Rankings by math, not commissions. Advertiser Disclosure
Best cards → Recommended

◎ What should you add to your wallet?

Generated August 13, 2026 · the arithmetic runs in your browser · nothing you type here is stored or sent anywhere

No card issuer pays us today. UseTheseCards has no affiliate links and no advertisers, so this ranking is pure math over published card terms — nothing on this page earns us a cent. How we're paid · Editorial policy

Tell us roughly what you spend. We route every dollar across the cards you already hold — caps, category picks and this quarter's rotating categories included — and then check whether any card in our database would beat that by enough to be worth its annual fee. Very often, nothing does.

🍽️ Dining🛒 Groceries⛽ Gas✈️ Travel📺 Streaming💊 Drugstores🛍️ Online shopping🏬 Wholesale clubs💡 Utilities🧾 Everything else⚡ Signup offers◎ Recommended for you

1 · Your wallet

Reading your wallet…

2 · Your spending

Per month. The starting positions are rough national averages (BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey shape), not your numbers — drag them until they are.

📊 Exact numbers: import a statement — parsed on your phone, nothing uploaded
🛒 Groceries$500/mo
🍽️ Dining & takeout$300/mo
⛽ Gas$175/mo
✈️ Travel$150/mo
📺 Streaming$50/mo
🛍️ Online shopping$250/mo
💡 Utilities & internet$350/mo
💊 Drugstores$60/mo
🧾 Everything else$700/mo
Total $0/mo on cards

3 · What that earns you

a year, from the cards you already hold, routed perfectly
No card pays us today. Recommendations are ranked by YOUR math — fee-adjusted, SUB excluded from the ranking, sources dated.
The number a card is ranked by is the extra rewards it would earn on the spending you entered, minus its annual fee (a required subscription counts as the fee). A signup bonus is one-time money, so it is shown separately and never inflates that number. Points are converted at the conservative researched value for that currency — never above the lowest figure our cited sources publish — and a currency we could not value is left out instead of guessed at. How we're paid · Editorial policy
Card links go through usethesecards.com/go/ and today redirect straight to the issuer — we earn nothing and count nothing.

Where your money is going right now

Category by category, with the card that should be taking each dollar and the cap that stops it. A category showing two cards is a cap being spent and then spilled — that is the routing working, not a mistake.

How this works

We rank the alternative against your best case, not your worst. Before any card is considered, we solve the wallet you already own: every category's spend goes to the highest-earning card that can still take it, caps are spent and spilled over, a pick-your-category card is parked on the single category where it wins the most, and a rotating card only counts if this quarter's published calendar includes the category. Then we add one candidate card at a time and re-solve. The difference is the gain; the annual fee comes out of it; the top three are what's left.

What we deliberately do not count: rates that need a five-figure deposit balance or a specific payment wallet, travel-portal-only rates, signup bonuses, and any card whose points currency we could not value from published sources. Every one of those would make the recommendation look better and be less true.

What this can't know: whether you'll actually park the category every month, whether you carry a balance (if you do, no rewards math beats paying the APR down — that is the whole answer), your credit profile, and issuer rules like Chase's 5/24 that may make the card unavailable to you regardless. Wrong number? .