Amex Qantas Credit Cards Compared — Ultimate, Premium, Discovery and the Platinum Route
By Craig McNamara · Published on 26 July 2026
"Which Amex earns Qantas points?" is a question I get a lot, and the answer is narrower than most people expect. American Express sells a wall of cards in Australia, but only a handful of them can actually land points in your Qantas Frequent Flyer account — and one of them isn't even a Qantas-branded card.
Here's the current lineup as tracked on this site, with real numbers, and how it compares to the bank-issued Qantas cards.
The Amex cards that earn Qantas points
Two Qantas routes exist at Amex: the Qantas co-branded cards, which earn Qantas points directly, and The Platinum Card, which earns Membership Rewards points that transfer to Qantas at 2:1.
| Card | Annual fee | Bonus | Minimum spend | Qantas earn rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qantas Amex Ultimate | $450 | 50,000 Qantas points | $5,000 in 90 days | 1.25 / $1 |
| The Amex Platinum Card (targeted) | $1,450 | 225,000 MR → 112,500 Qantas | $5,000 in 90 days | 2.25 MR / $1 → 1.125 / $1 |
| Qantas Amex Premium* | — | 20,000 Qantas points | $3,000 in 3 months | — |
| Qantas Amex Discovery* | $0 | — | — | — |
* I don't track an active offer for the Premium or Discovery; those figures come from Amex's own card-shop page, which I scrape for the cards I do track. The Discovery's headline is simply "$0 Annual Card Fee".
A few details that matter on the two main cards:
- Qantas Amex Ultimate — the 1.25 points per dollar rate drops to 0.5 at government bodies, and after you've earned 100,000 Qantas points in a calendar year the everyday rate steps down to 1 point per dollar. The card comes with a $450 Qantas Travel Credit each year (booked through Amex Travel, minimum $450 booking), two Centurion Lounge entries at Sydney or Melbourne international, and two Qantas Club lounge invitations. There's also a referral version of the offer floating around with identical numbers — same 50,000 points, same $450 fee, same $5,000 spend.
- The Platinum Card — this is a charge card, so the balance is due in full every month. The 225,000-point offer I track is targeted, not public. It earns Membership Rewards, which convert to Qantas at 2:1 — a ratio the December 2025 MR devaluation left untouched. It carries a $450 Travel Credit and a $400 Global Dining Credit against its $1,450 fee.
Worth knowing what's not on the list: the Amex Explorer and Platinum Edge earn Membership Rewards too, but their flavour of MR transfers to Velocity and KrisFlyer only — no Qantas. If Qantas points are the goal, those cards don't get you there.
What actually changes the math
Fee versus bonus value. I value a Qantas point at 1.6¢, using the same December 2025 AFF valuations this site uses for its card rankings. On that basis:
- The Ultimate's 50,000-point bonus is worth about $800 against a $450 fee — and the $450 annual Qantas Travel Credit offsets the fee entirely if you were going to book a Qantas flight anyway.
- The Platinum's 112,500 Qantas points (post-transfer) are worth about $1,800 against a $1,450 fee, before counting the travel and dining credits. Bigger number, but it only works if the credits match how you actually spend, and only if you've been targeted for the offer.
The earn-rate gap is real. 1.25 Qantas points per dollar (Ultimate) and 1.125 (Platinum via transfer) sit at the top of the everyday Qantas earn rates I track. Only one bank card matches the 1.25 — the Qantas Premier Titanium, at a $1,200 fee — and every other bank Qantas card tops out at 1 point per dollar, with several at 0.5 or lower.
Amex acceptance is the tax. The quiet cost of an Amex-only strategy in Australia is the spend you can't put on it — the businesses that don't take Amex, or surcharge more for it. That's not a number I can put in a table, but it's the reason many points collectors pair an Amex with a Visa or Mastercard rather than going Amex-only. If a chunk of your spending can't go on the card, the effective earn rate on your total spend is lower than the headline.
How the Amex options compare with bank Qantas cards
The banks compete on bonus size rather than earn rate. From the active offers I track right now:
| Card | Annual fee (year 1) | Bonus Qantas points | Minimum spend | Earn rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qantas Premier Titanium | $1,200 | 150,000 | $5,000 in 90 days | 1.25 / $1 |
| Qantas Premier Platinum | $349 | 120,000 | $5,000 in 90 days | 1 / $1 |
| NAB Qantas Rewards Signature | $420 | 100,000 | $5,000 in 90 days | 1 / $1 |
| Westpac Altitude Qantas Black | $295 | 90,000 | $6,000 in 90 days | 0.5 / $1 |
| St.George Amplify Qantas Signature | $295 | 90,000 | $6,000 in 90 days | 0.5 / $1 |
Three caveats hiding in that table: the Qantas Premier Platinum's 120,000-point bonus only applies if you haven't earned Qantas points with any credit card in the last 24 months, the Titanium wants a $200,000 minimum income, and the Westpac and St.George cards add a $75 Qantas Rewards program fee on top of the listed annual fee.
The pattern is clear enough. As a pure signup-bonus play, the bank cards win — 100,000–150,000 points versus Amex's 50,000 for similar or lower fees. As an everyday earner, the Amex cards win — 1.25 points per dollar versus 0.5–1 on the other bank cards, plus the $450 travel credit doing fee-offset work every year. The Qantas Premier Titanium is the odd one out: it matches Amex's 1.25 earn rate and stacks a 150,000-point bonus on top, but at a $1,200 fee and that income hurdle.
Which lens matters more depends on whether a card is a one-year bonus grab or a long-term keeper — I covered that trade-off in my churning guide.
The Amex one-bonus-clock rule
This is the part that catches people out. The bonus terms on the Amex cards say "New Amex Card Members only" — not "new to this card". Amex runs one clock across its entire stable: I track it as an 18-month waiting period, and holding any Amex card resets it for all of them.
Compare that with the banks, where the waiting periods I track are 24 months but generally scoped per card or per bank family. With Amex, you can't churn the Ultimate, then grab the Explorer's bonus, then come back — one Amex bonus, then 18 months in the wilderness before the next one.
That makes sequencing matter. The always-current, per-issuer rules — including exactly how Amex's clock works alongside every bank's — live on my credit card eligibility rules page.
See the current offers
Offers move around — bonuses get bumped, fees change, targeted offers appear and vanish. The Qantas points credit cards page has every live Qantas-earning offer I track, Amex and bank alike, ranked by actual first-year value after fees rather than headline points. Every number in this post comes from that same data.
