Let's be clear about what this card is and isn't. The American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is Amex's mainstream UK points card — not the British Airways Amex, which is a different product with its own companion voucher perk. People conflate the two constantly, and it costs them. If you're chasing a 2-4-1 companion voucher for a BA reward flight, this isn't your card; you want the BA Amex Premium Plus or the standard BA Amex instead. What the Gold card gives you is Membership Rewards points, which is arguably more flexible currency anyway — it transfers to Avios at British Airways Club, but also to Virgin Points, Hilton Honors, Marriott Bonvoy, Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Delta, Nectar and Club Eurostar, among others. For a household that flies short-haul on Avios one year and long-haul on Virgin the next, that flexibility is worth more than a single fixed voucher.
The fee structure is the headline hook: nothing in year one, £195 from year two onwards, and you can cancel any time before the renewal date lands if the maths stops working. Amex is currently running a welcome bonus of Membership Rewards points for new cardholders who hit a minimum spend within a set window — the exact size of that bonus moves around depending on when you apply and occasionally where you're geo-targeted from, so don't hold us to a number here; check the live offer on Amex's own site before applying, because it genuinely fluctuates. What we will say is that on a card with no first-year fee, almost any welcome bonus clears the bar for 'worth signing up.'
Everyday earning is unglamorous but sensible: one Membership Rewards point per £1 on general spend, rising to two points per £1 for direct airline bookings or anything paid in a foreign currency, and three points per £1 if you route travel through Amex's own booking portal. On top of that there's an annual spend bonus — 5,000 bonus points for every £10,000 you put on the card in a cardmembership year, capped at 10,000 points annually. Worth flagging: Amex quietly cut this back in October 2025, consolidating what used to be five tiered bonuses (worth up to 12,500 points a year) into two chunkier ones worth a maximum of 10,000. If you were a heavy spender relying on those mid-tier bonuses, you're now earning slightly less for the same outlay — not a dealbreaker, but the kind of stealth downgrade that's worth knowing about before you assume last year's math still holds.
Where the card earns its keep day-to-day isn't the points at all — it's the bundled perks that are actually easy to use. The £120-a-year Deliveroo credit (two lots of £5 back each calendar month, capped, no rollover if you forget) is the kind of benefit that quietly offsets a third of the annual fee if you're even a semi-regular takeaway household. Four complimentary Priority Pass lounge visits a year (with extras bookable at £24 a pop) won't rival a proper premium card's unlimited access, but for someone flying a handful of times annually it beats paying full lounge prices at the gate. There are also hotel credits at participating properties and car hire discounts, though those feel more like padding on the benefits page than reasons to apply. What the card doesn't give you is real travel insurance — the included cover is travel accident protection, a payout scheme for serious injury or worse, not trip cancellation or medical cover. You'll still need to buy a proper policy separately, and we'd say so plainly rather than let anyone assume this card has them covered on that front.
The catch that matters most is the cost of carrying a balance. This is priced as a card for people who pay in full every month — the representative APR is eye-wateringly high once the annual fee is factored in, and there's a near-3% foreign transaction fee that undoes some of the value of the 2x foreign-spend earning rate if you're not careful about where that spend lands. Our take: treat this as a free-in-year-one Avios and Virgin Points accumulator with a couple of genuinely usable lifestyle perks bolted on, run every purchase through it that earns bonus points, pay it off in full without exception, and make an honest call about renewal once that £195 bill is actually due rather than assuming the perks are worth it by default.
