7 reasons to get the Capital One Venture Rewards card

Editor’s note: This is a recurring post, regularly updated with new information and offers. The world of points, miles and credit cards can be complex — full of potentially confusing terms and unfamiliar abbreviations. That’s what makes a card like the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card such a precious commodity, with its simplicity in redeeming …

Mar 3, 2025 - 16:16

7 reasons to get the Capital One Venture Rewards card

Editor’s note: This is a recurring post, regularly updated with new information and offers.

The world of points, miles and credit cards can be complex — full of potentially confusing terms and unfamiliar abbreviations. That’s what makes a card like the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card such a precious commodity, with its simplicity in redeeming miles and a number of valuable airline and hotel transfer partners.

While it’s frequently compared to the more premium Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, the Venture Rewards has plenty to offer on its own. With the many ways to use your rewards, booking free travel can be as complicated or effortless as you make it.

Here are seven reasons why the Capital One Venture Rewards is one of the best rewards credit cards to have in your wallet.

Valuable welcome offer

New Capital One Venture Rewards cardholders can earn 75,000 bonus miles after spending $4,000 on purchases within the first three months from account opening. Plus, new cardholders will receive a $250 Capital One Travel credit to use in the first cardholder year. This is a limited-time offer.

If you plan to transfer your miles to Capital One’s hotel or airline partners, this welcome offer is worth up to $1,638, including the statement credit, according to our February 2025 valuations.

Of course, it’s possible to get even more value from them depending on which transfer partners you leverage and which awards you book. Even if you use your miles at a fixed value for travel purchases through Capital One Travel, you’ll still get $750 worth of flights, hotels or car rentals.

Great for everyday spending

Many other credit cards offer bonus rewards on common purchase categories such as groceries, gas or restaurants. But what about purchases that don’t fall under one of these categories, such as online shopping, gym memberships or kitchen appliances?

Family eating at a table — MASKOT/GETTY IMAGES

The Capital One Venture Rewards earns 5 miles per dollar on hotels, car rentals and vacation rentals booked through Capital One Travel and 2 miles per dollar on every other purchase.

That’s a 9.25% return on select Capital One Travel bookings and a 3.7% return on every other purchase per TPG’s February 2025 valuations.

For everyday spending, the Venture Rewards is ideal. Earning 2 miles per dollar on a wide range of purchases is a great return on your spending.

Easy to redeem miles

The Capital One Venture Rewards allows you to redeem your miles at a fixed value toward travel charges. This means you can effectively cover eligible travel purchases made in the last 90 days by redeeming your miles at a rate of 1 cent each.

There’s no minimum redemption amount, either (unless you don’t have enough miles to cover the entire purchase, in which case the minimum is 2,500 miles).

Let’s say you book a one-way, domestic award flight and pay the $5.60 in taxes with your card. You can use 560 miles — as each mile is worth 1 cent — to cover this small purchase.

Capital One makes it easy to redeem your miles this way, and you have two options. For one, you can book directly through Capital One Travel by selecting miles as your payment option.

Or you can simply purchase travel with your credit card, then log into your account afterward and select the option to cash your miles in as a statement credit against the charge.

Great airline and hotel transfer partners

You can squeeze more value out of your Capital One miles by transferring them to any of the following 15-plus travel loyalty partners. All of your Capital One miles will transfer at a simple 1:1 rate, with the exception of two partners (as noted below):

Capital One offers one of the most diverse transferable rewards programs around. You have airlines covering all three major alliances and several non-alliance airlines, such as Etihad and Emirates. Some of these options (such as Finnair) are unique to Capital One, too.

Convert cash back from other Capital One cards into Venture miles

You can convert cash-back rewards from Capital One into miles if you also have a Capital One miles-earning card.

Young casually clothed woman online shopping from her domestic kitchen — PEKIC/GETTY IMAGES

For example, you can turn the cash back you earn with the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card into miles if you’ve also got the Capital One Venture Rewards or the no-annual-fee Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card.

That means you can take advantage of the Savor’s bonus-earning categories, including dining and groceries, to rack up lots of extra rewards. Then, you can convert those rewards into Capital One Venture miles and transfer them to the program’s airline and hotel partners.

Valuable ongoing perks

Although the Capital One Venture Rewards isn’t actively competing with benefits provided by ultra-premium cards such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve® or The Platinum Card® from American Express, it does offer some modest perks:

No foreign transaction fees
MasterRental Insurance*
Travel assistant services*
Purchase assurance*

*Benefit available to accounts approved for the World Elite Mastercard product, subject to terms, conditions, and exclusions in the World Elite Mastercard Guide to Benefits. See Account Terms or Application Terms for more details. Terms, conditions and exclusions apply.

Reasonable annual fee

The Capital One Venture Rewards only charges a $95 annual fee, which is a low cost for such a potentially valuable card. It’s easy to offset the annual fee between the easy-to-use earning structure, a simple redemption process, a diverse set of transfer partners and other perks.

Portrait of a beautiful girl banking online — MIXMEDIA/GETTY IMAGES

However, be sure to crunch the numbers and make sure that the higher-priced Capital One Venture X doesn’t make more sense for you instead.

With an array of added perks — like $300 in annual credits when book through Capital One Travel and 10,000 bonus miles when you renew your card — you may easily be able to justify the additional annual fee on the premium Venture X.

Bottom line

The Capital One Venture Rewards is a great mid-tier credit card that’s a strong candidate for an all-in-one card.

Not only do you accumulate at least 2 miles per dollar on every purchase, but you also can keep things simple and flexible by redeeming your miles for the travel purchases you put on the card.

If you decide to study award charts and look for sweet spots instead, you’ll have lots of airline and hotel programs to choose from in the Capital One transfer partner lineup.

That’s what makes the Venture Rewards so special — it lets cardholders earn miles fast and then use them in myriad ways for outsize value. All that and more is why the card deserves a place in your wallet, especially with its valuable welcome offer.

To learn more, check out our full review of the Capital One Venture Rewards.

Learn more: Capital One Venture Rewards Card

For Capital One products listed on this page, some of the benefits may be provided by Visa® or Mastercard® and may vary by product. See the respective Guide to Benefits for details, as terms and exclusions apply.