Methodology
How credit cards are rated: the MoneyRoom Card Score.
Every card page shows a Card Score: one number out of 10 for how good a deal the card is. It combines three parts — usable value (40%), effort (30%), and earning (30%) — scored from the same card catalog and earn-rate data the app uses, with a flag on details pending final verification; pages refresh daily. No editor's opinion, no advertiser input, and no affiliate links anywhere on this site. This page shows every number we use.
The formula
Three parts, one score.
Each part scores 0–10 on its own, rounded to one decimal, and the Card Score is their weighted total. A card can look great on paper and still score modestly, because the score assumes a typical cardholder won't use every credit in full. It is an estimate, not a measure of real customers' results.
Part one · 40%
Usable value, not face value.
A $200 credit you must remember every month is not worth $200 to most people. So each credit's face value (its full amount) is multiplied by realization factors: discounts for how often it expires and for each restriction in the card's terms. A factor only applies when the card data (some of it pending final verification) shows that restriction; a credit with no restrictions keeps its full value.
| Credit resets | Factor |
|---|---|
| Monthly | × 0.65 |
| Quarterly | × 0.80 |
| Twice a year | × 0.90 |
| Once a year | × 0.95 |
| Every 4 years | × 0.95 |
| Restriction in the card's terms | Factor |
|---|---|
| You must book through the issuer's travel site or a named program | × 0.85 |
| It only works at certain named stores or services | × 0.80 |
| You must enroll once, or link an app, first | × 0.95 |
| You pay first and get it back on a later statement | × 0.95 |
| You must spend a moderate set amount to unlock it | × 0.85 |
Only the strongest “where you can use it” restriction counts; they never stack. A credit that applies automatically skips the enrollment and paid-back-later discounts. This part then compares the total usable value with the annual fee: a card with no fee scores 10, credits that exactly cover the fee score 7.0, and credits worth roughly 1.43× the fee score 10.
Part two · 30%
Effort: what the card asks of you.
This part ignores dollars on purpose. It counts how much a card asks you to keep track of: deadlines each year, separate enrollments, and credits limited to certain stores or booking sites. A monthly credit adds 12 deadlines a year; a yearly one adds 1. A card with nothing to keep track of scores 10, and each extra task costs a little more than the one before.
Credits the score leaves out (see below) add nothing here; a typical cardholder ignores them, so the score does too.
Part three · 30%
Earning: real rates on a typical year of spending.
Every card's earn rates on file are run against the same published mix of spending (the “basket”), so no card gets a flattering assumption. Spending caps are applied at $30,000 of spending a year, and any category without a bonus earns the card's base rate.
| Category | Share of spending |
|---|---|
| Dining | 20% |
| Groceries | 20% |
| Gas | 10% |
| Flights booked direct | 7.5% |
| Hotels booked direct | 7.5% |
| Everything else (base rate) | 35% |
Points are valued at the app's middle-of-the-range cents per point — the same values the in-app tools use, not a best-case redemption. Cash back is always worth exactly one cent. Earning 3.0% back overall on this spending scores 10.
| Rewards currency | Cents per point |
|---|---|
| Chase Ultimate Rewards | 1.35¢ |
| Amex Membership Rewards | 1.125¢ |
| Capital One miles | 1.025¢ |
| Hilton Honors | 0.375¢ |
Rotating, choose-your-category, and other conditional bonus rates never count toward the score — they fall back to the base rate, because a rate you must opt into, or that changes every quarter, isn't what a typical cardholder earns. Bonus rates for booking travel through the card's own travel site are left out too: that's a choice of where to book, not a kind of spending.
What the score leaves out
Five things we never score.
- Welcome bonuses are never scored. The score measures what a card is worth in a normal year — year two and after — so a big sign-up bonus can't inflate it. Card pages list first-year extras separately.
- Interest rates aren't included. The score measures rewards, not the cost of borrowing. If you carry a balance, no rewards card is a good deal.
- Per-use credits count as zero. A per-stay or per-trip credit depends on how often you travel, which we can't know. They're listed on card pages, never scored.
- Perks with no fair dollar value are listed, not scored. Free-night certificates, lounge access, elite status and insurance are worth too different an amount to each person to price honestly. This understates some cards, and each card page says so.
- Credits that need heavy spending are kept apart. Credits that require more than $25,000 of spending a year are left out of typical value and labeled as spend unlocks.
Every card's score
Every published card, scored the same way.
These scores are recalculated each time this page refreshes (daily). Nothing here is typed in by hand, so the table always matches each card's own page.
Cards whose details are still pending final verification carry a note on their page; the note never changes a score. To sanity-check our numbers we compared them with published research — Frequent Miler's per-credit value discounts and LendingTree's findings on unused rewards — but every weight and factor here is our own, and no third-party score or text was copied.
Run your own numbers
The score is an estimate. Your use is your own.
The discounts above describe a typical cardholder. If you know you'll use every credit — or none — the Annual Fee Calculator lets you set any card's credits against its fee with your own numbers, free and without an account.