Amex Gold vs. Chase Sapphire: Which Earns More on Dining?

These two cards get compared constantly, and for good reason — they are the two most common answers to "what’s the best card for eating out?" But they earn differently enough that the right answer depends entirely on how your spending actually breaks down.

The earning rates, side by side

American Express® Gold Card — $325 annual fee

• 4x points at restaurants worldwide, including takeout and delivery in the U.S., on up to $50,000 in purchases per year.
• 4x points at U.S. supermarkets, on up to $25,000 per year.
• 3x points on flights booked directly with airlines or through Amex Travel.
• 1x on everything else.

Chase Sapphire Preferred — $95 annual fee

• 3x points on dining worldwide (including takeout and eligible delivery) and on online groceries.
• 5x points on travel through the Chase Travel portal; 2x on other travel.
• 1x on everything else, plus a 25% redemption boost through Chase Travel.

Running the numbers on a real budget

Take a household spending $500/month on dining and $500/month on groceries — $6,000 and $6,000 a year, both comfortably inside Amex Gold’s $50,000 and $25,000 category caps.

• Amex Gold: 4x on both categories = 24,000 + 24,000 = 48,000 Membership Rewards points.
• Sapphire Preferred: 3x dining + 3x online groceries (note: this only applies to online grocery purchases, not in-store) = 18,000 + 18,000 = 36,000 Ultimate Rewards points, assuming all grocery spend is online. In-store grocery spend on the Sapphire Preferred only earns the base 1x — a meaningful gap if most of a household’s groceries are bought in person.

On raw points earned, Amex Gold wins this specific matchup — decisively so if grocery spend happens in-store, where Sapphire Preferred drops to 1x but Amex Gold’s 4x supermarket bonus has no such restriction.

But points aren’t worth the same amount

Membership Rewards and Ultimate Rewards are both excellent transferable currencies, and in practice most experienced points users value them similarly — commonly in the 1.7 to 2 cent range per point when transferred well. Neither card has an inherent redemption-value edge over the other; the gap here is in how many points you earn, not what each point is worth.

Where Sapphire Preferred claws some value back is the 25% boost on Chase Travel portal redemptions — a guaranteed floor that doesn’t require finding transfer-partner award space. Amex Gold has no equivalent fixed-value redemption boost; its points are strongest when transferred to a partner, weaker if redeemed for cash or gift cards.

Annual fee and credits

• Amex Gold ($325): up to $120 dining credit, $120 Uber Cash, $100 Resy credit, and $84 Dunkin’ credit — up to $424 in credits a year if you use every single one, which in practice most cardholders don’t fully capture.
• Sapphire Preferred ($95): $100 Chase Travel hotel credit (no minimum stay) plus a $120 Global Entry/TSA PreCheck/NEXUS credit every four years — easier to use in full because neither requires enrolling in a specific merchant credit program.

The verdict

If your spending is genuinely dominated by restaurants and U.S. supermarkets — and you’ll actually use the Uber Cash, Resy, and Dunkin’ credits rather than let them expire unused — Amex Gold earns more points for the same spend and can justify its higher fee. If your dining spend is moderate, your groceries are mostly in-store, or you’d rather have a lower, simpler annual fee with credits that require zero setup, the Sapphire Preferred is the more forgiving card. Plenty of serious points collectors carry both, since Amex and Chase points don’t compete with each other — they just give you two different sets of transfer partners to work with.