a single night can easily run you in the $300+ range. So to me, this sort of credit that is also dispensed as two $300 semi-annual credits, may not be so easy to maximize without spending a whole lot of extra money that you otherwise would not have spent. In comparison, Citi’s Strata Elite $300 annual hotel credit can be used for any hotel, from the cheapest to the most expensive, and so should really be seen as basically as good as cash.
• The $400 Resy credit is as good as cash. You need to enroll, but when you do, you’ll often find that you can reimbursed without even having had to search for a Resy-affiliated restaurant. The problem here is that this benefit is broken into 4 quarterly $100 credits, and that forms a barrier to maximizing the credit.
• The 300$ digital entertainment credit, as long as you don’t already get the selected digital entertainment services through other means, this credit is essentially ‘set and forget’, and easy to maximize.
• The $200 Uber Cash credit should be easy to maximize by spending it on food orders or rides.
• The $200 airline incidentals credit is a fun one, and something I’d potentially use. For example to upgrade to a better economy seat, or add an extra checked bag, so I can totally see this being useful. The one catch is that this can only be used on your ‘designated’ US airline: you’ll need to be loyal to that airline, and international airlines cannot be selected.
• The $209 Clear Plus credit is something I’d be interested to try, but with TSA PreCheck/Global Entry being as streamlined as it is, I’m not so sure Clear Plus even gives much of an edge anymore.
• The $120 TSA PreCheck/Global Entry credit is greta, but is also provided by many other credit cards, so is hardly unique.

Admittedly those are the big ticket items and the credits that are most ‘generalizable’ A lot of the other credits are very merchant-focused so if you never visit those merchants, or have no interest in their products (and you would otherwise never buy with them anyway), these credits are sort of useless. That is to say, I like to think of credits as being ‘useful’ if they save me money – not forcing me to spend money on things I would otherwise not have bought anyway. With that in mind:

• I have no use for the credits for OURA, Lululemon and Saks.
• The Equinox credit is definitely nice and I’d pick that up, but I know myself well enough to know that I’d be too lazy to go. I have a gym in my building and in my office, so that’s where I go to the gym – I wouldn’t actually go to Equinox.
• I would take the Uber One membership, but don’t think I’d actually use it seriously.

So what’s the tally? I would likely maximize ~$1100 worth of credits, and if I account for any missed months with e.g. Uber Cash, Resy or Digital Entertainment credits, I’d come down to about ~$900. So, by my maths, I’d be able to earn back the annual fee with credits alone.

The lounge access may be the biggest selling point, but how do the lounges stack up to the competition?

As I mentioned above, Amex Platinum grants you access to a massive number of lounges, but let’s be honest: the competition hasn’t been sitting still:

• The Sapphire Reserve gives access to the Sapphire Lounges, select Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounges, and provides a Priority Pass membership. The Sapphire Lounges are generally very good, though there aren’t that many of them yet, and I personally prefer the Maple Leaf Lounge to the Lufthansa Lounge (at least at Frankfurt Intl Airport).
• The Capital One Venture X provides access to the lovely network of Capital One lounges, though there’s only a handful of them, and provides a Priority Pass membership. Overall, the Venture X really doesn’t have as impressive a lounge access perk, but it’s also the cheapest premium card: only $395 per year!
• The Citibank Strata Elite comes out on the bottom unfortunately, since it only provides 4 annual American Admirals Club day passes, and a Priority Pass membership. Citibank doesn’t have its own lounge network.

Overall, I dare say that the Amex Platinum has the most comprehensive lounge benefit, but while the Amex Centurion lounge network is substantially bigger than either the Sapphire or Capital One lounge networks, the Centurion Lounges are also comparatively older than either Sapphire or Capital One lounges, and are generally a little less ncie or updated in design.

So, would I get this card?

Yes, I would. I believe I would be able to earn back the $895 annual fee with a mix of the available credits, and the lounge benefits are great. But, the catch for me is the welcome offer: given the ‘as high as’ 175k points welcome offer that has been around, I wouldn’t get this card for anything less than a 100k welcome offer, and would probably want an offer north of 125k. Unfortunately I have not been eligible for any welcome offer at all, so as long as that is the case, I will not be getting this card.

As a side note: if you can’t get the Amex Platinum card, do consider the Amex Gold. It’s rapidly become my favorite card! While not a travel card, for those of you spending a lot of money on food (either eating in or out), you’ll find that this card will provide a good return on your spending.

Summary

In this post I provide an analysis of the recently refreshed Amex Platinum card, one of the most well-known premium cards out there. With the newly elevated annual fee of $895, the price to have this card went up by $200, but there are also a slew of new and enhanced credits. I do think you will be able to earn back the annual fee with a mix of those credits, but there’s no denying that the Amex Platinum has becomes a veritable coupon book, which I find decidedly ‘un-premium’. The most important benefit of this card, namely the lounge access, has remained unchanged, providing the most comprehensive lounge access benefit of any card.

Overall, the Platinum Card is worth having under two conditions: (1) you don’t already have other premium credit cards that provide their own comprehensive lounge access benefits, and (2) you have the patience to ensure you’re earning back your annual fee through all of those credits without necessarily spending more than you’d otherwise would. Otherwise, you may just find yourself losing money on this $895 annual fee.