The short answer: if you've opened 5 or more cards in 24 months, expect a denial on most Chase cards. Chase counts personal credit cards, from any issuer. It does not count auto loans, mortgages, student loans, or personal loans. HELOCs usually don't count either, though the answer depends on how your lender reports the account. If you’ve been added as an authorized user, that probably counts against you too.
Once upon a time, long long ago, I was a credit risk analyst in a major bank’s credit card division. My job was to look at people’s offline data and purchase history to detect if someone wasn’t going to be able to pay their credit card bill. Sadly, I can't read an underwriting rule without trying to reverse-engineer whoever built it.
When the team asked me to write about Chase's 5/24 rule (which heavily plays into Chase’s approval of card applications), I skipped past the rule (cocky, maybe – but I innately understood the logic) and landed on questions I couldn't find answered anywhere.
Everyone agrees the rule was built around credit cards. But what about a car loan? A home equity line of credit? If I had built this thing, I would have flagged every new trade line, not just the plastic ones.
After all, risk is risk.
But there are some interesting nuances to 5/24, having dug into far too many online forums discussing it. Let me give you a former insider’s take.
What is the Chase 5/24 Rule?
Chase will decline you for most of its credit cards if you have opened five or more personal credit cards in the past 24 months, from any issuer. Not five Chase cards. Five cards, period.
Chase has never officially published this rule. It appeared briefly on a card application page in 2016 and was removed within weeks. Everything below comes from crowdsourced data points, contributed by applicants who reported back after approval or denial. (I may have spent too much time on Reddit.) The data is pretty darn consistent for something “unofficial.”
But! It IS unofficial, which means Chase can change it without telling anyone, at any time.
What Counts Toward Your 5/24 Total
Based on community data, these show up as “counting” towards the unofficial rule:
Personal credit cards from any issuer, including Chase
Charge cards, including cards with no preset spending limit
Store and retail credit cards, at least the ones that run on a payment network
Authorized user cards where someone added you to their account
Closed accounts that were opened inside the 24-month window
Business cards from three specific issuers, covered in detail below
What Doesn't Count Toward 5/24
Mortgages
Auto loans and car leases
Student loans
Personal loans
Home equity loans, the cousin of a HELOC
Denied applications
Product changes, upgrades, and downgrades on cards you already have
Business cards from most issuers
FAQ About Chase’s 5/24 Rule
Why Do People Get Denied at Exactly Five Cards?
The biggest thing people forget about 5/24 is that the card you’re applying for IS the 5th one. If you’ve already opened 5 cards in 24 months, you’re going to get declined.
Do Car Loans and Mortgages Count Toward 5/24?
No. Installment debt sits entirely outside this rule.
You can close on a house, finance a minivan, and take out a personal loan in the same calendar year, and as far as 5/24 is concerned you've opened zero accounts. Meanwhile the card you got at Kohl’s for a better discount on those jeans burns a full slot.
That feels backwards, and it’s why I assumed that installment loans would count.
Why Does 5/24 Ignore a Mortgage but Count a Store Card?
Short answer: because it’s not a risk rule. It’s layered on TOP of a robust set of risk rules (most likely).
I’d bet you a lobster dinner that Chase already runs a dozen actual risk screens on your application. Debt-to-income. Inquiry velocity. Total new accounts. Payment history. Utilization. All the machinery that decides whether you're likely to pay them back. That’s the world I lived inside for several years.
Those screens absolutely notice your car loan and your home equity line, and they will happily decline you on their own merits. It’s why, for example, if you only have 2 credit cards, you might get declined… even though you’re nowhere near the “5” limit.
5/24 is something else. It's a business rule bolted on top of the risk model, aimed at one specific behavior rather than at whether you’re worth taking a risk on.
My guess? Chase built it to slow down people opening cards in rapid succession to collect welcome offers. That's a profitability problem, not a default-on-your-balance problem, and narrow problems get special rules. Nobody is opening a car loan to collect 60,000 points.
The way I think about it now is – it’s like the metal detector at airport security. That machine has no opinion about whether you're dangerous; it's calibrated for one kind of thing and it goes off when that thing passes through, whether it's a box cutter or your grandmother's hip replacement.
5/24 beeps at new revolving credit card trade lines on your personal credit report. An $800,000 mortgage sails right through, because that isn't what it's listening for.
(However – the inclusion of retail store cards in the “5” wouldn’t necessarily cover likely abuse of welcome offers. Maybe Chase is just worried you’re a discount / rewards junkie?)
Does a HELOC Count Toward 5/24?
Usually no, and this is the one question where the community data genuinely conflicts. I think I know why. (If you don’t know what a HELOC is, it’s a Home Equity Line of Credit… basically you use a portion of whatever you’ve paid on your house as a line of credit for yourself.)
The consensus is that HELOCs don't count; the more thorough discussions I could find group them with things the rule ignores. But peppered through the forums are people insisting otherwise, including at least one report of a HELOC counting against someone's total.
Both camps may be right… and wrong. Let me tell you what I think is going on.
A HELOC is a revolving line of credit, but lenders don't report it consistently. Some code it as revolving, like a credit card. Others code it as installment, like a mortgage. There's no regulatory standard, and some lenders don't report HELOCs to the bureaus at all. It’s one of the rare “depends on the issuer” things you can still find in financial services.
