American Express has just rolled out its biggest Platinum Card refresh in years. Yes, the fee is going up as expected, but so are a lot of benefits. The question now is whether the upgrades are enough to justify the price jump and in this case, I’d actually say yes.
Amex Platinum Fee Rises To $895 With New Upside: Hotel, Dining & Lifestyle Perks Beefed Up
Effective for new cardmembers as of September 18, 2025, the Amex Platinum annual fee is increasing from $695 to $895. Existing cardholders will see the increase at their next renewal. That’s a $200 jump, making this one of the priciest mainstream premium travel cards in the U.S. market.
Hotel Credit Upgraded
Previously, hotel credits on Fine Hotels + Resorts / The Hotel Collection were worth $200 annually. With the refresh, that credit now becomes $600 per year, split into two halves ($300 January–June, $300 July–December). If you use Amex Travel’s FHR or Collection often, that change alone will more than offset the fee increase.
LHW Club Sterling Status
In addition to the increased hotel credit, Platinum cardholders can now receive Leaders Club Sterling status from Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), which includes like five confirmed upgrades. Enrollment is required.
Dining & New Resy Credit
A new credit of $400 annually for Resy dining is now part of the package ($100 per quarter). It works via statement credits when you dine at qualifying Resy restaurants across the U.S., enrollment required. This adds to the existing food/dining benefits, making dinner-out lovers very happy. The Resy network includes over 10,000 restaurants.
Lifestyle & Wellness Credits Expanded
Amex is adding or increasing several lifestyle-type credits: $300 at Lululemon, $200 toward Oura Rings (I just bought one), and new perks for Uber One ($120 annually and separate from the $200 annual Uber Cash benefit). These are in addition to the digital entertainment credit that has also been increased (from $240 to $300). Importantly for me, the digital entertainment credit now covers YouTube. All of them require enrollment.
Other Key Benefit Enhancements
- Existing perks like lounge access, elite hotel status (Hilton Gold, Marriott Gold), and many Travel/Hotel benefits remain intact
- Amex says cardholders will see new Centurion Lounges in Newark (EWR), Salt Lake City (SLC), and Amsterdam (AMS) in thecoming years
Is The New Fee Worth It?
If you travel often, stay in high-end hotels, eat out regularly, engage with wellness brands, and value perks like lounge access, this is a very compelling refresh. On the other hand, casual travelers or those who don’t use many credits might find that the increased fee eats into the benefit rather than making them feel rewarded. Also, keeping track of all these credits can be a hassle.
Amex claims the new mix of credits and perks adds up to over $3,500 in value annually…if you use everything. For some, the upgrades more than make up for the $200 fee increase. But if many of these credits go unused or if you don’t travel often or dine out a lot, this card is overpriced. The bigger hotel credit and the Resy credit are strong draws, but you’ll need to be intentional to extract full value and since almost every perk requires enrollment or deliberately spacing out purchases over months or quarters, it takes a lot of organization..
CONCLUSION
The Amex Platinum Card refresh is now official. Yes, the fee has gone up significantly. But Amex didn’t just raise the price, it added serious value in hotel, lifestyle, dining, and entertainment credits. Whether it is “worth it” depends entirely on how many of the new perks you’ll use. For frequent travelers, foodies, and wellness enthusiasts, the new Platinum is likely to be a winner. For everyone else, it will require closer calculation and discipline to make it pay off.
Yoo pay that fee because yoo a Camel-a . Camel-a’s “library” has no books . Camel-a’s brain is dum . Camel-a pays that fee .
Off your meds this morning?
“Other Key Benefit Enhancements” shouldn’t really include “remaining perks… remain intact” as that’s not really an enhancement.
As always, thanks for making reading about changes like these easily digestible. It’s unfortunate Amex is just amping up the “coupon” style benefits rather than making things simpler and more user friendly. I see the value, just so hard to keep track of it all.
That’s fair enough – I was thinking that companies often do bait and switch, touting enhancements while not mentioning cutbacks. Here, we see no cutbacks to existing benefits.
@Matthew do the benefits kick in immediately for existing card holders? For example, can I benefit from the $300 hotel FHR/HC credit before EOY? Same question for the quarterly benefits (Lululemon and Resy) – can I get those before EOQ3 and EOQ4?
Yes, new benefits should kick in immediately for existing cardholders.
I am not sure I am lucky or not yet but I just used $200 hotel credit on two cards and received the credit today.
New benefit kicks in today. Am I going to be take advantage of full $600 credit or $600-$200 = $400 remaining?
or since it’s $300 semi-annually, I have $100 credit left?
looks like I am lucky. Just notice the tracker says
$0 Earned
$300 To Go
Will have to do some more research here. The fee is very high and I currently have 3 additional family members as additional to my card. What is the fee for additional cards going to be?
As for the new perks, I mentioned here many times I rarely eat out so Resy is useless for me. I changed my hotel strategy to local boutique hotels so never used Amex to book anything.
