Head to head · issuer terms as read 2026-08-29
Hilton Surpass vs Bonvoy Brilliant
Hilton Surpass charges $150 a year; Bonvoy Brilliant charges $650 — a $500 gap the earn rates and credits have to close. Hilton Surpass earns Hilton Honors points; Bonvoy Brilliant earns Marriott Bonvoy points. One of them is a hotel or airline currency with no cash floor stated on the pages we read, so we show the terms side by side but don't put a dollar value on those points — set your own in the optimizer.
The earn tables are listed category by category below, each in its own currency. Credits, as the issuers state them, add up to $450 a year on Hilton Surpass and $421 on Bonvoy Brilliant — if you would have spent that money anyway. Monthly credits have breakage; count only the ones you'd really use.
Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card
$150 fee
Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card
$650 feeTransfers
The terms, side by side
| Hilton Surpass | Bonvoy Brilliant | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual fee | $150 | $650 |
| Foreign transaction fee | No foreign fee | No foreign fee |
| Earns | Hilton Honors points | Marriott Bonvoy points |
| Transfers to partners | No | Yes |
| Credits stated | 6 · $450/yr if fully used | 7 · $421/yr if fully used |
| Welcome offer, as stated | 130,000 Hilton Honors Bonus Points after you spend $3,000 in purchases on the Card within the first 6 months of Card Membership. | 150,000 Marriott Bonvoy® bonus points and a $250 statement credit after you spend $6,000 or more in eligible purchases on your Card within your first 6 months |
Earn rates by category, as stated
| Category | Hilton Surpass | Bonvoy Brilliant |
|---|---|---|
| Dining & restaurants | 6X | 3X |
| Groceries & supermarkets | 6X | base rate |
| Gas, EV charging & transit | 6X | base rate |
| Travel booked direct | base rate | 3X |
| Streaming, phone & online shopping | 4X | base rate |
| Everything else | 3X | 2X |
Green = the higher stated multiplier (not shown here: the two currencies aren't the same unit). Brand-specific, promotional and rotating rates are on each card page, not modeled here.
What each nets at sample spend
Three sample monthly budgets, every point at 1.0¢ (the Pay-with-Points floor we paid), fee subtracted, no credits counted. Estimates, not promises — your spend is the input that matters.
Run your own spendQuestions people ask
- Which has the lower annual fee, Hilton Surpass or Bonvoy Brilliant?
- Hilton Surpass: $150 versus $650, as stated on the issuers' pages on 2026-08-29.
- Does Hilton Surpass or Bonvoy Brilliant charge foreign transaction fees?
- Hilton Surpass: no foreign fee. Bonvoy Brilliant: no foreign fee. Read off each issuer's page on 2026-08-29.
- Which earns more on dining?
- Hilton Surpass states 6X; Bonvoy Brilliant states 3X. The two currencies aren't the same unit, so a bigger multiplier isn't automatically more value.
- Can I transfer points to airline and hotel partners?
- Hilton Surpass: no. Bonvoy Brilliant: yes.
- Which is better for me?
- It depends on where your spend goes. The receipts on this page use sample spend profiles at 1.0¢ per point; the Card Stack Optimizer runs your own numbers against every card we track, net of the annual fee.
- Hilton Surpass: Main marketing page (https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/card/hilton-honors-surpass/) returned truncated/JS-rendered content via WebFetch and could not be used directly; annual fee, welcome offer, and earn rates were instead confirmed from the linked prospect terms/disclosures page and the supplementary benefit-terms page on americanexpress.com, both fetched today.
- Hilton Surpass: Welcome offer of 130,000 points / $3,000 spend / 6 months was confirmed on the prospect terms & disclosures page fetched today (2026-08-29); this is the currently posted public offer, not a personalized/targeted offer, but Amex welcome offers change frequently and should be re-verified close to publish date.
- Hilton Surpass: No introductory/first-year annual fee waiver was found in the fetched welcome-offer terms text — confirm before publishing any claim of a $0 first-year fee.
- Hilton Surpass: Amex Venue Collection Concessions benefit (10% back up to $250/year) appeared in the benefits page fetch but exact program name/current terms should be re-confirmed against the live benefits page before publishing, as Amex booking-platform benefit names change periodically.
- Hilton Surpass: APR range (seen in third-party/search summaries as approx. 19.49%-28.49% variable) was NOT confirmed via a direct americanexpress.com fetch in this session and is therefore omitted from this file entirely — do not add it without a fresh direct-page confirmation.
- Bonvoy Brilliant: Property Credit cadence not explicitly stated on the fetched americanexpress.com terms pages (text only gives the $100 USD value and eligible use categories, no stated frequency) — recorded value as-is without an invented cadence.
- Bonvoy Brilliant: Elite Night Credits (25 ENC) confirmed via fetched Amex terms page as deposited 'within 60 days upon opening'; whether this repeats in subsequent card-membership years was not confirmed by the fetched text, so cadence is recorded conservatively.
- Bonvoy Brilliant: Transfer partners: fetched americanexpress.com printable terms/benefits page for this exact card confirms an airline-transfer bonus mechanic verbatim as 'Marriott International, Inc. will add 5,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 points you transfer to airlines miles,' confirming the transfer benefit exists for this card. The commonly cited base transfer ratio (3 Bonvoy points : 1 airline mile) could NOT be confirmed verbatim from any page fetched today — marriott.com transfer-ratio pages (points-to-miles.mi, redeem/travel.mi) and the global.americanexpress.com card-benefits detail page all returned HTTP 403 on WebFetch. transferPartners is set to true based on the confirmed bonus-miles wording above, but the exact base ratio is UNCONFIRMED by a fetched source as of this research.
- Bonvoy Brilliant: The primary marketing page (americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/card/marriott-bonvoy-brilliant/) returned truncated/JS-rendered content via WebFetch and could not be used directly; all fee, earn-rate, credit, and welcome-offer figures above were instead confirmed from the Amex 'Terms, Conditions & Disclosures' page and the printable partner terms page for this exact card (both americanexpress.com).
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