Frequent Miler on the Air - Amex Platinum vs. Robinhood Platinum | Coffee Break Ep116 | 7-28-26

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

The Robinhood Platinum card now live for invited members, so in today's episode, we'll see how it compares with another Platinum card, the American Express Platinum Card®.(00:17) - Robinhood Platinum card is now live for invited members...(00:50) - Here are some of the basic details of the card(01:22) - How is this card different from the American Express Platinum Card®?(03:27) - 5X categories(04:28) - Airport lounge access(04:49) - Elite status(16:56) - How is the Robinhood Platinum Card better?(19:11) - How is the American Express Platinum Card® better?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast NetworkVisit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Today's coffee break, Amex Platinum versus Robin Hood Platinum. Welcome to Frequent Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. Each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. Yes, there is a new platinum card on the block, and we're going to look at it to see how it compares to the platinum card we all know and love the

American Express Platinum card. This new one is from Robin Hood. It's invite only. So it might have some exciting things going for it. We'll dig in and find out. Yeah. And so remember, if you want to jump ahead to something, probably you can find some more information in the show notes. And don't forget to like this video, subscribe, enable notifications.

We always appreciate all of that. All right. So let's take a look at this. Like you said, the Robin Hood card is only available via invitation. So you'd have to first have a Robin Hood account. And I don't know this for sure, but I would guess you might need to be a Robin Hood gold member. That was a requirement for the Robin Hood gold card. So it seems reasonable that that may be a requirement for the platinum card as well. Although we haven't seen anything one way or another. So we don't know for sure. I mean, it comes with free Robin Hood gold. So, you know, but probably to get an invite, you probably have to already be part of it. It's hard to say. It's hard to say true. Yeah. All right. So let's dig into some of the differences. So first of all, if you're into, you know, the status of pulling out a shiny card, well, Amex, the platinum card, you have a mirror finish option.

So that's pretty cool. But the Robin Hood card is 99.9.9% pure platinum plating. So I don't know whether you could tell that visually, but I mean, if you're into that kind of thing, I guess that's impressive. It's also weighs in at a tremendous 27 grams compared to, yeah, compared to the Amex cards, about 17 grams in that area. And then if you want to compare to what a regular plastic card is, those are around 5 grams. gives you some idea of how much like pocket, you know, how much it's going to be pulling down your pants having this thing in your pocket. You know, it's fun. The old Ritz card was like the old Ritz card.

Newer ones are not the same. But the old one was like a heavy, heavy metal. I don't know if it was 27 grams, but it was always fun because when I'd hand that over, somebody would be like, oh, wow, this is heavy. And I'd always make the joke, you should feel the bill. Yeah. So if you want to make that joke over and over again, then the Robin Hood card will be the one for you. But moving on to other features of the card that are likely more important to many folks listening. The networks.

First of all, obvious easy difference there. The MX Platinum is an Amex card. The Robin Hood card is a Visa Infinite. Yep. Annual fees. So the Amex card, 895. The Robin Hood is a cheap $6.95. So $200 less right there.

Boom. Rewards type. Obviously, Amex, you're going to be earning membership. rewards points with Robin Hood, you'd be earning cash back. Yeah. And, you know, we love some transferable points. So that's a little point in the favor of Amex. But if you're a cashback person, you know, maybe it doesn't matter.

All right. Anyway, moving on. What are the 5x categories that each card has? They each have one major 5X category. The Amex card has 5X for flights, booked directly with airlines. The Robin Hood card has 5% back on. dining on your first $50,000 of spend each year. I guess I should have mentioned the Amex cards, 5X flights is on your first 500,000 spend each

year. Probably not an issue for most people. Probably not. But you also have portal rewards. So 5X prepaid hotels on the Amex side. If you got a platinum card, if you have the Robin Hood card, it would be 10% on hotels and cars. But I think that's booked through the Robin Hood travel platform, right?

And 5% on flights. So similar, depending on how you value your membership rewards points. We would value the membership rewards points more, of course. But you've got decent percentages back if you're okay with booking through the Robin Hood Travel Portal. Right. Airport lounge access. So the Amex card includes Centurion lounges, airspace lounges, escape lounges, plaza premium lounges, Delta Sky Club up to 10 visit days per year and priority pass membership.