$300 at Lululemon as $75 per quarter means you will have to spend money there as literally nothing there is less than $100. I have an Oura Ring for over 4 years now so wondering if the $200 can be used to pay for the monthly membership as I don’t need a new ring. Uber credit might be useful and the digital entertainment will cover stuff that I pay anyway.
The $400 Resy credit itself accounts for this $200 fee increase, and there’s so much more here beyond that. Over ten thousand Resy restaurants – this is not a hard credit to use.
Compare that to the $300 opentable credit with Chase’s tens (yes, literally tens, not hundreds, certainly not ten thousand) of restaurants that Chase is offering here.
Just one example.
Amex launched a great refresh here and should be commended. Heads should be rolling at Chase.
With all due respect Matt, Oura is more proof some Americans have WAY too much money and will fall for almost anything.
“ An initial investment of $200 in the S&P 500 in 1985 would be worth approximately $17,637.77 in 2025, assuming all dividends were reinvested. This represents an 8,718.89% total return or an absolute return of $17,437.77 on top of the original $200”
How many Americans 40 years old today don’t have $18,000 to their name? If only their parents thought ahead. I’m sure you are taking care of your kids futures but how many say “It’s only $200”?
Not an exact answer but I found this tidbit of sadness. “ Overall Savings: A 2025 report noted that 59% of Americans can’t cover a $1,000 emergency expense with their savings”
@Dave Edwards: I work investing in healthy food and wellness companies so I think I know well the benefits it comes with eating healthy, exercising and tracking wellness. I actually got my Oura ring for free and have been using every day for the last 4 years. I have to tell you it changed my habits in a very good way. It allows me to track things that I ignored before and “forces” me to do things that I should be doing but did not have time or commitment to do it. I have to say the ring has been spot on for me every day. It basically told me I was getting sick 2 to 3 days before I got sick with Covid. The beginning of symptoms were there but I hadn’t noticed yet and the ring gave me it all. It tracks my sleep quality and I have to say I have been sleeping so much better since I know things that affect the quality of sleep. It track my steps, activity, movements and it makes me do better every day. Thus, overall, it is a fantastic investment to me. Yes, $200 for 20 years in the S&P500 is great but it does no good if I am not alive or healthy in 20 years to use that money. Also, spending money is about choices. I cringe when I see someone carrying a coffee from Starbucks since I know I can get much better quality at a fraction of price at home. So I save on that for example so I can send $200 on an Oura ring that it has been working flawlessly fr the last 4 years.
I was going to make a comment about polishing a turd and all, but this is actually a closer call than at first blush.
Resy credit – there are shockingly few options in my corner of DFW, but can probably use half of it for special occasion dinners.
YouTube credit – actually useful since I already pay for YouTube Premium, so full $300 there.
FHR credit – probably can use the whole thing, especially if one night stays qualify, but questionable whether it would mean paying more than I otherwise would in the first place. I’ll be charitable and say I’ll get the full $600 in value.
Everything else is useless to me, so I end up with about $200 of excess value give or take. The real question is whether it’s worth upgrading my Gold and losing 4x on grocery spend, which adds up to a very large number annually. Probably not, but to Amex’s credit, it is a closer call than I thought and is making me think about it.
Can get a Citi Strata (Regular) $0 fee card for 3x grocery spend.
Amex Plat is a great card, but no reason to spend a lot for money on it. It’s the best coupon book / overall lounge card.
Citi Strata Premier ($95 but effectively $0 if you use the $100 hotel credit), Citi Strata Regular and Citi DoubleCash is now the best points earning machine, in my opinion.
C1 Venture X has the newest lounges (although not that many of them). But at least in NY they are about to have lounges in the same locations as Chase (LGA TB and JFK T4). And it’s a lot cheaper at $395 ($95 if you will use the $300 portal credit) versus CSR.
And Chase, with the previously amazing and “default” one-two combo of the CSR and 1.5x Freedom Unlimited, is increasingly becoming less relevant in a very competitive marketplace, with coupons that are way too hard to use and illusory. They really are trying hard to, and succeeding at, irking their HNWI customers.
Thanks. I have the Venture X, and I’m one of those dinosaurs that still hangs on to the Citi Prestige. The answer is probably what it’s always been – stick with what I have because it works for my spending patterns. All these new products do have me thinking about whether it’s time to mix things up, though.
Unfortunately, the added credits don’t do much for those of us who frequently travel abroad. The Uber, Resy, and streaming credits are either explicitly US-only or functionally so (unless you like playing VPN whack-a-mole). And the FHR credit has always resembled a Bed, Bath & Beyond coupon, in that it’s largely a discount on inflated rates (which don’t earn status points to boot).
This isn’t necessarily going to be deal breaker. But I certainly won’t be able to use the credits as justification for paying the annual fee when other hotel platforms and credit cards (eg. C1 Savor) provide better overall value in these categories.
Hate to be this guy…but do you have any idea if any of these benefits were added for the Centurion card too? I have the card and can’t find any communication on new benefits for it..