How we rank crypto cards

Every card on this site is ranked by one number: the cashback you'd actually keep each month after costs. This page explains how we work that out for all 21 cards, where our card data comes from, and how we make money.

The number we rank by

Here's the simple version. We take what you spend each month and run it through each card's actual reward rules, caps and all. Then we take off everything the card costs you in the first year: fees, FX, and the cost of anything you'd have to lock up to get the higher rate. What's left is what you'd keep.

Two cards can both say “4% back” and leave you with very different amounts. This is how you tell them apart.

What we take off

Card fees. Yearly, monthly and one-time costs.
Spend caps. Most boosted rates stop at a monthly limit. We pay the boosted rate up to the cap and the lower rate after it, the same way the card would.
FX. If you spend in a currency the card doesn't settle in, Visa or Mastercard charge a cross-border fee of about 1%, and card companies pass it on. A card that says "0% FX" usually means nothing on top of that. So we count the card's own FX fee or 1%, whichever is higher, unless its terms say in writing that you pay no FX or cross-border fee at all. Some cards add a fee on every purchase as well. On top of that we add about 0.3% for the card network's exchange rate, which is always a little worse than the real one. If we've tested a card ourselves, we use what we actually measured instead.
Staking. Some tiers only unlock if you lock up the card's own token, and tokens like these can fall a long way. So we take a deliberately cautious view and assume they lose 15% of their value over the year, priced at today's CoinGecko price. If a tier can also be reached by spending enough each month, we use that route instead and assume you lock up nothing.
Balance tiers. Some cards set your rate by how much you keep in the account. We assume you keep about a month of spending there anyway, at no cost. For anything above that, we count what the money could have earned elsewhere: 4% a year.
When a lock-up is worth it. A tier that needs tokens locked or a bigger balance only counts if its extra cashback covers the cost of holding. Each card page shows the monthly spend where that starts to happen, and any plan that needs something held has a lock badge saying what.

Where you spend changes the answer

A card that settles in US dollars costs nothing extra if you spend in US dollars. Spend in pounds or euros and the same card usually costs 1.3% or more on every purchase. So tell us where you live (the calculator starts on the US) and we'll use the right FX cost for every card.

Card companies publish their own FX fees, but that isn't the whole story. Visa and Mastercard charge their own fee of about 1% on that spend, which most cards pass on even when they advertise 0%. They also convert at their own exchange rate, and it's a little worse than the real one. We checked hundreds of our own purchases on two Visa cards against the mid-market rate. In Australian dollars, the network's rate cost about 0.3% more than the market. On currencies pegged to the US dollar, it cost close to nothing. So we add that 0.3% to every card's FX cost, and swap it for the real figure once we've tested a card ourselves.

How we test cards

Our tests are about fees. A card's fee page doesn't always tell you what paying with it actually costs, so we use the card ourselves and measure it. Mostly that means foreign-currency purchases, which is where hidden costs tend to live. Then we set what we paid against what the card advertises, and against the cashback it actually paid.

At least a week of regular spending before a card goes in our tests. Small purchases and big ones, some priced in US dollars, and always paying in the store's own currency.
Every purchase recorded. The price in the store's currency, what the card took, and the cashback it paid.
Checked against the mid-market rate. That's the real exchange rate with no markup, the one you see on XE or Google. We average the purchase day and the next business day, since that's usually when cards convert. Anything above it is a cost of using the card, whether it's listed as a fee or buried in the exchange rate.
The typical cost. We report the median for each currency, so one odd purchase can't skew it, plus the range the middle half of purchases fall in. Only settled purchases count, and clear outliers are left out and noted.
Split when the terms change. A new fee or a change of tier gets its own set of figures, with the current terms first.

You can see each card's results on our card fee tests.

Where our card data comes from

Card terms come from each card company's own fee schedule, cardholder terms and help center first. Then we check them against published reviews. Where sources disagree, we go with the less generous number and flag it, and when a card changes its terms, we check it again. We once corrected a card's advertised cashback after finding that the headline rate only applied to a discontinued plan, paid in a token worth almost nothing.

How we make money

Some card companies pay us when someone signs up through our links. That's how the site pays for itself. It doesn't buy anyone a better spot. Every card goes through the same math, including the ones that pay us nothing, and the order comes only from the numbers at the spend you enter. We don't cover every card on the market, and we're not a card issuer or a financial adviser.

Everything here is general information. The figures are estimates based on the spend you enter and the card terms we've collected. We haven't considered your goals, your financial situation or your needs, so read the card company's terms before you apply.

Questions about a specific card? Find it in all cards, or read about the site.