Review: Chase Freedom Flex℠ credit card (no annual fee + quarterly bonus categories)

The Chase Freedom Flex® credit card is, relatively speaking, one of the newer cards in Chase’s lineup, and it didn’t take long for the card to become one of the more useful miles & points credit cards on the market.

With a $0 annual fee, strong earning rates in several categories, and a set of benefits that most no-fee cards can’t match, this is a card that’s worth most people’s attention.

The Chase Freedom Flex® credit card

In brief

The Chase Freedom Flex® credit card is a $0 annual fee credit card that earns 3% to 5% cash back (or, in the right circumstances, Chase Ultimate Rewards Points) across a range of categories, including rotating quarterly categories that change every three months. It earns just 1% on everything else, which tells you exactly what this card is for: it’s a card you pair, not a card you lead with.

In detail

Here’s what you need to know about the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card:

Annual fee:

• $0 (zero)

Cost of authorized user cards:

• $0 (zero)

Current welcome offer:

Earn $200 cash back (or 20,000 Ultimate Rewards Points*) after spending $500 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening (terms apply)

Note: This offer isn’t available to current cardmembers of this card, or to previous cardmembers who received a new cardmember bonus on this card within the last 24 months.

Also, be aware that Chase classifies the Freedom Flex® credit card as a standalone product, so the welcome offer is available to current holders of the Chase Freedom credit card (no longer open to new applicants) and the Chase Freedom Unlimited® (review).

*More on this later.

Earnings:

• 5% cash back (or 5 points/dollar) on up to $1,500 of spending each quarter in rotating bonus categories (activation required)
• 5% cash back (or 5 points/dollar) on travel purchased through the Chase Travel℠ portal
• 3% cash back (or 3 points/dollar) on dining (includes takeout and eligible delivery)
• 3% cash back (or 3 points/dollar) on spending at drugstores
• 2% cash back (or 2 points/dollar) on Lyft rides booked through the Lyft app (through 30 September 2027)
• 1% cash back (or 1 point/dollar) on all other eligible spending

Note: This card charges a 3% foreign transaction fee, so it isn’t a card you should be using outside the US.

Key benefits:

• $0 annual fee.
• Earn valuable Ultimate Rewards Points in place of cash back when this card is paired with a Chase Sapphire Card or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card.
• Complimentary DoorDash DashPass membership for 6 months (activate by 31 December 2027), plus up to $10 off quarterly on non-restaurant DoorDash orders.
• Trip cancellation/interruption insurance – up to $1,500 per covered traveler and $6,000 per trip.
• 120-day purchase protection – up to $500 per item against damage or theft, and up to $50,000 per account. (New York residents get 90 days, not 120 days cover.)
• Extended warranty protection – this extends the time period of the U.S. manufacturer’s warranty by an additional year, on eligible warranties of three years or less.
• Auto rental collision cover – secondary cover in the US, but primary cover when you rent outside the US, up to $60,000.

Note: The card currently offers cell phone protection (up to $800 per claim and $1,000 per year, with a maximum of two claims per year and a $50 deductible), but Chase is discontinuing this benefit on 20 September 2026. Eligible losses incurred through 19 September 2026 are still covered.

Because this benefit is on its way out, we’re not including it in our overall assessment of the card in this article.

How Chase pays out cash back

The Chase Freedom Flex® credit card is, at its core, a cash back credit card, but Chase pays cash back in the form of points which cardholders can exchange for statement credits at a rate of 1 point = 1 cent.

As I’ll show a little later in this article, under the right conditions, the points that this card earns can be used for more than cash back.

Why we like the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card

The welcome offer

$200 back for $500 of spending in 3 months is a 40% rate of return on the required spending, and it’s about as low a spending target as you’ll find. That’s a genuinely easy bonus to earn.

Things get better if you hold one of the Chase Sapphire cards or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, because the $200 cash back can be taken as 20,000 Ultimate Rewards Points which can then be converted to a variety of other rewards points/miles (more on this later).

Here at TFM, we value Ultimate Rewards points at 1.5 cents each, so to us, that puts the value of this welcome offer at $300. That’s a 60% return on the required spending, from a card that charges $0 to hold.

The rates of return

3% to 5% cash back is a strong return from a no-annual-fee credit card but, as mentioned above, for holders of one of the Chase Sapphire cards or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, it gets better.

If you’re a fan of pure cash back, the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card will work very well for you, but it can also be a very good card for anyone who loves earning a valuable rewards currency and who is happy to put in a bit of extra work to maximize the value that the card offers.

