Maximize Your Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card DoorDash Benefits

If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, you've probably heard plenty about the points, the transfer partners, the travel credits. 

What doesn't get talked about enough is DoorDash, and honestly, it might be the easiest way to offset your annual fee.

Here's the deal: activate the benefit and you get a complimentary DashPass membership plus a monthly credit on non-restaurant orders. No spending threshold, no travel required, no strategy. Just groceries and errands you were probably already buying. It's the kind of benefit that doesn't need a strategy session... you just turn it on and use it.

Here’s the quick rundown of how to turn this delivery app into real value.

How the Sapphire Preferred DoorDash Perk Works

What You Actually Get

• Complimentary DashPass: Activate by December 31, 2027, and you'll get at least 12 months of DashPass for free. That's normally about $10 a month, so you're looking at $120+ in value just for turning it on. DashPass gets you $0 delivery fees and reduced service fees on eligible orders.

• Up to a $10 monthly credit for non-restaurant orders: This is the part people miss. Every month, you get up to $10 off things like groceries, convenience and drugstore orders, pet supplies, and retail and convenience partners. It doesn't roll over, so if you don't use it, it's gone at the end of the month.

⚠️ One catch: your DoorDash account needs to be tied to a U.S. address, and you'll need to make your Sapphire Preferred your default payment method for these benefits to kick in.

Our Math

Here's how we're calculating the value, using our own estimate:

• DashPass: $120/year in value

• Monthly credits: $120/year in value

• Total: around $240/year, by our math

The Sapphire Preferred annual fee? $95.

So this one benefit alone, used consistently, is worth more than double the cost of the card. You don't need to touch a travel portal or transfer a single point to make it worthwhile... and that's honestly a little wild for a card so often talked about for its travel side.

How to Activate Your DashPass 

This takes like… 60 seconds.

1. Open the DoorDash app

2. Go to Account and then “Credits and Gift Cards” (I’ve also found it’s easier to do this on desktop than on mobile)

3. Select Activate DashPass with Chase

4. Sign in and verify your Sapphire Preferred

5. Make it your default payment method

How to Maximize the $10 Monthly Credit

Lots of people activate DashPass and then… forget about the monthly $10 promo. Here are a few practical ways to not be one of those people.

• Build a monthly “essentials” routine: It sounds boring, but use it for things like paper towels, toothpaste, coffee, pantry fillers, and pet food. Most of these run $12 to $20, which makes the $10 credit perfect.

• Use it for grocery top-offs: Not full shops, just things you’d usually run out for anyway.

• Stack with DoorDash promos: DoorDash regularly offers store-specific discounts or reduced service fees. Pairing those with your $10 credit could knock $12 to $15 off a single order.

• Add a reminder: This perk only works if you remember to use it, so a calendar ping once a month is your friend.

Sapphire Preferred vs. Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Both cards get DashPass. Past that, the two benefits split in a way that's worth spelling out, because it's not just "Reserve gets more"... it's a completely different credit structure.

The Sapphire Reserve comes with the same complimentary DashPass, but layers on a $5 monthly promo for restaurant orders and two separate $10 monthly promos for non-restaurant orders, working out to $25 a month, or $300 a year in credits. Combined with DashPass, that's about $420/year in value, by our estimate.

The Sapphire Preferred, by comparison, gets that same DashPass membership plus just one $10 non-restaurant promo, for a total of $120/year in credits, or $240/year including DashPass.

So the Sapphire Reserve isn't just a bigger version of the same credit. It adds a restaurant credit the Sapphire Preferred doesn't have at all, and it doubles up the non-restaurant promo instead of giving you just one. That's the difference between $10 to spend in a month and $20, plus $5 toward an actual DoorDash restaurant order on top of it.

The Sapphire Reserve also extends the $5 restaurant credit to authorized users, which the Sapphire Preferred doesn't offer at all.

Why this doesn't automatically make the Sapphire Reserve the better pick: the annual fee gap between the two cards is enormous. Even at $420 a year in DoorDash value, that's nowhere near enough on its own to justify the jump, especially once you factor in that the Sapphire Reserve's real selling point is its broader set of travel credits and lounge access, not DoorDash. If you're already deciding between the two cards for other reasons (travel credits, lounge access, how much you spend on travel), the DoorDash benefit is a nice tiebreaker to know about, not a reason to upgrade on its own. For most people, we'd argue the Sapphire Preferred's $240 in potential value against a $95 fee is the easier math, and it doesn't require heavy DoorDash use to come out ahead. You just have to remember to use the credit.

Bottom Line

The Sapphire Preferred gets plenty of attention for its travel perks, and rightly so. But the DoorDash benefit is one of the simplest ways to make the card pay for itself, and it works whether or not you're actively earning or redeeming points that month. Activate it once, build a small habit around it, and let it quietly cover your annual fee. It's the rare card perk that asks nothing of you except remembering it exists.