My $895 annual fee just hit for the American Express Platinum Card, which means it’s time for my yearly ritual: figuring out whether I actually got enough value from this increasingly complicated coupon book to justify keeping it.
The Platinum Card still isn’t a great card for everyday spending, outside of airfare purchases. For me, the real value has always come from the benefits, statement credits, and lounge access. But with AMEX continuing to add more lifestyle credits and partner perks, keeping track of that value has become a lot more complicated than it used to be.
So once again, I went back through the past year to see how much I actually used, which credits were easy wins, which ones took effort, and whether the math still works at a much higher annual fee.
Digital Entertainment Credit – Up to $300
I had to rethink this credit a bit this year after canceling my New York Times subscription, which had previously made it easy to use the full monthly allowance.
To replace it, I charged $95.20 for ESPN and $111.75 for Peacock to the Platinum Card, for a total of $206.95. That worked well enough, though it took me a little while to realize our cable subscription already included ESPN+, so that part of the spend proved less useful than I expected.
Partway through the year, AMEX increased this credit from $20 to $25 per month, which raised the annual value on paper. In practice, though, that didn’t help me all that much.
At this point, Peacock is really the only service I have left that naturally fits the credit, and it only costs $12.39 per month. So while I still got solid value from this benefit, it’s also a good example of how some Platinum credits look more generous on paper than they are in real life if your subscriptions don’t line up with AMEX’s approved partners.
CLEAR Membership Credit – Up to $209
Last year, I did some fancy maneuvering to split our CLEAR memberships between two AMEX cards to maximize the available credits. It worked well enough at the time.
The problem with getting fancy, though, is that sometimes you forget exactly what you did.
That’s what happened this year. I accidentally charged the entire CLEAR bill for both of us to Sharon’s AMEX Green Card. That card reimbursed $209 of the charge, so I didn’t use any of the CLEAR credit on my Platinum Card.
Even so, I’m not counting this as a complete miss. Since Sharon’s Green Card covered most of the fee, the most I could have squeezed out of the Platinum Card here was only about $85.
Still, this is a good example of how keeping track of overlapping credits across multiple AMEX cards can get complicated fast.
$200 Airline Fee Credit
I kept Delta as my selected airline for both 2025 and 2026, which made sense for how we were traveling. But this benefit has the annoying habit of straddling cardmember years because it resets on a calendar-year basis.
I only used $118.49 of the credit during the 2025 portion of my membership year. I tried to sneak in one more eligible charge right at the end of the year, but it posted too late to count for 2025. Instead, that $199.80 charge triggered my 2026 airline fee credit.
So I didn’t do a great job maximizing this benefit, and I lost out on over $80. This is one of the most frustrating Platinum credits because you have to pick one airline, track eligible charges, and then hope your timing lines up the way you want it to.
(Yes, I know there were ways I could have used that credit to not let it go to waste, but it slipped my mind until it was too late.)
Uber Cash – Up to $200
This is one of the harder Platinum benefits to track because it isn’t issued as a statement credit. Instead, AMEX credits your Uber account with $15 each month and $35 in December as Uber Cash. That makes it easy enough to use, but harder to total up after the fact.
I used the credit in most months for Uber Eats, though I also used it for an Uber ride in New York City in October and Miami in January.
One quirk I ran into came in September. Even though we took an Uber, Uber Cash doesn’t work for rides outside the U.S., so I had to use the credit on Uber Eats instead.
The one month I appear to have completely missed was April 2025, which means I likely lost that month’s credit. So while this is still one of the easier Platinum benefits to get value from, it’s also a good reminder that “easy to use” isn’t the same as automatic. If you forget even once, some of the value disappears pretty quickly.
Uber One Credit – Up to $120
This is one of the newer Platinum credits, but it also turned out to be one of the easiest to mess up.
I signed up for Uber One in November and received the statement credit in November, February, and March, for a total of $30 in direct value so far.
The reason I didn’t receive the credit in December and January is a little ridiculous. I didn’t realize the Uber One membership charge was being paid automatically from my Uber Cash balance rather than being billed directly to the Platinum Card. So even though I still had the membership, those months didn’t trigger the card benefit. I wrote more about that issue here: The AMEX Platinum Uber One Credit Trap.
