The flat-rate cash back showdown: Double Cash, Active Cash, Quicksilver and Freedom Unlimited

Four cards, no annual fee, nothing to activate: Citi Double Cash, Wells Fargo Active Cash, Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards and Chase Freedom Unlimited. Two pay 2% on everything. Two pay 1.5% with extras attached, and one of those loads its value into the first year. Which card wins depends less on the headline rate than on where your money goes, and on whether you are asking about year one or year five.

The four no-fee flat-rate cards in brief

Citi Double Cash

The original 2% card, and still the plainest. It pays 1% when you buy and another 1% as you pay the bill, so the full 2% assumes you pay. The welcome offer is $200 cash back after $1,500 in purchases in the first 6 months, the highest hurdle of the three cash bonuses here. Its 0% intro APR is on balance transfers; our catalogue calls it long and gives no length. Rewards convert to Citi ThankYou points. Rated 4.7, eighth in our ranking.

Wells Fargo Active Cash

Unlimited 2% cash rewards with no categories and no caps, and the lowest bonus hurdle of the four, shared with the Quicksilver: $200 after $500 in purchases in the first 3 months. It adds a 0% intro APR for 12 months and cell phone protection when you pay the phone bill with the card. Also rated 4.7, ninth in the ranking.

Capital One Quicksilver

1.5% on every purchase, and 5% on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel. It pays $200 after $500 in purchases within 3 months, lists a 0% intro APR on purchases and balance transfers for 15 months, and is the one card of the four that lists no foreign transaction fees. Rated 4.4, fifteenth among the credit cards we rank.

Chase Freedom Unlimited

1.5% base, 3% on dining and drugstores, 5% on travel booked through Chase Travel. Instead of a cash bonus it adds an extra 1.5% on everything you buy, on up to $20,000 spent in the first year: up to $300. It matches the Quicksilver’s 15-month 0% intro APR on purchases and balance transfers, and it pairs with Chase’s Sapphire cards. Rated 4.8, seventh in the ranking and the highest of the four.

Round 1: 2% flat vs 1.5% plus categories

On a purchase with no category attached, the arithmetic is short. Double Cash and Active Cash pay 2%; Quicksilver and Freedom Unlimited pay 1.5%. The gap is $5 per $1,000, or $100 on $20,000 a year. Between the two 2% cards there is no gap at all. Between the two 1.5% cards, Freedom Unlimited earns the same or more on every purchase except hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel.

Freedom Unlimited’s case rests on its 3% on dining and drugstores. Every dollar there earns 1 cent more than on a 2% card; every other dollar earns half a cent less. The break-even follows directly. You can also put the two 2% cards and Freedom Unlimited side by side in the comparator.

In practice: on $1,000 a month of card spending, more than $333 has to go to dining and drugstores before Freedom Unlimited out-earns a 2% card in year two. Groceries do not help. None of the four pays extra at supermarkets.

Both 1.5% cards pay 5% on travel booked through their issuer’s own portal: hotels and rental cars through Capital One Travel for the Quicksilver, travel through Chase Travel for Freedom Unlimited. That counts only if you would book there anyway, and portal prices can differ from booking direct, so compare before you count it.

Round 2: three $200 bonuses and one that grows with spending

Three of the cards pay a flat $200. What separates them is the hurdle: $500 in 3 months for Active Cash and Quicksilver, about $167 a month, against $1,500 in 6 months for Double Cash, $250 a month. Most households clear all three without trying. For a light spender, the Double Cash threshold is the one to check against the budget.

Freedom Unlimited’s offer is a rate, not a lump sum: an extra 1.5% on everything you buy, on up to $20,000 in the first year. Its value depends on how much you spend. As a bonus on its own it passes $200 only above about $13,333 of first-year spending ($200 ÷ 1.5%). Against the Quicksilver, which shares the 1.5% base, that is the break-even, and dining and drugstores only bring it lower. Against a 2% card it is not enough, because the 2% card also earns half a point more on every dollar.

So where Freedom Unlimited wins year one, the win comes from dining and drugstores, which earn 4.5% for as long as the extra 1.5% lasts. That is what the household ledgers below measure.

Year one vs year two: three hypothetical households

Three hypothetical households. Each pays in full every month, puts all its card spending on one card, and clears every spending requirement. Rewards are valued as cash, and portal travel is left out.

Freedom Unlimited needs its own ledger, because its first-year extra applies to total spending up to a cap rather than to a category. Here it is for the busy household.

The light spender never reaches the spending at which Freedom Unlimited’s extra 1.5% outruns a $200 bonus, so a 2% card wins both years, by $44 and then $24. The busy household is the instructive case. Freedom Unlimited wins year one by $58 and loses every year after by $42: $16 ahead after two years, $26 behind after three. The dining-heavy household is past the one-third line, so Freedom Unlimited wins both years, by $124 and then $24.

