Imagine spending months collecting points for dream vacations, only to have your plans derailed by an invisible rule buried in the fine print. Welcome to the world of Chase credit cards, where one quirky rule—the 24 month rule—can make or break your points strategy. This little-known policy has tripped up everyone from eager first-timers to seasoned travel hackers. But once you understand how it works, you can play Chase’s game like a pro and stack up those sweet sign-up bonuses without a hitch.

Breaking Down the Chase 24 Month Rule

Chase’s 24 month rule isn’t splashed across billboards or even especially easy to spot in their terms and conditions. Yet, it’s a dealbreaker for anyone hunting those lucrative sign-up bonuses Chase is famous for. Here’s how it works: if you’ve earned a bonus on the same credit card (or even within the same bonus family of cards in some cases) in the past 24 months, you can’t get another sign-up bonus on that card. Let’s say you opened a Chase Sapphire Preferred and scored its bonus in August 2023. You won’t be eligible for another Sapphire Preferred bonus until August 2025, no matter how many fee cycles you wait or how many times you close and reopen the account.

A few Chase cards tie their 24 month rule not just to the specific card—but to the card family. For example, with the wildly popular Sapphire line, the clock resets based on when you last got a bonus from either the Sapphire Preferred or the Sapphire Reserve. So, if you bagged a bonus with either one in the last two years, you have to wait it out. The same goes for Southwest’s personal cards, Ink business cards, United cards—most Chase cards play by the 24-month rulebook except a couple of co-branded oddballs like the Disney or Amazon cards which sometimes have their own quirks.

Chase automatically checks your application history, matching up bonus award dates as well as when you closed any previous accounts. If you received any Chase Sapphire card’s bonus in the last two years, you won’t see a new bonus, even if you squeak through the application process. There’s no way to trick the system or sweet-talk a banker into an exception; the database never blinks. And unlike Chase’s stricter “5/24” rule (that counts how many new accounts you opened with any bank in the past 24 months), the 24 month rule only cares about when you last got a bonus from that specific card.

Why the 24 Month Rule Exists

Banks give out big sign-up bonuses to lure you in, hoping you’ll stick around and become a profit-making customer—spending on the card, carrying a balance, or using other lucrative services. In the 2010s, folks figured out they could open cards, hit the minimum spend for the bonus, grab the rewards, and dump the card—only to repeat the cycle. Chase started bleeding money on bonus hunters, so in 2018, they quietly started cracking down with tougher rules. The 24 month rule is all about stopping “churners”—people who sign up again and again just for the bonus—while still offering big enough incentives to attract new customers.

Some people feel cheated when they run into this rule for the first time. It’s not obvious; the language in Chase’s terms isn’t always easy to parse. The welcome offer wording usually looks something like, "This product is not available to either current cardmembers of this credit card, or previous cardmembers who received a new cardmember bonus within the last 24 months." Blink and you’ll miss it if you skim through the application page. Why so subtle? Banks want to keep their application volume high, but need to keep serial bonus hunters out of their bonus budgets. The 24 month rule helps them draw the line quietly, with a system check at approval time.

Truth is, Chase isn’t alone. Other banks—Citi, American Express, and more—all have their own ways of limiting bonuses. Citi’s “48 month” rule is even tougher for some cards. Amex generally only lets you get a welcome bonus on a given card once per lifetime. Chase’s 24 month window is actually pretty generous, especially since you can get new bonuses on different products (say, swapping from a Sapphire to a Freedom card) as long as they’re not in the same family.

Smart Strategies to Work Around the Chase 24 Month Rule

The first mistake people make is closing a card too soon or forgetting when they got those juicy bonus points. If you want to squeeze the most out of Chase without running into the 24 month wall, tracking is everything. Mark your calendar as soon as your bonus posts to your account, not the day you’re approved or the day you finish spending. Chase clocks the 24 months from the day the bonus was awarded, not from approval or account opening. That detail saves a lot of heartbreak.

If you want bonus after bonus, play the long game. Space out your applications and target different families of cards. Let’s run through a real-world example. Suppose you earned the sign-up bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred on July 10, 2023. You can apply again for a new Sapphire bonus after July 10, 2025. But there’s no need to wait around doing nothing—you could grab a Chase Freedom Unlimited or an Ink Business Cash in the meantime, since they’re not tied to the Sapphire bonus restrictions (though keep the 5/24 rule in mind, since it counts all new cards from any issuer).

Here’s a neat tip: some people assume closing the previous card will reset the clock. Not so. Whether your card is open or closed, what matters is the date you last received the bonus. Some advisors even suggest leaving your card open (especially if it’s a no-fee version after downgrading), which can help your credit score by extending your average account age and available credit.

• Double-check your bonus dates. Login to your Chase account and scroll back through your transaction history, or call the number on your card for bonus posting info.
• Set reminders for when your 24 months is up, so you don’t forget to reapply and score another bonus on schedule.
• Remember that product changing (upgrading or downgrading within the card family) doesn’t reset your 24 month clock—the bonus date is what matters.
• Be careful about combining points: if you shift points from a Sapphire to a Freedom when downgrading, you’ll still have to wait for the Sapphire bonus to come around again.

If you want to see exactly which cards play by these rules, check Chase’s own website or search current welcome offer terms—for most cards issued since 2018, the rule’s right there in the fine print. Co-branded cards like Hyatt or Marriott may sometimes have different restrictions, so read those closely before you hit submit.

Common Misconceptions and Frequently Asked Questions

First, many assume the Chase 24 month rule is identical to the 5/24 rule, but these are totally separate. The 5/24 rule blocks your application if you’ve opened five or more new personal credit cards from any bank in the last two years. The 24 month rule, on the other hand, is about bonus eligibility for a specific Chase card—or sometimes, a family of cards—not the act of opening cards. So you could be denied a Sapphire bonus because of the 24 month rule, while still not having hit 5/24, or vice versa.

Another myth is that being an authorized user on someone else’s account resets your 24 month clock. That’s simply not true. Only being the primary cardholder and personally receiving the sign-up bonus counts. Authorized users don’t get their own bonus and aren’t tracked for the 24 month window.

People also wonder if product changing (say, downgrading from a Sapphire Preferred to a Freedom Flex) resets the clock. Again—no. The date you received your last sign-up bonus is the only thing that matters for eligibility. You can product change as often as you want, but you still need to wait out the 24 months before reapplying for the original card’s bonus.

Now, what if you have both personal and business cards? The business and personal versions of most cards are tracked separately, and their bonuses don’t interfere with each other. For example, you can snag a Chase Ink Cash bonus while waiting for your 24 month window to reopen on the Sapphire line. Just remember: business cards can still count toward your 5/24 total, even if they don’t factor into the 24 month rule for sign-up bonuses.

One last common question: does closing a Chase card make you eligible sooner? Nope. If you take a card out of the sock drawer and close it, the only thing that changes is your available credit and possibly your score’s average age of accounts. You still have to wait a full 24 months from when you received the last bonus for that card. Some folks choose to downgrade instead of closing, especially for no-annual-fee versions, to keep their credit history intact.

There you go—the Chase 24 month rule isn’t exactly out to get you, but it does put a speed limit on your bonus chasing road trip. Keep your bonus dates on file, mix up different Chase card families, and you can keep the travel and cash-back rewards rolling year after year.