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finder.com’s rating: 4.0 / 5.0
★★★★★
70,000
Miles as welcome offer
Up to 2x
Miles
$0
Annual fee
for the first year ($99 thereafter)
15.74% to 24.74%
Purchase APR (variable)
Annual fee | $0 intro annual fee for the first year ($99 thereafter) |
---|---|
Welcome Offer | 70,000 miles after spending $2,000 in the first 3 months |
Rewards | 2x miles on Delta purchases, restaurants and at US supermarkets and 1x miles on all other purchases |
Purchase APR | 15.74% to 24.74% variable |
Balance transfer APR | N/A |
Recommended minimum credit score | 670 |
Issuer | American Express |
Review by
Kliment Dukovski is a credit cards writer. He's written over 600 articles to help readers find and compare the best credit cards. Kliment has also written on money transfers, home loans and more. Previously, he ghostwrote guides and articles on foreign exchange, stock market trading and cryptocurrencies.
The Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card is a mid-tier Delta card with a $0 intro annual fee, reverting to $99 the following year. It offers 2x miles on Delta purchases, purchases made at restaurants and US supermarkets, and a generous welcome offer of 70,000 bonus miles after you spend $2,000 in your first 3 months. Depending on what you redeem your miles for, this can be worth $840 or more.
Additional Delta perks include first checked bag free, priority boarding, 20% back as a statement credit on your Delta purchases, 0% foreign transaction fees and more.
All this makes the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card a solid credit card option for the occasional Delta flyer.
Applying for the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card is straightforward:
To qualify for the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card, you’ll need a good to an excellent credit score of 670 or higher.
Here’s a look at the Delta Gold vs. two similar cards to help visualize the major differences between these mid-tier travel cards.
Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card
★★★★★
Rates & feesGo to site |
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Minimum credit score 670 |
Annual fee $0 intro annual fee for the first year ($99 thereafter) |
Purchase APR 15.74% to 24.74% variable |
Balance transfer APR N/A |
Rewards 2x miles on Delta purchases, restaurants and at US supermarkets and 1x miles on all other purchases |
Welcome offer 70,000 miles after spending $2,000 in the first 3 months |
United℠ Explorer Card
★★★★★
Rates & feesGo to site |
---|
Minimum credit score 670 |
Annual fee $0 intro annual fee for the first year ($95 thereafter) |
Purchase APR 16.49% to 23.49% variable |
Balance transfer APR 16.49% to 23.49% variable |
Rewards 2x miles at restaurants, hotels and United and 1.5x miles on all other purchases |
Welcome offer 40,000 miles after spending $2,000 in the first 3 months, plus 25,000 miles after spending $10,000 in the first 6 months |
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
★★★★★
Rates & feesGo to site |
---|
Minimum credit score 670 |
Annual fee $95 |
Purchase APR 15.99% to 22.99% variable |
Balance transfer APR 15.99% to 22.99% variable |
Rewards 5x points on Lyft, 2x points on up to $1,000 on groceries until April 30, 2021, 2x points on travel and dining and 1x points on all other purchases |
Welcome offer 60,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months, a value of up to $750 through Chase Ultimate Rewards. Plus up to $50 statement credit towards groceries. |
Compare even more credit cards
Unlike many other travel cards that offer flight credits, you’ll need to reach a spending cap to gain this bonus. For a mid-tier card like this, the asking price is steep at $10,000. Your biggest earning categories on this card are restaurants, US supermarkets and Delta purchases. This could prove a difficult requirement to hit if you’re not flying or dining out much. Since this card’s annual fee rests at $99 after the first year intro however, failing to hit this credit each year isn’t the end of the world. In fact, you’ll probably more than make up for the annual fee with other perks on the card.
The wording of this benefit is admittedly a little confusing: The whole point of earning miles is to pay for flights, after all.What this benefit actually allows is partial payment of flights using your accrued miles. You can take chunks out of your flight cost in $50 increments. This can prove useful if you have a tight month and need to pinch a few pennies. Using your points this way doesn’t affect their redemption value thankfully.
Amex’s refresh of the Delta line of cards was more than a few added perks. A few benefits were removed at the same time, including the old Medallion Qualification Dollars waiver and discounted access to the Delta Sky Club. Reaching Medallion status with Delta’s loyalty program requires two things: Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQM) and Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQD). To obtain MQDs, you need to spend on eligible Delta and partner flights. Typically, you need at least $3,000 in MQDs to reach the first Medallion status of Silver, extending all the way to $15,000 for Diamond status. A MQD waiver let you ignore this spending requirement and focus purely on the necessary miles instead.
Unfortunately, both the Blue and Gold Delta cards lost this perk. If this benefit once featured into your plans for the card, you might want to reexamine the rest of the card’s perks to determine if they make up for the loss.
The removal of discounted access to Delta SkyClub lounges isn’t quite as large a blow. However, standard day passes for the SkyClub are $59. The old discounted rate of $29 when using this card added up if you traveled frequently. Now, you might want to look for other options if you need lounge access.