Quicksilver finishes last in every row. Its $200 bonus matches the 2% cards’ bonuses, and its 1.5% trails their 2% by $5 per $1,000 in every year, the first included. The first year flatters Freedom Unlimited; the second year is the card you keep.

The first year flatters Freedom Unlimited; the second year is the card you keep.

The two-card answer

Nothing forces a choice of one. Put dining and drugstores on Freedom Unlimited at 3% and everything else on a 2% card, and the busy household earns $672 a year from year two: $216 plus $456. That is $72 more than a 2% card alone and $114 more than Freedom Unlimited alone. The cost is a second application, which typically brings a hard inquiry, and a second bill to pay in full.

Cash back calculator: your spending, every year after the first

At the defaults, the two 2% cards tie at $600 and Freedom Unlimited follows at $558. Set dining to $700 and everything else to $1,600, with drugstores at $100, and Freedom Unlimited draws level at $576: dining and drugstores are then exactly a third of the $2,400 monthly total. Any more dining and it leads.

Round 3: 0% intro APR and the rate that follows

If you expect to carry a balance for a while, the intro APR matters more than the earn rate. Quicksilver and Freedom Unlimited both list 0% on purchases and balance transfers for 15 months. Active Cash lists 0% for 12 months; our catalogue does not say which balances it covers, so confirm that with Wells Fargo. Double Cash lists a long 0% intro APR on balance transfers, with no length given and no purchase offer listed. Balance transfers typically carry a fee, and our catalogue lists none for these four cards, so get the length and the fee from the issuer’s own page before you move a balance.

After the intro window, the regular variable APRs: Double Cash 18.24% to 28.24%, Active Cash and Quicksilver 19.24% to 29.24%, Freedom Unlimited 19.99% to 28.74%. Double Cash has the lowest range at both ends. Where you land inside a range generally depends on your credit profile. If the balance, not the rewards, is the main problem, a dedicated 0% card is the better tool; see our balance transfer comparison.

Round 4: foreign transaction fees and use abroad

Quicksilver is the only one of the four whose catalogue listing includes no foreign transaction fees. The listings for Double Cash, Active Cash and Freedom Unlimited say nothing either way, and we do not fill that gap from memory. Check each issuer’s current terms before a trip. Where a card does charge such a fee, it is typically a percentage of each foreign purchase, which can cancel much or all of what a flat-rate card earns on it.

All four run on Visa or Mastercard: Active Cash and Freedom Unlimited on Visa, Double Cash and Quicksilver on Mastercard. Both networks are widely accepted abroad. For the traveler, the difference that is actually on record is the Quicksilver’s fee listing, plus its 5% on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel.

Round 5: phone protection, ThankYou points and the Sapphire pairing

• Active Cash: cell phone protection. It applies when you pay the phone bill with the card. Our catalogue lists no coverage limit or deductible, so read the benefit terms before you count on it. It is worth something if it would replace cover you pay for; if you already have cover, it duplicates it.
• Double Cash: ThankYou points. Rewards convert to Citi ThankYou points. What that adds depends on what else you hold at Citi; this article values everything as cash. Our Double Cash pros and cons go further into the card’s weak spots.
• Freedom Unlimited: the Sapphire pairing. Our catalogue notes it pairs with Sapphire cards to lift point value, and its cash back never expires while the account is open. Chase cash back is widely reported to be earned as points, and points moved between a cardholder’s own Chase cards generally pool together.
• Quicksilver: the portal rate. 5% on hotels and rental cars through Capital One Travel, alongside the no-foreign-fee listing.

The Sapphire pairing deserves numbers. The Chase Sapphire Preferred gets 25% more value from points redeemed for travel through Chase Travel, which implies 1.25 cents a point there. Pooled into it, Freedom Unlimited’s 3% on dining and drugstores is worth 3.75 cents a dollar, and its 1.5% base 1.875 cents. That base is still short of 2 cents cash. It holds only for Chase Travel redemptions, and the Sapphire Preferred costs $95 a year. The Chase trio works through when that combination pays, and Chase is widely reported to decline applicants who have opened five or more personal cards from any issuer in the previous 24 months, so the order of applications can matter.

The scorecard: who takes each round

When a flat-rate card is the wrong tool

A flat-rate card is a floor, not a ceiling. It loses wherever a card pays much more on a category you spend heavily in. Groceries are the obvious gap here, since none of the four pays extra at supermarkets. The Blue Cash Preferred from American Express pays 6% at U.S. supermarkets on up to $6,000 a year, for $95. Used only for groceries beside a 2% card, it gains 4 cents a dollar, so on the simplest arithmetic it covers its fee at $2,375 of groceries a year, about $198 a month. Our Blue Cash Preferred break-even works through the full version.