So, for now, I’m only counting $30 in direct statement credit. That said, this number understates the real benefit a bit, since it doesn’t include any savings or other rebates I received as an Uber One member.
Saks Fifth Avenue Credit – $100
This is one of the easier Platinum credits to keep track of, assuming you remember that it’s split into two $50 credits each year.
I used one $50 Saks credit in July and the other in January, so I got the full $100 in value from this benefit during the membership year.
Walmart+ Membership Credit – Up to $155
I continued using the Walmart+ membership that comes with the Platinum Card, which is one of the easier benefits to keep once it’s set up.
I received the credit for all 12 months of my membership year at $12.95 per month, for a total of $155.40 in value. Between free shipping and the included Paramount+ subscription, I got enough use out of it to count this as a solid benefit.
Resy Credit – Up to $400
This is one of the newer Platinum credits, and it fits the modern AMEX formula perfectly: potentially valuable, but only if your spending lines up with a very specific set of rules.
The card now offers up to $100 per quarter for eligible Resy purchases. I used it in October and January, which gave me $200 in value so far.
That’s real savings, but it also highlights the downside of quarterly benefits. They can look great when AMEX adds them all up, but in real life, you only get the full value if you remember to use them every few months and happen to dine at the right places.
Fine Hotels + Resorts Credit – Up to $600
AMEX also increased the Fine Hotels + Resorts credit to $600 per year, split into two $300 credits.
I was able to maximize this one by booking a hotel stay as two separate reservations—one at the end of 2025 and the other in 2026. That let me trigger the $300 credit twice, giving me the full $600 in value.
Of course, this is another benefit that looks easier on paper than it may be in practice. You need to book the right kind of stay through AMEX Travel, and in my case, getting the full value required a little strategy in how I made the reservation. Still, this was one of the biggest wins among the new Platinum credits.
AMEX Offers – $20 Total Savings
It was a pretty slow year for AMEX Offers on my Platinum Card.
In past years, I’ve been able to stack a few useful deals here and there, but this time I only ended up using one offer: $20 back at Walmart.com.
That’s still real value, but it’s also a reminder that I don’t count AMEX Offers as a reason to keep the card. They’re a nice extra when something lines up with a purchase I was already going to make, but they’re far too inconsistent to assign much weight in the annual-fee calculation.
Lounge Access
Centurion Lounge Visits
We visited Centurion Lounges twice during my membership year: once in Miami on our way to Aruba, and again in Atlanta in November.
That said, Centurion Lounge access isn’t quite as important to us as it once was. Since we now also have access to lounges through Chase and Capital One, those have often become our other stops when traveling. So while I still consider Centurion Lounge access a meaningful Platinum benefit, it’s no longer the exclusive draw that it used to be.
Delta Sky Club Visits
We only visited the Orlando Sky Club once this year, mostly because we didn’t fly Delta very much.
That limited use doesn’t make the benefit worthless, but it does reinforce a bigger theme with the Platinum Card: some of its best perks only matter if your travel patterns happen to line up with them.
Final Thought
Total value received this year: $1,815
On paper, that’s well above the $895 annual fee. But as I was putting this together, it became clear that the story isn’t really about the total. It’s about where that value came from—and how much effort it took to get there.
The older Platinum credits, like the airline fee credit and digital entertainment, didn’t do much of the heavy lifting this year. Instead, most of the value came from just a couple of the newer benefits, especially the Fine Hotels + Resorts and Resy credits. Together, those can add up to $1,000 in value, which is more than the annual fee.
Of course, those credits also take more work. You have to book the right way, remember quarterly deadlines, and make sure your spending lines up with AMEX’s partners. It’s not nearly as automatic as it used to be.
That’s really where I landed with the Platinum Card this year. I still got more than enough value to justify keeping it, but I also had to try a little harder to max out the credits if the lounge access wasn’t making up the difference.
For now, I’m still keeping the card. But at $895 a year, it’s no longer a card I keep without giving it a second thought.
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