Chase has hiked up the annual fee on the United Club card all the way to $695. To make room for this card in your wallet, you’ll need to break open the piggybank. As you may expect, benefits have been added that make the card sound good on paper, but the changes here seem largely negative unless you’re planning to spend toward status anyway.
United Club Card New Offer & Key Card Details
| Card Offer and Details |
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Up to 100K Miles ⓘAffiliateThis is an affiliate offer. Frequent Miler may earn a commission if you are approved for this offer 95k miles after $5k spend in first 3 months + 5K bonus miles after you add an authorized user in the first 3 months (Offer Expires 5/7/2025)$695 Annual Fee This card is available to you if you do not have any United Club card and have not received a new Cardmember bonus for any United Club card in the past 24 months. Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: While pricey, the Chase United Club Infinite Card is a great choice for those who want a United club membership and other perks like a 10% discount on saver awards. . Earning rate: 5X Renowned Hotels & Resorts for United Cardmembers ✦ 4X United ✦ 2X dining & travel Card Info: Visa Signature issued by Chase. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: Earn up to 28,000 PQPs per calendar year: 1 PQP per $15 spend ✦ Earn a 10K award discount after $20K spend in a calendar year ✦ Earn an additional 10K award discount after $40K spend in a calendar year ✦ Earn United Club All access membership after $50K spend in a calendar year or achieving Premier Gold status or higher + 4 United Club passes when you also have an authorized user. Noteworthy perks: ✦ United Club membership ✦ Unlocks complimentary elite upgrades on award tickets, including companions on the same reservation ✦ 10% discount on saver level economy awards within the continental US and Canada ✦ Up to $120 for Global Entry, TSA Precheck or Nexus fee credit ✦ Priority check-in, security screening, baggage handling, and boarding ✦ Free 1st and 2nd checked bags ✦ Up to $200 in statement credits per cardmember for Renowned Hotels ✦ Up to $150 in rideshare credits per year (up $12 per month January to November and up to $18 in December, re-enrollment is required annually) ✦ Up to $50 in Travel Credit for Avis or Budget car rentals per cardmember year up to two times ✦ Hertz President's Circle Elite Status ✦ Primary auto rental collision damage waiver ✦ Up to $200 per year in statement credits for JSX purchases ✦ Free Instacart+ membership through 12/31/27 ✦ Two $10 Instacart credits per month through 12/31/27 |
What’s changing?
At a high level:
- Changes
- Annual fee is now $695 (up from $525)
- Receive 1.5K Premier Qualifying Points (PQPs) per qualification year starting in 2026
- Earn 1 PQP per $15 spent up to 28K per calendar year (previous cap was 15K PQPs)
- New spend bonuses:
- Earn a 10K award discount after $20K spend in a calendar year
- Earn an additional 10K award discount after $40K spend in a calendar year
- Earn United Club All access membership after $50K spend in a calendar year or achieving Premier Gold status or higher. Also earn 4 United Club passes if you reach this spend threshold and have an authorized user on your account.
- Coupon-like additions:
- Up to $200 in statement credits for Renowned Hotels & Resorts per cardmember year
- Up to $150 in rideshare statement credits: $12/month January to November; $18 in December. Yearly opt-in required
- Up to $50 in TravelBank credit per qualifying Avis/Budget rental made through cars.united.com per cardmember year (up to 2 times per year)
- $200 JSX per cardmember year
- Free Instacart+ membership thru 12/31/27
- Up to $240 in Instacart credits each year through 12/31/27: Two separate $10 credits per month
Analysis of the changes
The changes here are largely negative. The increase in annual fee is significant. Star Alliance lounge access, which previously came with United Club membership, now requires the All Access Membership that requires either $50K in calendar year spend or United Premier Gold status (which provides Star Alliance lounge access without this credit card).
The award discounts with $20K and $40K spend could obviously be nice if you redeem miles for awards every year, though they represent at most an additional half a mile per dollar spent, and that’s valuing them at an overly generous full face value.
The coupons could be good if you’ll use them, but the rideshare credit requires re-enrollment yearly, the Avis/Budget credits require bookings of 2+ days made through United, and JSX only has a significant route network for the western half of the US. The Renowned Hotels & Resorts credit could be useful, but it is hard to say since there is no public access to participating hotels and pricing. Further, you probably won’t get elite credit or benefits or hotel points when booking through Renowned Hotels & Resorts. If you’re a regular Instacart user, you might enjoy those monthly credits, but will all that and club access add up to more than $695 per year in value?
