Compare the Features and Benefits of Citi Custom Cash℠ Card and
Capital One Venture X Credit Card

You will earn 5% cash back (as ThankYou® Points) on eligible purchases in your top spending category each billing cycle, up to the first $500 spent, with 1% cash back thereafter on all of your other eligible purchases made with your Citi Custom Cash card. You do not have to select anything at any time. It’s automatic. And these are not rotating bonus categories – it’s the same choice each month.
The eligible bonus spend categories are:

• Restaurants
• Gas Stations
• Grocery Stores
• Select Travel
• Select Transit
• Select Streaming Services
• Drugstores
• Home Improvement Stores
• Fitness Clubs
• Live Entertainment

You’ll earn an unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases.

The 5X applies to your top category each month. So it’s kind of like a rotating bonus category except you choose – and you don’t even have to technically choose or register, the 5% is automatically applied to your highest spend category each billing cycle.

As a comparison, the Chase Freedom Flex offers a 5X rotating quarterly bonus category, but with a limit of $1,500 per quarter and on whatever categories they choose. This works out to the same $1,500 per quarter, but divided evenly each month such that you can utilize different categories each month.

This is the first and only card that I can think of that offers 5% at home improvement stores and at drugstores.

While a heavy spender may not be super impressed with the $500 a month cap, I think many spenders would be very happy to earn 5% on restaurants, grocery stores, gas, etc. on a card with no annual fee.

And heck, you could buy $500 worth of show or concert tickets one month and get 5% on that!

The Citi Custom Cash card is a perfect companion card to a Citi Strata℠ Premier and a Citi® Double Cash card, creating a Citi Trifecta. If you have all three cards, you would use the Citi Strata℠ Premier for 3X Citi ThankYou points® on air travel & hotels, gas stations, restaurants and supermarkets, the Citi® Double Cash for everything else at 2X, except for one category out of the Custom Cash’s options for 5X up to $500 a month.

Personally, I think that most people would want to make this their go-to card for gas stations, as that is an easy one to spend roughly $500 a month on. But, of course, what category you pick will depend on your own spending patterns.

You might be thinking about getting multiple Citi Custom Cash cards – a Custom Cash card for each category, but you cannot. Acknowledging that someone might want to hold many of these to get everything at 5X, they have capped this card at one per person.

Bonus Eligibility Rules for the Citi Custom Cash card

The bonus offer is not available if you received one for opening a new Citi Custom Cash℠ Card account in the past 48 months.

Bonus Category Definitions

It’s important to know what counts and what doesn’t, especially for bonus categories that start with the word “Select.”

The following definitions apply to the Citi Custom Cash card categories:

Restaurants

Includes purchases at cafes, bars, lounges and fast food restaurants. Excludes purchases at bakeries, caterers, restaurants located inside another business (such as hotels, stores, stadiums, grocery stores, or warehouse clubs) and third party dining delivery services.

Gas Stations

Excludes gasoline purchases at warehouse clubs, discount stores, convenience stores or other merchants that do not use the gas station merchant category code.

Grocery Stores

Includes purchases at supermarkets, meat/seafood stores, dairy stores, bakeries, and miscellaneous food/convenience stores. Excludes purchases at general merchandise/discount superstores; wholesale/warehouse clubs; candy, nut and confectionery stores. Purchases made at online supermarkets or with grocery delivery services also do not qualify if the merchant does not classify itself as a supermarket by using the supermarket merchant category code.

Select Travel

Includes airline, hotel, cruise line and travel agency purchases. Excludes timeshares, boat leases and rentals, campgrounds and trailer parks, and real estate agencies.

Select Transit

Includes car rentals, ferries, commuter railways, subways, taxis/limousines/car services, passenger railways, bridge and road tolls, parking lots/garages, bus lines, and motor home and recreational vehicle rentals. Excludes bike/scooter rentals, auto clubs and insurance companies.

Select Streaming Services

Includes the following cable, satellite, and streaming providers: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Apple Music, CBS All Access, Disney+, AT&T TV NOW, ESPN+, fuboTV, HBO Max, NBA League Pass, Netflix, Pandora, Showtime, Sling TV, Spotify, Starz, SiriusXM, Vudu, YouTube Red, YouTube TV, and Tidal.

Drugstores

Includes purchases made at pharmacies in grocery stores, general merchandise/discount superstores, and wholesale/warehouse clubs if those merchants submit purchases made in their pharmacy with the drug store and pharmacy merchant category code.

Home Improvement Stores

Includes purchases at home supply warehouse stores, lumber and building materials stores, paint and wallpaper stores, hardware stores, nurseries – lawn and garden supply stores and paints, varnishes and supplies stores. Excludes florists and florists’ supply stores; nursery stock; wholesale construction stores; and glass stores.

Fitness Clubs

Includes membership fee and other purchases at athletic, sports and recreation facilities requiring membership such as health, tennis, and swimming clubs. Excludes fees associated with virtual services for home exercise equipment, personal monitoring devices, or fitness streaming classes.

Live Entertainment

Includes ticket purchases for live entertainment, including: concerts, live sporting events, live theatrical productions, amusement parks, and orchestras. Excludes: charitable organizations that provide live entertainment (benefits), sporting camps, sports complexes where you participate in the sport, public and private golf courses, country clubs (including membership fees), bowling alleys, movie theaters, tourist attractions, museums and art galleries.

💳 This card earns Capital One Miles. Capital One often runs transfer bonuses where you can get even more points when you transfer to airline or hotel partners at designated times. Transfer bonuses are awesome. Get 20%, 30%, 40% or more bonus miles when you transfer points at the right times. But they are easy to miss!

You can see all past Transfer Bonuses from Capital One Miles here.

Even better? Get notified when a new transfer bonus comes out and again before it ends (either or both, your choice). Sign up for free alerts right here. 🔔

The Capital One Venture X rewards credit card is an incredibly well rounded travel credit card that is easy to recommend to almost anyone. The first objection is always the annual fee, but once you see that the $300 annual travel credit and 10,000 miles anniversary bonus (worth $100 or more) nets out the annual fee, it’s much easier to go and focus on the benefits.

If you consider the annual fee to effectively be -$5 as I do based on the above though process, then you are looking a a TON of benefits for a card where you aren’t out a ton on the annual fee with nothing in return.

You’re getting Priority Pass, Plaza Premium, Capital One Lounges, and Virgin Clubhouse airport lounge access, free authorized users that get that get the same (even when not traveling with you), top tier car rental status, Global Entry (or PreCheck) fee reimbursement, the ability to earn up to 10X miles on travel booked via Capital One, primary car rental CDW, cell phone protection, Extended Warranty, Purchase Protection, and travel benefits like trip delay or trip cancellation.

See, that’s a mouthful! You would expect to be paying a massive annual fee for all of that (without credits that net it out) and in this case, you’re just not. Of course, you’ll still have to pay the $395 fee upfront, but you’ll also be able to get that early spend bonus of 75,000 miles worth at least $750. I think that offsets it nicely!

In my opinion, this card is simply one of the best travel cards around in terms of both benefits and value for money.