If you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, your annual fee just jumped from $550 to $795, and unless you check your renewal date, you’ll pay it on autopilot.
Chase quietly refreshed the Reserve last summer. New applicants started paying $795 on June 23, 2025. Existing cardholders keep the old $550 fee until their next anniversary after October 26, 2025. Translation: if your account renews at any point this year, you’re staring down a $245 hike. Authorized user cards went from $75 to $195 too, a 160% jump per extra card.
Chase’s pitch is that the card now delivers “more than $2,700 in annual value” through new credits: $500 for The Edit (hotel bookings with a two-night minimum), $300 dining, $300 StubHub, $300 in DoorDash promos plus DashPass, $250 for Apple TV+ and Apple Music, $120 Lyft, and the same $300 travel credit that was there before. Add the fee back and the “value” line is Chase’s, not yours.
Here’s the catch. Credits are only real money if you would have spent that money anyway. A $250 StubHub credit is worth $250 if you were already buying concert tickets. If you weren’t, it is the bank telling you where to shop next. Same for Peloton, DoorDash, and Apple subscriptions. Even The Edit credit is capped at two $250 statement credits, hotel bookings only, two-night minimum stay. The old flexible $300 travel credit stayed, and that one is easy money.
The earnings changes hurt too. The blanket 3x on all travel is gone. Only flights and hotels booked direct earn 4x, and Chase Travel is 8x instead of the old 10x on hotels. Rideshares, vacation rentals, ground transport, tolls: all 1x now.
The new fee is $795, up from $550. Sapphire Reserve authorized user cards went from $75 to $195 (Chase press release, June 23, 2025).
Who still wins? If you actually book through Chase Travel, hit the direct-with-airlines and direct-with-hotels categories at 4x, and would have paid for Apple, Peloton, or DoorDash on your own, the credits can offset the fee and then some. If you don’t spend big on Chase Travel and don’t use those credits, the extra $245 is money burned.
Log into Chase.com this week and find your renewal date. Add up what you actually spent last year on the credits you’ll use, not the ones Chase says you will. If the total does not clear $795, downgrade. Chase lets you switch to the Sapphire Preferred ($95) or Freedom Unlimited ($0) without closing the account, so your credit history and points travel with you. That is $700 back each year, and your account age is preserved.
Do this now. Waiting until your renewal date to think about it means the fee posts and Chase’s clawback rules kick in on parts of the credit. Product-changing before the fee hits is cleaner.
Verdict: questionable. The card can still work for heavy Chase Travel users. For everyone else, it’s a $700 downgrade opportunity hiding in plain sight.
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