The Robin Hood card, priority pass. Done. Elite status. You got Marriott Gold, Hilton Gold, leading hotels of the world, Sterling, National Executive and Avis preferred with the MX Platinum card. So that's a number of different statuses, hotel and car rental with an MX platinum. With the Robin Hood Platinum, you get Robin Hood Gold, I guess. There you go. Yeah. And there might be some car benefits through the Visa Infinite connection. We haven't dug into that, but there's none directly through Robin Hood. Travel rebates. So American Express Platinum offers $800 in travel rebates. $200 per year are from airline incidental fee rebates. And $300 per six months.

for hotels, which are specifically booked through either the hotel collection, which requires a two-night's day, or find hotels and resorts, which does not require a two-night stay. The Robin Hood Platinum also has $800 in travel credits. The flight one is $150 every six months for flights. Now, this isn't airline incidental fees, so this is much more easily usable. So that's a total of $300 a year there. And then $500 a year or $250 every six months for premium hotels. And these have to be booked two nights or more. So it's a little more like Amex is the hotel collection than the fine hotels and resorts in that way.

So I'd say roughly comparable. We don't know what Robin Hood's premium hotel collection looks like at all. So that is going to have so much to do with whether that's a worthwhile benefit. Do they have a lot of properties? Are they well priced compared to how much you could pay elsewhere? We just don't know. Yeah, you know, if it's a collection similar to Amexes or broader, it could be even more interesting. If it's like city is the reserve, then it won't be particularly useful at all since there aren't very many, you know, properties in that collection.

So, yeah, like you said, really depends. Guaranteed premium hotel benefits. If you book through Amex, fine hotels and resorts, you get daily breakfast for two, and sometimes you'll get that with hotel collection bookings. And you get $100 property credit per stay with FHR or the hotel collection. Guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout with FHR. On the Robin Hood side, with the Robin Hood Platinum,

you get daily breakfast for two and $100 property credit per stay at those premium collection hotels. So similar-ish, but without the 4 p.m. guaranteed late checkout, which is something I think is unique to Amex. I don't think anybody else guarantees the 4 p.m. late checkout. Yeah, of those kind of premium hotel booking options, I think you're right. Now, these were just the guaranteed benefits. Both of them also suggest that you might get room upgrade.

You might get early check-in, things like that. But I find those kind of maybe things pretty worthless. Yeah. So rare for those to pay off. You also may get those things if you didn't book through those platforms. So yeah, you're right. Very questionable value. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. They both offer dining credits. The Amex card has a total of $600. $400 of it is through the Rezi platform. So $100 every quarter when you dine at a Rezi restaurant, a restaurant that's listed on Rezi, you don't have to book it through Rezzi and pay with your platinum card. You just get $100 up to $100 back.

You also have the Uber slash Uber Eats credit, which we're going to kind of double dip here because we also have a ride share section later and this credit can be used for either, but the point is you get $15 per month, Uber credit and $35 in December that can be used for either Uber or Uber Eats. On the Robin Hood side, you've got $370 total in credits per year, $20 per month, and $30 in January goes to participating restaurants. This is kind of like that hotel collection. This could be really good. Like if participating in restaurants are basically all restaurants or most restaurants, that'd be nice and easy.

But it could be a small list, and we don't know. So that's a TBD to find out if that's a useful benefit. The other one is $10 per month on DoorDash, which, you know, so the $120 per year there if he used DoorDash enough. Yep. Airport security. So you get Clear Plus rebated on an MX Platinum card. If you pay for your Clear Plus with your MX Platinum card,

I don't know if you have to enroll in this benefit. You might need to enroll in your benefit section, but you get a full rebate for the cost of Clear Plus for one. person. Also, it includes the rebate every, whatever it is, four to five years for global entry or TSA pre-check. Again, that's on the Amex Platinum card. The Robin Hood Platinum card offers the similar rebate for global entry or TSA pre-check, but nothing for clear. Yeah. Yeah. In the ride share area, we've got that Uber credit that I mentioned before. So total of $200 per year, but it's broken up $15 per month, most months.

Then on the Robin Hood side, you have Waymo, $20 per month, $30 in December for Waymo, which is the kind of automated driving ride share thing, which I guess is nice if you're in one of the cities where Waymo operates. They're in, according to Waymo site, they're currently in San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. They also listed a couple other cities where they are,

but they said only available book through Uber in those cities. So ironically, there you'd have to use your Amex credit to get rebated for those booking. So anyway, so yeah, that's what the Robin Hood card offers for Ritecher. And then we have some wellness perks

on the Amex Plus. platinum side you get up to $800 per year that's up to $300 in credit for Equinox purchases. That's like a gym chain that exists in some cities. $300. And I should mention, I think you can also use that for the app if you do the workouts in the app. So even if you don't live near an Equinox gym, it's possible to use that one. $300 a year back on Soul Cycle. I believe that might just be on the purchase of a Soul Cycle.

That's right. So I think you have to be buying one, not going to a Soul Cycle place. and $200 back on an aura ring purchase, which is a fitness tracker ring. Robin Hood Platinum gives you up to $803. They up the Annie by $3. That's $239 back for whoop. Woop is a wearable. We've seen that as a benefit on a chase card recently for a temporary offer there.

