Application rules
41 rules across 11 issuers: the velocity limits, once-per-lifetime bonus rules, portfolio caps, and card-family restrictions Miles checks before recommending a card.
American Express
Welcome offer not available to applicants who have or have had this card. How you came to have it does not matter: a card reached by upgrade or downgrade counts, even though the change itself paid no bonus.
Amex may 'forget' after 5-7 years, making you eligible again
Maximum one credit card application every 5 days. Does not apply to Pay Over Time (charge) cards.
Maximum two credit cards within 90 days. Usually does not apply to Pay Over Time (charge) cards.
Amex will only approve you for the same card once every 90 days. Primarily relevant for no-lifetime-language (NLL) offers. Amex considers some cards as the same product (e.g., Marriott Bevy and Brilliant).
Maximum five credit cards and ten Pay Over Time (charge) cards at one time. Both personal and business cards count toward the respective five- and ten-card limits.
Some customers have been allowed to exceed these limits.
You may not be eligible for a welcome offer on the Green, Gold, or any Platinum card if you've previously had any Platinum card. You may not be eligible for a welcome offer on the Green or Gold if you've previously had the Gold card. Business cards are not affected by these family rules.
The Platinum Card from American Express, The Platinum Card from American Express for Schwab, The Platinum Card from American Express Exclusively for Morgan Stanley, American Express Gold Card, American Express Classic Green Card
You may not be eligible for a welcome offer on the Blue Cash Everyday if you've previously had the Cash Magnet, Blue Cash Preferred, or Morgan Stanley Blue Cash Preferred. You're not eligible for a Blue Cash Preferred welcome offer if you've previously had the Morgan Stanley Blue Cash Preferred.
Blue Cash Everyday Card from American Express, Blue Cash Preferred Card from American Express, American Express Cash Magnet Card, Morgan Stanley Blue Cash Preferred American Express Card
You can get a welcome offer on any Delta card provided you've never had a more expensive Delta card. For example, you're eligible for a Delta Reserve welcome offer if you've had the Delta Gold, but you may not be eligible for a Delta Gold welcome offer if you've previously had the Reserve.
Delta SkyMiles Gold American Express Card, Delta SkyMiles Platinum American Express Card, Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express Card, Delta SkyMiles Gold Business American Express Card, Delta SkyMiles Platinum Business American Express Card, Delta SkyMiles Reserve Business American Express Card
Welcome offer eligibility restrictions across Marriott/SPG cards from both Amex and Chase. Amex considers the Marriott Bevy and Brilliant as the same product for the 1-per-90-days rule.
Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card, Marriott Bonvoy Bevy American Express Card, Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express Card
Bank of America
Maximum 2 new Bank of America cards per 2 months, 3 per 12 months, 4 per 24 months. Counts Bank of America cards only; the 3/12 rule is the one that counts other banks' cards.
May not approve if 3+ accounts were opened at any bank, Bank of America included, in 12 months (7+ for Bank of America deposit account holders)
May be relaxed to 7/12 for Bank of America deposit account holders
May require 24-month waiting period after opening/closing same card for bonus eligibility
Business card bonus offers are for a new account only and do not apply to converting an existing account; a business that has, or has had, a Bank of America business card in the preceding 24 months may be declined for another
Barclays
May not approve if 6+ cards opened anywhere within 24 months
Welcome offer requires 24+ months since last offer on same card
Inconsistently applied. Some cards instead use the language: 'You may not be eligible for this offer if you currently have or previously had an account with us in this Program.'
Must cancel existing card before reapplying for same product
One new personal card every six months recommended
Capital One
Cannot earn welcome offer within 48 months of receiving one on same personal card. Does not apply to business cards.
Historically 2 card limit, now showing frequent data points of more approvals
Limit appears to be relaxing with many successful approvals beyond 2 cards
Reported, not a published Capital One term: one business charge card per primary cardholder, so Spark Cash Plus and Venture X Business cannot both be held (authorized users excepted); one first-hand report of a Spark Cash Plus denial for too many accounts of this type while holding Venture X Business. No Capital One source states a limit on its other business cards.
Hard inquiries across all three credit bureaus for each application
VentureOne: Not eligible for welcome offer if you received a bonus on ANY personal Venture card within 48 months. Venture Rewards: Not eligible if you received a bonus on a Venture X or Venture Rewards within 48 months. Venture X: Not eligible if you received a bonus on another Venture X within 48 months.
Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card
Chase
Likely denial if 5+ cards opened anywhere within 24 months
Most business cards are exempt from this count: their issuers do not report them to the personal credit bureaus. Whether a given card does is recorded per card in credit_cards.json as `reports_to_personal_bureaus`, which is the field every consumer reads. Do not decide it from this sentence. Four issuers report at least some business cards (Capital One, Discover, TD Bank, UBS), and at Capital One it is per product rather than blanket: Spark Cash, Spark Cash Select and the no-fee VentureOne Business report, while Spark Cash Plus, the $95 Venture Business and Venture X Business do not while the account is in good standing. Venture Business and VentureOne Business are the pair to be careful with: near-identical names, opposite answers, and the annual fee is what tells them apart. Authorized user cards may count but can sometimes be removed via reconsideration.
Welcome offer requires no current card AND 24+ months since last offer on same product
Does not apply to the Sapphire Preferred and Reserve, which have their own limitations (see chase_one_sapphire). There can also be exceptions with some business cards. The restriction is per card, not per co-brand family: United cards, for example, restrict only on the same card, and multiple United cards may be held at once.
Most applicants limited to two new personal cards per 30 days. Business cards are usually limited to one per 30 days.
Ink welcome offers turn on which cards you have ever held, not on bonuses you were paid. Having held any no-annual-fee Chase business card blocks the offer on a no-annual-fee Ink; the Ink Business Preferred is blocked only by having held the Ink Business Preferred.
Each Sapphire card's welcome offer is once per lifetime, and the Preferred and the Reserve count separately. You cannot open a second copy of a card you already have.
The old rule preventing holding both simultaneously has been lifted, and as of early May 2026 Chase removed the family-rule language from both cards' welcome offer terms. The terms now read "This credit card is unavailable to you if you currently have one open" — a restriction on opening a second copy of the SAME card, not on holding a Preferred and a Reserve together. A pop-up window will warn you if you're not eligible for the welcome offer, and you'll be asked whether to proceed without it.
Reported denials for sole proprietors applying for Chase business cards after opening 3 or more new cards with any bank in the prior 24 months. Reported, not confirmed by Chase, and enforced inconsistently.
A 2026-09-23 report has Chase reconsideration and underwriting staff declining sole-proprietor business applications "specifically for having opened three or more new credit cards in the past 24 months". Enforcement is inconsistent: user reports include denials on the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business card at 4/24, the Sapphire Reserve for Business at 3/24 or more, and the United Business card, and approvals on Ink Business Unlimited at 4/24 and 6/24, Ink Business Preferred at 4/24, United Business over 3/24, and World of Hyatt Business at 3/24 and 4/24. So it is not limited to Ink cards, and it is not a certain denial. Counted like 5/24 until data shows otherwise; whether business cards count toward the 3 is unreported. Reports concern sole-proprietor applications; never suggest changing how a business is structured or described to avoid it.
Not eligible for a personal Southwest welcome offer if you currently have one, or if you've received a welcome offer on any personal Southwest card within the last 24 months. This doesn't apply to business cards. Cannot have two Southwest consumer cards open simultaneously.
Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Credit Card, Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Credit Card, Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority Credit Card, Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business Credit Card, Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business Credit Card
Not eligible for a personal IHG welcome offer if you've received one on any personal IHG card within the last 24 months. Cannot have two IHG consumer cards open simultaneously. You can have both a personal and a business IHG card.
IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card, IHG One Rewards Credit Card, IHG One Rewards Business Credit Card
Welcome offer eligibility restrictions across Marriott/SPG cards from both Chase and Amex
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card, Marriott Bonvoy Bold Credit Card, Marriott Bonvoy Bountiful Card
Citi
Welcome offer eligibility requires 48+ months since last offer received on same card. Does not apply to the Citi Strata Premier or Citi Strata Elite, which follow the Strata Lifetime Rule instead.
Counted from bonus receipt date, not approval date. Since September 2026 the Strata Premier and Strata Elite are excluded: their bonus is once per lifetime (see citi_strata_lifetime). A product change pays no bonus and does not start the 48-month clock.
Maximum 1 card application per 8 days (both personal and business)
Maximum 2 cards per 65 days (both personal and business)
Difficult approval with 6+ inquiries in six months
New account bonus is not available if you currently have or previously had the same Citi Strata account. For the Strata Premier, having or previously having a Citi Premier account (the card's former name) also disqualifies you.
Replaced the 48-month clock on these two cards in September 2026. This is held-account eligibility, not a waiting period from a prior bonus, and the terms state no lookback limit. Citi also says applicants may be ineligible based on their history of opening, closing and using credit cards. A legacy Citi Premier account counts as having held the Strata Premier.
