Citi Strata Premier card review and guide 2026

The Citi Strata Premier card is a premium travel rewards card that has relatively strong rates of rewards earning in multiple usefl categories. The card also enables point transfers from Citi ThankYou Rewards to Citi’s airline and hotel partners as the most favorable rates.

Citi Strata Premier card at a glance

The Citi Strata Premier℠ Card is a staple of the ThankYou® Points wallet, earning bonus rewards in a variety of travel categories, plus restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations and EV charging.

Citi Strata Premier℠ Card welcome offer

Welcome offer: Earn 60,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months.

Learn how to apply.

This bonus is earned as Citi ThankYou® Points. This card also enables transfers to all of Citi’s travel transfer partners at the most favorable rates.
If this is your only ThankYou® Points card, you won’t be able to redeem your points for cash back at 1 cent per point. Pair this with a Double Cash or Custom Cash for cash back redemptions.

Annual fee: $95

Citi Strata Premier Review

Cards and Points Rating: 3.5/5.0
Read more about our star ratings.

The Citi Strata Premier℠ Card is Citi’s premium travel rewards card that earns decent rewards on spending. Historically, where the Citi Strata Premier’s predecessor (the Citi Premier® Card) shined was in the number and variety of categories where it earned 3x points. And with the relaunch of the Strata Premier, Citi continued that.

But those earnings aren’t as compelling when the Citi Strata Card largely replicates the same bonus categories—and on a card with no annual fee. The Strata Premier hasn’t gotten objectively worse—but the alternaitves to the card have gotten better.

What the Strata doesn’t offer, however, is the 10x points on hotels, car rentals and attractions booked through CitiTravel.com. And those are some pretty strong earnings for bank portal bookings at the $95/year annual fee level.

The card is allso surprisingly light on travel insurance benefits. For being marketed as a premium travel card, meant to compete against the Chase Sapphire Preferred®, I’d certainly expect more. But, then again, Citi’s cards are notoriously light on benefits.

Ultimately, if you want to be able to transfer your ThankYou Points to Citi’s travel transfer partners at the most favorable rates, and the Citi Strata Elite Card doesn’t make sense for your, the Strata Premier is the right choice. We just wish it offered more.

How to maximize the Citi Strata Premier

The real reason to have the Citi Strata Premier is to get value from Citi’s travel transfer partners, but holding other cards in the Citi ecosystem can both give you more options to redeem your points and enable you to earn more points. Here’s what you should to do the the most value out of this card.

Learn and use the ThankYou Points transfer partners. In most cases, the reason you get the Strata Premier card is to get access to Citi’s ThankYou Points transfer partners at the most favorable transfer rates. See our guide to ThankYou rewards to dig more into that. If you’re not using transfer partners, in our view, there’s little reason to hold the Strata Premier.

Combine your ThankYou Rewards accounts. By default, every Citi card you open that earns ThankYou Points will have its own ThankYou Rewards account. But you’ll get the most out of the rewards ecosystem if you combine your ThankYou Points accounts, since you’ll be able to access the most favorable redemption options from across all of your cards and you’ll be able to earn your rewards as a single pool of points.

Get a “cash back” ThankYou Points card. One quirk of the ThankYou Points ecosystem is that the cards marketed as earning “points” don’t let you redeem those points for 1 cent of cash back each. You can fix this problem by picking up either the Citi Double Cash or Citi Custom Cash and combining your ThankYou Rewards accounts. When you do, you can use the card to earn more rewards on some of your spending AND redeem your points for cash back at Citi’s most favorable rates.

Quick take: Transfer partners ARE the reason to get this card

Aaron Hurd
Executive Editor of Cards and Points

Before Citi launched the no-annual-fee Strata card, it could make sense to get the Strata Premier card (or more specifically its predecessor card) for earning 3x in useful categories. Paying $95 a year meant you could earn more points on the most useful categories within the Citi ecosystem than you could with either Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership Rewards.

But that calculus changed when Citi launched the no-annual-fee Strata card. Now you can earn just as many points with a no-annual-fee card. This is objectively better for consumers overall, but it means that the Strata Premier card loses a bit of its shine—the card hasn’t gotten worse, but rather then alternatives have gotten better.

Ultimately, the reason to get the Strata Premier card is to get access to Citi’s ThankYou Points transfer partners at the most favorable rates. If you’re just redeeming for cash back, stick with the no-annual-fee Strata card, paired with a Double Cash and a Custom Cash.