When it comes to choosing a credit card, the benefits, rewards, and annual fees play a crucial role in decision-making. This is especially true when looking at two of the most popular travel credit cards on the market, the American Express Gold Card and the Capital One Venture X. Both cards offer unique features and rewards programs that can enhance your spending experience and get you more value for your money.

However, while both of these two cards are great, they are fundamentally different in their ideal uses, benefits, and reward systems! The American Express Gold is known for its valuable points and its benefit for food spending, while the Capital One Venture X is famous for its travel credits and easy point-earning. Therefore, if you’re considering only one of these titans, it can be tricky to decide which is right for you.

As well, the American Express Gold and the Capital One Venture X have distinct rewards programs that are largely tailored to different travel preferences. While there is some overlap between the AmEx/Chase/Capital One rewards systems, it is largely more complicated to get great value out of compared to working within one card ecosystem. Therefore, unless you are willing to put in the time to learn how to fit the rewards programs together, it likely does not make sense to have both these cars together.

If this decision sounds overwhelming, don’t worry! We have thoroughly researched both of these cards and pulled from our personal experience to compare the strengths, benefits, and limitations of both the Gold and the Venture X, all to help you figure out which one of these cards and reward programs is a better fit for you. Luckily, while there may be an optimal card for you, these are both excellent credit cards, so you can’t go wrong no matter which one you decide to add to your wallet!

Now that we have the background out of the way, let’s start with an individual breakdown of each of the two cards:

American Express Gold Card

The American Express Gold card is one of the most popular personal credit cards offered by AmEx, along with the well-known Platinum card and the slightly more niche Green card.

The Gold is a great entry-point into the AmEx system, as it has a lower annual fee and is easier to get approved for than the bigger travel cards (e.g., the Platinum) but still gives a lot of excellent benefits.

Let’s start by reviewing the basics of the AmEx Gold:

Annual Fee: $250

Current Sign-Up Bonus: 90,000 points after you spend $4,000 in 6 months of having the card

Spending Rewards: 4x points on worldwide dining, US groceries, and US delivery/takeaway; 3x points on flights booked directly with the airline or through American Express; 1x points on everything else

Other Benefits: $120 dining credit at select restaurants, $120 Uber credit ($10 monthly)

As you can see from the spending rewards set-up, the Gold card is centered around food and travel; almost every benefit the AmEx Gold offers is some form of credit or reward for your spending on either food (e.g., 4x points on grocery/dining spending, annual dining credit) or on travel (e.g., 3x points on flights, $120 Uber credit). This is an excellent combination of rewards for individuals who travel frequently and enjoy either dining out or ordering food, and is the perfect card for people who plan their holidays around the cuisine!

Even considering both cash-back and point credit cards, the American Express Gold is one of the best cards on the market for food spending. Most competitor cards (such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred) only give bonus rewards for spending on dining and takeout/delivery. However, not only does the Gold give 4x points back on both of those categories, but it also gives 4x points on groceries as well.

Frankly, the inclusion of groceries into the Gold’s bonus spending puts the card into a league of its own for getting value out of your eating—no matter if you go out to eat, get food delivered, or get groceries for cooking at home, you’re getting great rewards for your spending!

The Gold card also does have great rewards for spending on travel. Not only does the AmEx Gold make it easy to earn these travel rewards (3x points on flight purchases directly with the airline, no travel portal required), but American Express also has great airline transfer partners (e.g., Delta) and inherently valuable points. The American Express travel portal has a decent selection of travel options, making it very easy to use your points for flights regardless of whether you want to book through AmEx or directly with airlines. While we’d always recommend transfer points to partners, the option for booking through the portal is solid if you don’t want to put in the research!

However, when it comes to travel, the AmEx Gold has an interesting dilemma.

While the Gold is clearly marketed as a good travel card (though less so than the more expensive Platinum), the fundamental issue with the card—and all AmEx cards for that matter—is that the acceptance rate of American Express by merchants outside of the USA is still low. While AmEx continues to do all it can to increase uptake, the current reality is that if you’re abroad, it is a gamble if the store you’re at will accept your American Express card. To make matters worse, many of the benefits of the card (e.g., the Uber credit and the 4x points at groceries) are only valid within the USA. These two issues hurt the Gold’s potential as a true travel card.

Therefore, for travel, the American Express Gold is an amazing card for booking your flights, but not the best card to actually bring with you on any international travel. However, for travel within the USA, the Gold is an excellent option.

Summary: A great food card and a good travel card

Capital One Venture X

The Capital One Venture X is the most luxurious option of the three-card Venture series and the most expensive personal credit card that Capital One currently offers. While the hype has calmed down since the Venture X launched a few years ago, the value of the Venture X remains constant.