I want to be SUPER clear that this is my guess of the what’s going on, and not something Chase has confirmed. Some of the examples I found on forums were several years old, so take my guess with a grain of salt. But it seems to me that it’s likely a lender coding thing, so if you have a HELOC and you're anywhere near your limit, pull all three credit reports and see how it's showing up before you apply for a Chase travel rewards card.
Do Business Credit Cards Count Toward 5/24?
I was pretty curious about this one.
The answer is: generally no, and the reason is the same reason your mortgage doesn't count. Most business cards never appear on your personal credit report, so there's no trade line for the rule to detect.
This is the part that seems a little bananas for me, especially if you’re a small business owner with no employees, but you’ve got an LLC and an EIN. A business card with a $50,000 limit can be completely invisible to 5/24, while a store card with a $500 limit burns a full slot. The size of the credit line is irrelevant. The only question is whether the account lands on your personal report, and business cards mostly don't, because the account belongs to the business rather than to you.
Let’s talk about what “mostly” means here.
Which Issuers Put Business Cards on Personal Credit?
Most business cards never touch your personal credit report, which is why they don't count. (The credit risk in those cases goes to your employer, not you. And if you have a business credit card… pay it. People have been fired for not clearing the balance on their corporate cards.)
Three issuers are the exception to the company taking all the risk: Capital One, Discover, and TD Bank all report business card activity to the consumer bureaus, so those cards can cost you a “slot” against 5/24. (Likely because a lot of small business owners use these banks for their first business card.)
Everyone else, including Amex, Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Barclays, only reports business activity if the account goes delinquent. Pay on time and those cards stay invisible to 5/24.
If you already have a business card and want to know where you stand, don't take my word for it. Pull your report and look. If the account is listed, it counts, whatever the issuer's general policy says.
Chase Business Cards Work in One Direction Only
Chase business cards are their own strange animal.
Chase business cards are subject to 5/24 for approval purposes. If you've opened five cards in the past 24 months, you're getting declined for one of their business cards the same way you'd get declined for a personal card. The rule applies on the way in.
But once you're approved, that Chase business card doesn't add to your count, because it never hits your personal credit report. (At least, I couldn’t find any examples or anecdotes that Chase business cards do hit your credit report at the time of writing.)
So… looks like it's a one-way door.
Nothing Will Reset Your Count… Except Time
The only thing that clears a space in the group of 5 is time; your oldest account has to age past the 24-month mark and drop out of the window on its own.
There's also a piece of this that has nothing to do with 5/24. Staying under the limit is necessary; it isn't the same thing as being approvable, because Chase may have other unpublished rules in play. I’m not going to go into detail about these, since they’re less commonly discussed.
My recommendation is to leave three or four months between Chase applications, which has nothing to do with your count and everything to do with not looking like you're catch all the welcome offers like they’re Pokémon.
Other 5/24 Questions, Answered
Yes. If someone added you to their card, it shows up on your report as an account, and Chase's automated system counts it even though it isn't really yours.
If you want it gone, the primary cardholder has to remove you, and then you contact Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to get it off your report.
Do Product Changes and Downgrades Count Toward 5/24?
No. When you downgrade or convert a card, the account number stays the same and the credit history continues as a single entry. No new trade line appears, so there's nothing for the rule to detect.
One catch worth knowing: the original account still counts if it was opened inside the past 24 months. Converting an eighteen-month-old card doesn't reset its clock. And a product change usually makes you ineligible for the welcome offer on the card you're switching into.
Does a Denied Application Count Toward 5/24?
No, and this is the distinction that confuses people most. Applying for credit generates a hard inquiry, and hard inquiries stay on your report for up to two years and can ding your score. But 5/24 doesn't look at inquiries; it looks at accounts that were actually opened. A denial leaves an inquiry behind and nothing else.
Hard inquiries can still hurt you through those other risk screens. They just don't move your 5/24 count.
Do Store Credit Cards Count Toward 5/24?
Most likely yes, though there's a wrinkle. Store cards that run on a payment network, meaning they work anywhere and not just at the one retailer, are revolving credit card accounts on your report and count like any other card. There are scattered reports that cards usable only inside a single store or brand may not count, on the theory that they don't register as normal credit cards.
Nobody has confirmed that distinction, so I wouldn't plan around it. My bet is that those single stores will still go after you if you default on your card balance, and will report you to the bureaus.
Does Closing a Card Get It Off My 5/24 Count?
No. If the account was opened inside the 24-month window, it counts whether it's open or closed today. Closing it accomplishes nothing for this purpose.
How to Check Your 5/24 Status
There's no calculator, and you don't need one.
Pull your free reports from all three bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com.
Find the accounts sections, both open and closed.
Count every credit card with an open date inside the past 24 months. Include store cards, charge cards, and authorized user accounts.
Four or fewer means you have room. Five or more means you're waiting for the oldest account to age past 24 months and fall off.
If there's a HELOC or a line of credit in that list, check how it's categorized while you're in there. That one detail may be the difference between a slot and a non-event.
Bottom Line
Chase's 5/24 rule is narrower than it feels. It doesn't care about your mortgage, your car, or your student loans. It counts new revolving credit cards on your personal credit report, and it stops counting at four.
Pay attention if: you’re early in your points journey, since the rule is strict enough that Chase applications generally belong at the front of your plan rather than the back.
Worth doing first: pull your three reports and count. If you have a home equity line of credit in the mix, spend the extra ten minutes checking how it reports. The answer is sitting in your account details, and it's easier to find it there than in a denial letter.