While the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card stacks up well against competing mid-tier cards, the same doesn’t hold true when you compare it to its big brother, the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card. The Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card costs $250 per year (Terms apply, see rates & fees) compared to the Delta Gold’s $99 annual fee.
For that extra cost, you get 3x miles on Delta purchases and directly booked hotels, along with the 2x miles on restaurants and US supermarkets. This makes the card a much clearer choice on travel purchases and comparable to cards such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card.The Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card also keeps the Status Boost that the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card lost. By spending $25,000 in a calendar year with the Platinum, you’ll earn 10,000 MQMs. And you can do this twice per year. That’s a big boost toward upping your Delta Medallion level.
Finally, the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card comes with one complimentary round-trip Companion Certificate each calendar year upon renewal. This perk alone is worth hundreds of dollars. This means you don’t even have to try to negate your annual fee with this card — it pays for itself. If you’re someone who travels with a partner, picking the Gold over the Platinum is a tough sell.
Here’s a quick breakdown of each card’s rough benefit values versus the corresponding annual fee:
Delta SkyMiles Gold vs. Platinum perk values compared to annual fee
Annual Fee | Free checked bag | Annual companion certificate | TSA PreCheck or Global Entry fee credit | Spending bonus | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card | $99 starting the second year | $30 (each flight) | – | – | $100 (after spending $10,000 in a calendar year) |
Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card | $250 | $30 (each flight) | $300+ | $100 (every four years) | 10,000 MQMs, worth $1000+ (after spending $25,000 in a calendar year. Earnable twice per year) |
As you can see, the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card’s companion certificate completely covers the cost of the card so long as you use it. That companion certificate is good for a domestic round-trip, so your value could go even higher depending on when and where you’re flying. Everything else on the card is an added bonus.
Certainly. The Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card’s asking price of $99 after the first year’s intro annual fee isn’t a terribly large burden. You’ll only need to travel and cash in on your first free checked bag a few times to make up for the annual cost. You might also think of it this way: Earning the card’s welcome offer is worth several years’ of annual fees. The real question is whether you should make the jump to the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card.
You can check whether you’re preapproved for the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card by doing the following:
You can’t specifically choose to check your preapproval odds for the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card. Instead, Amex will check your information against the whole suite of available cards. Afterward, you’ll be sent to a new webpage with your eligible preapproval cards.
Authorized users are welcome on the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card. All additional users are lumped in under the main account. That means purchases made on extra cards earn rewards toward the main user account. They may also benefit from the card’s travel perks.
Users on social media, such as Reddit, generally enjoy this card thanks to the number of travel perks offered for the price.
A recurring theme among customers is how easy it is to make up for the card’s annual fee. Flying only twice a year with a companion is enough to wipe out the fee, so long as the both of you check a single bag each flight.
The biggest complaints with this card came down to the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card’s overall superiority. For only $150 more per year, you get better rewards and a companion ticket each calendar year. We tend to agree with this assessment, as we’ll detail below.
You have a surprisingly wide variety of ways to earn Delta SkyMiles. In addition to using a credit card, you’ll also earn miles on Delta flights, eligible cruises, vacations and car rentals, through the SkyMiles dining or shopping program, and through eligible hotels.
You can also purchase SkyMiles directly, though this is rarely worth the cost.
As of our last calculations, Delta SkyMiles are worth around 1.4 cents per mile on average. Like many airline loyalty programs, you can find bigger value for your miles if you’re willing to do a little research.
In the case of Delta, using their five-week view when booking potential flights can lead to more than 10,000 miles in savings. You can read more at our Delta SkyMiles redemption guide.
Given the rather simple structure of Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card’s reward program, you can follow a few typical steps for maximizing your value:
Rachel Dix-Kessler
Public Relations Manager
I liked that there was no annual fee for the first year — though it has a $99 annual fee for every year after — and that you could earn extra miles by purchasing flights with it. However, one downside is that it has a really high interest rate. If you don’t pay off your balance each month, that high rate can hit you hard.
But overall, I love this card and still use it today.
Adrian Tomkins
Senior Product Manager
While the APR for the Delta Gold credit card was not the best, the annual fee was pretty fair and the opportunity to reach status tiers appealed to me.
I’m Australian and travel back there once or twice a year. When I travel within the US, I choose to fly with Delta over most US carriers.
Last year, I was traveling quite a lot both domestically and internationally and thanks to the card, I almost made status with Delta. Unfortunately, due to personal reasons, I had to cancel a flight in December. Not only did Delta not refund me any of the money for the flight, but they refused to grant me the miles just because I didn’t physically get on the plane — even though I still paid the full fare.
Utterly frustrated with the poor customer service, I decided to move away from both Delta and its cobranded credit card.
The Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card is a perfectly solid card that offers good perks for the price. However, Amex’s recent Delta refresh carved away some of the extra value that you used to find on this card. The Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card loses a bit of luster when stacked up to the rest of the Delta card family, especially the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card.
For the price, the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card stands in the awkward position of not being that much better than the Delta SkyMiles® Blue American Express Card, and inferior to the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card — which pays for itself. While the Delta Gold isn’t a bad pick per se, there are better airline card options out there in the same range.
Images: americanexpress.com
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