How the number is built
What the calculator counts, and what it refuses to.
Pick a card and the calculator loads every recurring credit and benefit recorded in the card catalog — the same catalog the MoneyRoom app tracks against, including pending-verification notes — with the annual fee on the other side of the ledger. Nothing counts until you tap it: a credit you would never use should not offset a fee you pay every year. Tap a line to count its recurring annual catalog value, or open its terms to set the amount your own usage would actually recover.
The result is the net for one year: credits and benefits you counted, minus the fee. Positive means your chosen values exceed the fee on the counted credits and benefits; negative means the difference is what the card's uncounted perks — points earning, lounge access, status, protections — have to be worth to you.
Deliberately left out
- Welcome bonuses and one-time credits. One-time money against a fee that recurs every year. The calculator prices the steady state — year two and beyond.
- Multi-year credits. Four-year credits count at one quarter of their face value per year, not as a fresh allowance every year.
- Interest. The calculator measures rewards value, not borrowing cost. If you carry a balance, no annual-fee card is a good deal.
- Perks without a defensible dollar value. Lounge access, elite status, free-night certificates, and insurance are listed at $0 until you add your own number — a per-visit figure multiplied by unknown usage is fiction.
Three worked examples under modeled usage
The Card Score pages apply published realization factors — a discount for monthly windows, enrollments, and portal-only spend a real cardholder faces — to estimate what a typical holder might recover. These figures come from that model, not measured customer results.
$526 of credits at face value, about $366 at typical usage, against a $95 fee — +$271 a year, so it clears the fee.
$445 of credits at face value, about $384 at typical usage, against a $395 fee — −$11 a year, so it close — worth a keep-or-downgrade decision.
Summit Reserve World Elite Mastercard
$456 of credits at face value, about $281 at typical usage, against a $295 fee — −$14 a year, so it close — worth a keep-or-downgrade decision.
Before you cancel a card
Annual fees post around the account anniversary, and most issuers offer a product change to a no-fee card in the same family instead of a closure. Run the numbers here first, then check your cardmember agreement for the issuer's own refund window and product-change rules — those terms, not this page, are the final authority.
Every credit here has a reset clock. When each one resets — monthly, quarterly, twice a year, yearly, or on your card anniversary — is on the statement-credit reset calendar; how the typical-value discounts are derived is on the methodology page. MoneyRoom takes no affiliate commissions and has no application links — the math has no reason to flatter a card.