Column N.A.
Each member can only have one Bilt Card at a time. Someone who holds a Bilt card moves to another one by product change, not by a new application.
From Bilt's own support article "Bilt Card 2.0 Program Overview" (updated 09/18/26, support.biltrewards.com/hc/en-us/articles/42897766682381-Bilt-Card-2-0-Program-Overview): "Can I have multiple Bilt cards? No. Each member can only have one Bilt Card at a time." Bilt's offer terms (biltrewards.com/terms/bilt-card-offer-terms, last updated 09/18/26) also list "Applying for multiple Bilt Cards to obtain multiple Welcome Bonuses" as abuse. Neither source publishes an application-velocity window or a waiting period after a denial, so none is recorded for Bilt.
A Bilt card Welcome Bonus is only for someone who does not hold, has never held, and has never received a Welcome Bonus on any Bilt Card 2.0 (Blue, Obsidian or Palladium). Holding or having held one Bilt card rules out the Welcome Bonus on all three. Upgrading to a higher-fee Bilt card by product change can carry a separate Upgrade Bonus, but product changes are offered only to eligible cardholders.
From Bilt Rewards Card Offer Terms, last updated 09/18/26 (biltrewards.com/terms/bilt-card-offer-terms). Bilt Blue has a $0 annual fee, so it can only be the card a downgrade lands on, never the one it leaves.
Discover
Must wait slightly over 12 months before second card application
Maximum two Discover cards simultaneously
First Electronic Bank
One card per product family at a time
Only one approval every 60 days
45-day waiting period after denial before reapplication consideration
US Bank
Cannot earn welcome offer if same card already open
May not approve if 5+ cards opened within 12 months
Wells Fargo
May not approve new card if one opened within six months
May not approve if 5+ new personal cards opened within 24 months. Unlike Chase, authorized user cards DO count and cannot be removed via reconsideration. Business cards don't seem to count.
Welcome bonus requires 48 months since last bonus
Choice Privileges card only requires 15 months since last bonus
Glossary
- 1/8
- : Citi's velocity rule: Maximum 1 new Citi card per 8 days
- 2/3/4
- : Bank of America's velocity rule: Maximum 2 new Bank of America cards per 2 months, 3 per 12 months, 4 per 24 months
- 2/30
- : Chase's velocity rule: Maximum 2 new Chase cards per 30 days
- 2/65
- : Citi's velocity rule: Maximum 2 new Citi cards per 65 days
- 3/12
- : Bank of America's rule: May be denied if you've opened 3+ accounts at any bank in 12 months (7+ for Bank of America deposit account holders)
- 5/12
- : US Bank's rule: May be denied if you've opened 5+ cards in 12 months
- 5/24
- : Chase's rule: Likely denied if you've opened 5+ cards (any issuer) in 24 months
- 6/24
- : Barclays' rule: May be denied if you've opened 6+ cards in 24 months
- eligibility_basis
- : What an issuer's welcome offer is gated on: "held" means having (or having had) the card disqualifies you regardless of whether you were ever paid a bonus; "bonus_received" means only a bonus you actually received starts the clock.
- external_velocity
- : Rules that count cards from ALL issuers, not just the one you're applying to
- family_rule
- : Cards in the same product family share bonus eligibility or restrictions
- held_groups
- : Only present on an eligibility_basis: "held" rule whose held-disqualification crosses card lines, e.g. Chase's Ink Lifetime Rule: having held ANY card in a group disqualifies the welcome offer on EVERY card in that same group, including itself. A rule with no held_groups uses the plain same-card reading (held this exact card blocks this exact card's offer). Every card in applies_to must appear in exactly one group, and the groups' union must equal applies_to -- enforced by tests/test_dataset_integrity.py::TestCrossFileIntegrity::test_held_groups_partition_applies_to in the main repo.
- lifetime_rule
- : Cannot receive welcome bonus on a card you've previously held
- portfolio_limit
- : Maximum number of cards you can hold from an issuer at once
- product_change
- : Upgrading or downgrading an existing account into a different card, keeping the account and its age. A product change normally pays no welcome bonus, so it forfeits a future one only at held-basis issuers (see eligibility_basis). Bilt is the exception: a downgrade within 30 days after an annual fee posts swaps the old card's Welcome Bonus for the new card's.
- velocity
- : How quickly you can apply for new cards from a given issuer
Read more about how the data is maintained and where it can still be wrong.