Costco Anywhere Visa by Citi: worth a spot in your wallet?

The honest math on the Costco Anywhere Visa Card by Citi: what its cash back earns beyond a plain 2% card and what its protections would cost to buy.

Citi · No annual fee (The card itself has no fee, but you must hold an active, paid Costco membership to apply for or keep it — $65/yr Gold Star or $130/yr Executive. Not counted as part of this card's fee: unlike a card-bundled subscription, Costco membership buys warehouse shopping access, gas, and Costco Travel independent of which card (or payment method) you use in-store, so it isn't a cost this card imposes on you.) · cash back

Where it ranks: #3 of 16 for gas & EV charging

Earning rates

5x Gas at Costco (Shares a $7,000/yr combined cap with other gas & EV charging below, then 1%)
4x Other eligible gas & EV charging ($7,000/yr combined with Costco gas above, then 1%)
3x Restaurants
3x Eligible travel — flights
3x Eligible travel — hotels
3x Eligible travel — car rentals, cruises, travel agencies, Costco Travel
2x Other Costco and Costco.com purchases
1x Everything else

Protections and perks (4)

Worldwide Car Rental Insurance — Up to $50,000 toward repair costs or the rental car's cash value when you decline the rental company's collision/damage waiver and pay for the full rental with the card.
Worldwide Travel Accident Insurance — Up to $250,000 per person for accidental death or dismemberment (with reduced payouts for lesser losses) when the full common-carrier fare is paid with the card.
Damage & Theft Purchase Protection — New purchases covered 120 days (90 for New York residents) against damage or theft, up to $1,000 per item and $50,000 per calendar year.
No Foreign Transaction Fees — No surcharge on purchases abroad.

Recent changes to this card's data

2026-09-14 — Costco Anywhere Visa Card by Citi

Verified accurate — no changes. Fee, the 5%/4%/3%/2%/1% earning rates (including the shared $7,000/yr gas and EV charging cap), no foreign transaction fees, and the rental car, travel accident, and purchase protection coverages re-confirmed against citi.com and Citi's Guide to Protection Benefits.

2026-08-23 — Costco Anywhere Visa Card by Citi (new card)

$0 annual fee, no foreign transaction fee. 5% cash back on gas at Costco, 4% on other eligible gas and EV charging (5%/4% tiers share one $7,000/yr combined cap, then 1%), 3% on restaurants and eligible travel (airfare, hotels, car rentals, cruises, travel agencies, Costco Travel — MCC-based, uncapped), 2% on other Costco/Costco.com purchases, 1% on everything else. Confirmed via citi.com's product, rewards, and additional-information pages.
Only the 4% (non-merchant-specific) gas rate is auto-applied to your gas spend; the 5% Costco-only rate is shown but not auto-counted, since this app can't tell what share of your gas spend happens at a Costco pump — a conservative under-count by design. Same treatment for the 2% "other Costco" rate (single-merchant, no matching bucket).
Benefits: Worldwide Car Rental Insurance (secondary in the US, primary outside it; $50,000 max, modeled with the standard $20/day counter-cost anchor), Worldwide Travel Accident Insurance ($250,000/person), Damage & Theft Purchase Protection ($1,000/item, $50,000/yr), No Foreign Transaction Fees — all sourced from Citi's official "Your Guide to Protection Benefits" (Costco consumer card, effective Jan 22, 2023, fetched as PDF and read directly). That guide lists no Extended Warranty benefit for this card — confirmed absent, not omitted by oversight.
Roadside Assistance Dispatch Service and Travel & Emergency Assistance omitted as non-monetizable (referral/pay-per-use only, no coverage value to price) — same convention as the Prime Visa and Active Cash cards.
**Membership-fee judgment call**: a paid Costco membership ($65/yr Gold Star, $130/yr Executive, per costco.com) is required to apply for and hold this card, but it is NOT folded into the card's fee the way Robinhood Gold's required subscription is. Reasoning (mirrors the precedent already set on chase-amazon-prime-visa.json for Amazon Prime): Costco membership buys warehouse shopping, gas, and Costco Travel access independent of which card or payment method is used in-store, unlike a subscription bundled specifically to unlock one card's rewards. The fee stays $0, with a note on the card page explaining the membership requirement so the $0 doesn't read as genuinely cost-free. Costco's separate Executive-membership 2% rebate is a membership-tier perk (you get it regardless of payment method), so it isn't counted as this card's earning.
Cash back is paid out as a single annual reward certificate (issued in the February billing statement, redeemable at US/Puerto Rico Costco warehouses through Dec 31 of the issue year), not an ongoing statement credit — noted in the points preset description; doesn't change the face-value math.

Card data verified against Citi on 2026-09-14.

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