For some, the club access alone is worth the annual fee on this card. And if you’re going to spend your way to United PQPs for elite status, it probably makes more sense to do it on this card than the other consumer cards given the award discounts at $20K and $40K spend (though the business card offers a better base earning rate). If you’re going to spend your way to both of those discounts, it very well could make sense to spend to $50K for the All Access membership. While that’s all true, it all relies on a lot of “ifs” and feels like a slippery upward slope in order to justify a $695 annual fee.
There’s no doubt that the introductory bonus here is excellent and that alone could make it worth testing out the other benefits for a year, but you’ll have to work at squeaking enough value out of the side benefits to justify keeping the card long-term.
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Useless to me now without the *A access, if the had kept that maybe I could have justified the higher fee, but now this is getting cancelled as soon as it’s time to renew. The AA executive card had a similar coupon-book AF hike (somehow even worse with their stupid Lyft credit requirement) and I guess not enough people cancelled since they didn’t backtrack, so this is the way it has to be now, keep removing the hard perks while raising the fee and people keep paying so why not just keep continuing this trend as consumers certainly aren’t voting with their wallets. Maybe I’ll switch to Delta from now with their Reserve, at least with that you get the companion certificate which is way easier to use and has a lot more value than these stupid credits that most people don’t want.
This does it for me. The card benefits have steadily been going down, while the cost has gone up, since I got the card several years ago. I’ve been keeping this card because of the large limit I had on it, which helps my credit utilization score. But this latest round of fee increase plus decrease in meaningful benefits means it is time for me to say goodbye. As soon as it’s time to pay the higher fee, I’ll give up the card. I have to keep re-learning that loyalty is meaningless to businesses, unlike the way it used to be.
Do i try to hold onto this card ? Had this card for a few years now but an increase in annual is crazy, I feel like I’m stuck with a bad decision
The United clubs are a frickin’ daycare now. They need to restrict the amount of kids they allow in, not limit the adults. Families are bringing in 2, 3, 4, 5 kids at a time. Not a good experience when you have kids screaming and running all over like it’s a Ronald McDonald play land. United is making some really poor decisions these days and they are going to start feeling the hurt of lost Club card members and United fliers. The clubs used to be full of quiet respectful business professionals and now they are literally a circus of pajama wearing families. The company that claims to be the “leading airline” and “good leads the way” is just turning into another greedy company and we all know what happens when these companies jump on the greed wagon…it eventually falls off the cliff.
Kids are humans too. And most are more well behaved than half the adults I see in the clubs filling their backpacks with plates of chocolate chip cookies.
Yes of course kids are humans too. But many parents take advantage of the system and with the new rules it is being biased towards one of the main reasons the clubs are so crowded these days…multiple kids per family. Instead of getting rid of the two guest policy (which many business travelers use) and changing it to 1 guest and unlimited minors they could easily reduce the amount of people in the club by reducing the amount of minors allowed and/or to start charging for “family” passes. Afterall, one of the main reasons for them doing this was because the clubs were getting too crowded. Instead they have chosen to go a pretty crappy route and charge more all while taking membership benefits away. More money for less product. A lot of the airline revenue is generated from the credit cards which include Club cards, so they should have thought a little more clear headed on this before doing something so rash and foolish. I know several people with the Club cards and every single one that I have spoken with about it said they were going to cancel their Club card.
Its not taking advantage of the system if the rules state the primary card member can bring in their dependent children. You can’t take advantage of something when its built into the rules. Again, I regularly see grown adults taking advantage of the clubs: filling their bags with food, more drinks than a human really ever should consume, etc. etc. I travel weekly for work and take my kids on 2-3 trips per year. Its a benefit that should be allowed for those of us that spend so much time away from our families. I never bat an eye about a crying or noisy child. I simply remove myself from the area if its that bothersome. AirPods have taken care of that really ever being an issue though. Most recently I had to move away from an older male that was hacking up a lung in the Denver A club. Much more distracting than a child has ever been for me.
Is it losing the $75 IHG annual credit? I saw the IHG platinum status under the benefits but didn’t see the credit anymore.
Earning a foreign Star Alliance Gold would be better than holding this card.
The question is how many miles AF PYB will be now? It was 30k.
This is a total shitshow!