Chase and Amex Just Raised Annual Fees Again: Is Churning Premium Cards Still Worth It in 2026?

If you've been out of the premium card game for a year or two, the sticker shock is real. The Chase Sapphire Reserve's annual fee jumped from $550 to $795 — a roughly 45% increase — for anyone who applied on or after June 23, 2025, with existing cardholders hit at their next renewal starting October 26, 2025. The Amex Platinum followed with its own hike, from $695 to $895, a 29% jump that took effect for new applicants on September 18, 2025, and rolled out to existing cardholders at renewal starting January 2, 2026.

Two of the most-applied-for premium cards in the churning world now cost more than $1,600 combined if you held both past their first renewal. That's the headline. It's also mostly irrelevant to how most churners actually use these cards.

Why the ongoing fee barely matters to churners

The number that actually drives a churning decision isn't the annual fee — it's the welcome bonus math, and most churners never see that second annual fee at all. The standard playbook is simple: apply, hit minimum spend, collect the bonus, and close or downgrade before the account renews for year two. If you're on that pattern, a fee increase from $550 to $795 costs you nothing, because you were never paying it twice.

Where the fee hike actually bites is the calendar. Both issuers extended a grace period before the new fee applies to existing cardholders — the Reserve's kicked in at renewal on or after October 26, 2025, and the Platinum's at renewal on or after January 2, 2026. If you opened either card before those windows, you may have gotten a full extra year at the old price. That window has now mostly closed for both cards, so anyone applying today is paying full freight from day one, and the safe-close-before-renewal decision matters more than ever.

This is exactly the kind of thing that trips people up — not because the math is hard, but because the renewal date is easy to lose track of when it's sitting in an email from a bank ten months ago instead of somewhere you actually look.

What actually changed besides the price

Both issuers loaded up the refreshed cards with new statement credits to try to offset the higher fee, and it's worth knowing what they are even if you're planning to close before ever using most of them — some of these are worth capturing in the bonus year.

The Sapphire Reserve added a $500 annual credit for stays booked through Chase's "The Edit" hotel collection, a $300 dining credit, $300 in StubHub/Viagogo event credits split semiannually, $150 semiannual dining credits through Chase's Exclusive Tables program, plus $10 monthly credits each for Peloton and Lyft. The Amex Platinum added up to $600 in annual hotel credits split across Fine Hotels + Resorts and the Hotel Collection, a $300 semiannual Resy dining credit, and a $25 monthly digital entertainment credit, on top of its existing airline fee and Uber Cash credits.

If you're closing the account within the first year anyway, most of these are noise — you won't have time to use quarterly or semiannual credits before the bonus posts and the account closes. What matters for churning purposes is the welcome offer and whether the minimum spend is one you can hit cleanly with organic spend.

Does the welcome bonus still clear the bar?

That depends entirely on the current offer, which moves around more than the annual fee does — check the live offer through the issuer's site or a tracker like Doctor of Credit before applying rather than assuming last quarter's numbers still hold. What doesn't change is the framework: take the cash value of the bonus (using a conservative points valuation, not the aspirational one), subtract the one annual fee you'll actually pay, and compare that net number to the time cost of hitting minimum spend and the 5/24 slot (or Amex's own application rules) you're using up.

A $795 or $895 fee is a rounding error against a four-figure welcome bonus. It becomes a real problem only if you (a) forget to close or downgrade before the second annual fee posts, or (b) get talked into keeping the card "for the perks" without running the math on whether you'll actually use $600+ in credits that require remembering to redeem them on a schedule.

The real risk isn't the fee, it's the deadline

This is the operational risk that actually costs churners money: not the credit inquiry, not the fee itself, but missing the cancel-or-downgrade window before a $795 or $895 charge posts to a card you were never planning to keep. If you already have the Sapphire Preferred's more recent refresh on your radar — a $95-fee card that got a genuine bonus bump without turning into a $795 commitment — it's worth comparing against the Reserve for anyone deciding which Chase Sapphire product is worth the application slot right now.

If retention offers come up when you call to close, that's a separate decision — sometimes the credits genuinely pencil out for someone who travels enough to use them, and it's worth hearing the offer before you decide. But that's a choice to make deliberately, not a fee you want to eat by accident because a renewal date slipped past you.

That's the part BonusTrail is built for: log the account-open date, the fee, and the actual close-by deadline in one place, so a $795 or $895 charge never shows up as a surprise on a statement instead of a decision you made on purpose.