When held alongside a Chase Sapphire Card or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, the cash back that the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card offers can be taken in the form of Ultimate Rewards Points.

These points can be transferred to a variety of airline and hotel loyalty programs where they can be used to extract considerably more value than the basic cash back that the card offers.

Essentially, the cash back that the Flex card earns can be turned into a currency that can be used to book high-end hotels and premium cabin flights for considerably less than they would ordinarily cost.

We value Chase Ultimate Rewards Points at 1.5 cents each (based on the value we know we can get out of each point with relative ease) and that means that in effect, the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card offers us the following earnings rates:

Effective rebates of 7.5% on:

• Travel booked through Chase
• All quarterly bonus categories (on up to $1,500 of spending each quarter)

Effective rebates of 4.5% on:

• Spending at drugstores
• Spending on dining (including takeaway and delivery)

There are a number of premium credit cards on the market (i.e. cards with annual fees of over $200) that don’t offer rebates as good as these, and yet the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card comes with a $0 annual fee.

Making the most of the quarterly categories

The rotating 5% categories can be one of the more interesting things about this card, and in a quarter where Chase blesses us with some useful bonus categories (e.g. Amazon, PayPal, grocery stores, gas stations, etc …), this card can offer a relatively easy way to earn a good number of Ultimate Rewards points.

Two things to keep in mind, however, are that you’ll need to remember to activate the bonus categories every quarter, and that the 5% is capped at $1,500 of spending per quarter (not per category).

If you hit the $1,500 spending cap in a quarter, that will earn you an unimpressive $75 in cash back or a significantly more impressive 7,500 Ultimate Rewards Points (which we’d value at $112.50 but could use to get yet more value).

The benefits

For a card that comes with a $0 annual fee, the list of protections here is pretty good.

The auto rental collision cover is the one worth knowing about, because it’s primary when you rent outside the US. Most cards only give you secondary cover, which means claiming on your own insurance first. Primary cover means that you don’t have to involve your own insurance company if there’s an incident, you just deal with Chase.

Beyond that, this card gives cardholders trip cancellation and interruption insurance (up to $1,500 per covered traveler and $6,000 per trip), 120-day purchase protection, extended warranty protection, and a complimentary DoorDash DashPass membership for six months with a $10 quarterly credit on non-restaurant orders.

None of these are groundbreaking or particularly exciting, but again, keep in mind that this is a card with a $0 annual fee, so as long as you’re never carrying a balance and paying interest (something you should never, ever do with a rewards credit card), you’re not paying for any of these benefits.

The Flex or the Freedom Unlimited?

There’s overlap between the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card and the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card, so it’s worth being clear about what the differences between the two cards are.

They both earn 5% back on Chase Travel spending, 3% back on dining, 3% back at drugstores, and 2% back on Lyft spending, but that’s just about where the similarities end.

The Chase Freedom Flex® credit card also offers the 5% rotating quarterly categories (on up to $1,500 of spending per quarter) that was mentioned earlier, but it earns just 1% on eligible spending outside its bonus categories.

The Chase Freedom Unlimited® card has no rotating categories, but it earns 1.5% on all eligible spending with no cap.

What this means is that if most of a person’s spending falls outside the bonus categories these cards offer, the Freedom Unlimited is probably the better card for them to hold because the card’s 1.5% cash back beats the Flex’s 1% cash back.

If, however, a person is going to make an effort to make the most of the quarterly bonus categories and has another (more rewarding card) on which to put their unbonused spending, the Flex card will probably be the better option as the 5% quarterly earnings will make a difference.

(Or, of course, you could hold both. There’s no annual fee on either of them, and between them they cover both bases.)

One negative thing to note

Just like the Chase Freedom Unlimited® card, the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card charges a 3% foreign transaction fee. That doesn’t make this a bad card, but it does mean that it’s a card that should stay at home when you travel. Keep it for your US spending, and carry a card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees when you leave the country.

Bottom line

The Chase Freedom Flex® credit card is a justifiably popular card in the miles and points world thanks to its $0 annual fee, strong earnings on dining and at drugstores as well as its rotating bonus categories.

Paired with a Chase Sapphire card or the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card it gets better, as it then can help a cardholder generate a good amount of valuable Ultimate Rewards points.

It’s disappointing to see Chase decide to remove this card’s excellent cell phone cover and that definitely takes off a bit of the gloss, but the Chase Freedom Flex® credit card remains an important card for those of us who collect Ultimate Rewards.