So up to $239 back for a Woop, that'll buy the device and a year of service. but that won't cover the taxes, so you won't get a full amount rebated, but pretty close. $365 back for Function Health. I don't know anything about Function Health. Do you know what that is? I believe it's a service that will, like, give you all these tests. Like lab results, yeah.

So if you're into, you know, kind of knowing everything about your health indicators, that's something you might subscribe to. And this gives you the full purchase price. I think, rebated. Yep. And $199 towards Amazon One Medical. So I think that's the full cost of membership for the year. I looked into that at one point.

So Amazon has, you can make essentially e-visits for doctors, you know, telehealth visits over the computer. So it gives you a membership to be able to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Robin Hood Platon is also advertising a thing called Eight Sleep, which is, I don't know, what it is, but it says the device and everything comes with it, but it's only through September something, so it seems to be a one-time promo. So I don't sort of consider that as part of a

comparison between the Amex and the Robin Hood card. Streaming perks. So on the Amex side, you have $300 towards digital subscriptions, select digital subscriptions, and it's doled out $25 per month. So if you just use your platinum card to auto pay any of these things, the up to $25 per month will just come off your, or be rebated right back to you. That includes Disney Plus, Disney Bundle, ESPN Plus, Hulu, New York Times, Paramount Plus, Peacock, Wall Street Journal, YouTube Premium, and or YouTube TV. Also, as an aside, the Amex Platinum gives you Walmart Plus, and by having Walmart Plus, you get to pick either Paramount Plus Essential or Peacock Premium.

which are both ad-supported versions of those services. So quite a bit of streaming perks on the MX side. I didn't see any streaming perks on the Robin Hood side. All right. And then last but at least, other. So AmX Platinum has a couple of other things that are worth a mention. There's the $75 per quarter in credits for Lulu Lemon purchases. So that's $300 over the course of the year if you used all four quarters.

it comes with emergency medical transportation assistance. And so if you need emergency medical evacuation, the AMX Platinum card theoretically at least covers that with no stated limit. You don't need to have booked your trip with the card. That's just a benefit for being a card holder. Though you have to call AMX travels emergency medical assistant. They have a phone number for that. Obviously not a 911 type of emergency number.

but once you have that stuff kind of in motion, you can call them for help coordinating that and figuring out whether or not your benefit will cover. And there's some other various purchase protection type benefits and things of that sort. We're not going to dig into all of those little details. On the Robin Hood side, you get Robin Hood Gold membership, which if you wonder what does that give you. The biggest benefit, the marquee benefit, is a 3% bump on retirement account. contributions. So if you're contributing to an IRA, I think this year, don't quote me, I'm not a

tax person, but I think this year the limit $7,000 in contributions. So if you were to max that out, in an IRA with Robin Hood, you'd get an additional $210 because they add 3% on your contributions. So that can be worth something. Nice. Pretty measurable here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a nice little perk there. And one thing we didn't mention at all, and perhaps by design, but I think as probably at least worth a mention here is that the Robin Hood Platinum card at the time we're recording this doesn't have any introductory bonus at all. And so that's a major difference in the first year. Yeah, that's true. I also want to mention about the Robin Hood Gold membership. You shouldn't value it more than $60 per year because that's what it costs to just sign up $5 a month.

So yeah. So even if you're getting hundreds of dollars back for because of its perks, you still shouldn't value it more than $60. Great point. Great point. We'll be back right after this with our thoughts about the two cards. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. And we're back.

I'm going to go over real quickly what I think are the best features of the Robin Hood card, like where it's better than the MX card, and then where the Amex card is better. And then we'll give our analysis of like which one do we think is really better overall. where Robin Hood Platinum is better. Obviously, it's $200 cheaper, so that's better. Pure platinum plating. Now, if I was going to put either one of these cards in my breast pocket, and if I was to be shot right there, I would think the Robin Hood card would be more likely to keep me alive

than the Amex card. Now, I don't know this for sure, but that's my guess. So Robin Hood card is more likely to keep you alive. I don't know if the platinum is all that strong, Greg. It's hard to say. It's hard to say. It could be that the stainless steel is stronger. I don't know.

We will, I'm not going to promise to test that. It's a visa, so it's more widely accepted worldwide. 5% dining could be a nice benefit for more people, I think, than 5x flights, which, are the built-in 5x categories that these two cards offer. So that's nice. It has better earning rates through their travel portal, so you can get 10% back for hotels and cars. The dining and flight credits appear to be easier to earn,

but that's really TBD. We can't really say that for sure. I think one thing I could say is that, where things seem to be better, the wellness perks, the Robin Hickard seems to be much more focused towards health, as in like monitoring your health and getting health advice and stuff, whereas the Amex perks are more geared towards exercise, just sort of as a broad brush view of what those like rebates and things offer.