Let’s review the basics of the Capital One Venture X

Annual Fee: $395

Current Sign-Up Bonus: 75,000 miles after you spend $4,000 in 3 months

Spending Rewards: 10x miles on hotels/rental cars booked through the C1 portal, 5x miles on flights booked through the C1 portal, 2x miles on all other spending

Other Benefits: $300 travel credit (booked through the C1 portal), access to Capital One Lounges, Priority Pass lounge membership, $100 TSA Pre/Global Entry credit once every 4 years, Hertz President’s Circle status , 10000 free points per year

The Venture X is exceptionally easy to get good value out of, but slightly more complicated to get great value out of.

To start, this card gives you 2x miles on all purchases. While this means that you’ll never earn any extra bonus rewards for any certain categories of spending (e.g., food with the AmEx Gold), it also means that never have to think about what categories to use for a certain card. If you use the Venture X, you’ll get 2x miles on the purchase—as simple as that. This is a great proposition for people who prefer a smaller and less complex credit card rotation.

However, this card is best known for its $300 annual travel credit, giving you $300 back on flights, hotels, and rental cars booked through the Capital One portal every year. If you consistently use the travel credit, the annual fee of this card effectively becomes only $95 with a free trip! At that point, you only have to spend $4750 on the Venture X to get enough miles to make the annual fee effectively 0—and that’s not even including the 10,000-anniversary points per year or any of the non-financial benefits like lounge access!

Unfortunately, the one tough stipulation of this travel credit is that you have to book the travel through the Capital One portal—while not a dealbreaker by any means, credit card travel portals always have substantially fewer options and limit your travel flexibility.

The biggest downside to the Venture X as a travel card is Capital One’s lack of good transfer partners. While Capital One has great options for international travel, there are few good options for domestic travel within the USA. Sure, you could book American Airlines flights by transferring miles to British Airways, but this added layer of difficulty can be a hassle when you have to do it every time you want to book a reward flight.

Luckily, Capital One offers the ability to book any flight directly with the airline and pay for it with miles afterward at 1:1 mile-to-cent ratio. While this is by no means the best redemption value you’ll see, the simplicity can sometimes be worse the slightly worse return.

Overall, the Venture X is an excellent travel card, and even comes with VISA Infinite concierge to help you with any travel bookings or non-travel tasks! Between the travel credit, the wide acceptance of VISA cards internationally, and the lounge access, the Venture X has almost everything you could want from a travel credit while not quite approaching the intimidating annual fees of some of the other top-tier travel cards (e.g., the AmEx Platinum).

Summary: An incredible travel card with okay redemption options

So which card is right for you?

As we mentioned at the start, both the Capital One Venture X and the American Express Gold are excellent cards, so no matter which one you end up with, you’re going to get good value.

Since both of these cards have different bonuses on spending, they can actually work synergetically! I personally hold both of these cards and find that I am able to get value out of both of them—I use the Gold for all food purchases and booking flights, and then I use the Venture X for (essentially) everything else.

However, if you only have room for one of these cards in your wallet, it can be broken down into the following 3 different cases:

1. If food is your biggest category of spending and you stay in the USA, get the American Express Gold. The AmEx Gold is one of the most elite cards on the market for getting your return on your food spending, be it groceries, dining, or delivery. If you spend $10,000 on food on this card, you’re getting back 40,000 Membership Rewards points not even including the sign-up bonus, worth ~$500 in travel if transferred to partners.

2. If you travel internationally often, get the Capital One Venture X. To start, the better acceptance of VISA cards (like the Venture X) compared to AmEx cards is a huge green flag for anyone who frequently travels abroad. However, many of the Gold’s benefits are ONLY given within the USA. For instance, the $120 Uber credit and the 4x points on groceries are ONLY valid within the US—even if you go to another country with supermarkets and Uber, you won’t get the credit and will just get 1x points. This is a huge bummer and makes it hard to use the Gold as a frequent international traveler.

3. If you travel more frequently within the USA and:

   1. Don’t use lounges, already have Global Entry, or travel frequently on JetBlue/Delta, get the AmEx Gold

   2. Don’t use Uber/Uber Eats and don’t spend more than ~$6,000 a year on food, get the Venture X

As you can see, these categories are not mutually exclusive; if you fit into multiple, then you will need to balance the rewards vs. travel benefits on your own personal scale to see which card is worth more to you. We’d also strongly recommend that you consider getting both of these cards (assuming they fit your spending), as they combined will give you a greater value than either alone!

We hope this article helped you decide between the Capital One Venture X and the American Express Gold Card! If you’re interested in our other card comparisons, make sure to check out our analysis of the Chase Sapphire Preferred vs. the United Explorer, the Venture X vs. the Bilt Rewards card, and the Sapphire Preferred vs. the Bilt Rewards.