So that's a personal decision of which one is more important to you, I think. Where Amex Platinum is better, transferable points. I always prefer those over cash back. More credits. There's a lot more cash back to be earned here. And so if you think about just the $300 in digital streaming alone, if you can, right there, you can be getting more than the $200 difference back between these annual fees, but also things like $300 Lululemon can be valuable to many people.

But ultimately, I think where the Amex Platinum card really shines over Robin Hood is just it has much better perks. You've got better lounge access. You've got more elite status. You've got Clear Plus. You've got emergency medical transportation and evacuation. You've got fine hotels and resorts guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout, things like that. So that's really, to me, where there's no contest. You know, I think that it's easy to make, it's funny to say this.

easy to make the case for the MX platinum card. I was just having a conversation about that card over the weekend with a family member who's mildly interested in points and miles at best, but has the platinum card. And she was enthusiastically talking about it, despite how expensive it was, because a lot of those things are things she was already paying for. So it doesn't really make a difference to her, whether she pays that money to MX and then covers it or she was already paying for a lot of those things separately. So she feels like she's getting, easy value out of it. And I think that it's easy to feel that way. Because a lot of those things are things that many of us pay for. The streaming services, when you also include it, I thought it was

wise of you to include with the Walmart plus perk. You get Paramount Plus or Peacock. And so that adds something additional. So there's really, there are a lot of things that add on the pile for the MX side. What I think is kind of interesting about Robin Hood is, okay, it's already $200 cheaper. If you were going to the $60 a year for Robin Hood gold anyway. Like I am. I'm paying the $60 a month. I did a few years back, there was a big promotion to transfer your IRA and they gave you a 3% uncapped based on whatever it was in your IRA. And there was a required five, yeah, it was a great deal. There was a required five year hold period for that. So my IRA money has to stay at Robin Hood for the next couple of years in order to keep that. I only needed to keep gold for one year. But if I'm going to keep contributing to it,

Of course, I'm going to pay the $60 to get the additional $2.10. I'm coming out $150 ahead every year. So I'm definitely paying for that anyway. So if I look at it, it's $200 cheaper. And that's $60 that I don't have to, well, it's just getting shifted to this card instead of going for Robin Hood Gold. Right. So now we're at $260 cheaper. And so then when I look at it, I say, well, you know what?

The flight credits are pretty easy to use. And if the hotel credits are okay, then I, I think it'd be a pretty easy one for me to justify having the Robin Hood Platinum card. And the Amazon One Medical and stuff like that is just sort of icing on the cake that if I'm able to make use of any of that, I think it'll work out pretty well. Now, I say that and make it sound like I'm going to get the Robin Hood Platinum. And I'm probably not going to get the Robin Hood Platinum card because I am pretty happy with the MX Platinum.

But I say all that to say that while on the surface, we made it sound like the MX Platinum, I think, is an easy winner here. I think that there probably is quite a market of people for whom the Robin Hood Platinum is not as crazy as it initially seems. The biggest issue, I think, is that there's no introductory bonus on the card, at least in the time we're recording this. And I think that's a big miss. I mean, how do you have a card that costs $700 a year just about and doesn't include any introductory bonus? Like, the only carrot is the credits on the card. I mean, they might pencil out to keep, but it's hard for me to get enthusiastic about it without anything there. If it had a competitive introductory bonus, I would still prefer the MX platinum, but I could

see some people picking Robin Hood Platinum between the two. Yeah. I think for, yeah, I don't know. I think for most people, the Robin Hood Platinum is only going to really make sense if you value those wellness things, the whoop, the function health, the Amazon One medical. Because if you do value those, maybe if you're already subscribed to one or two of those things, I could see right there you're being like, this card is practically costing me nothing, plus I'm getting some perks on top. And, you know, so in that case, great. For people that aren't interested in those things, I don't know. I think it's a hard sell because then you have to like jump through hoops just to make back your annual fee without getting a lot in in terms of extra perks.

Anyway, so that's my. No, you're right. You're right. I mean, I think it's, yeah, it's missing a lot of perks. And I, if I had to pick between the two, I can't imagine picking the Robin Hood platinum over the MX Platinum. I think I could see maybe there being justification for having both. But even though I say that, I'm not going to get both.

Probably. I don't think I'll get the Robin Hood Platinum card. Yeah, and I'm definitely not. It would take too many Robin Hood Platinum cards to keep me protected from any kind of war. So, yeah. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to Frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media.

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Send it to mailbag at Frequentmiler.com. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel, comedian, and since 2011, host of the Travel Tales podcast. When I'm not traveling the world telling jokes for money, I'm traveling for fun out of curiosity and love of new places. And I love talking about travel with other people who share my passion. Whether they're travel experts, influencers, expats, or I'm just catching up with a fun friend, the subject is always my favorite one, travel.

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