Bilt Card 2.0 Compared: Blue vs. Obsidian vs. Palladium

The original Wells Fargo Bilt Mastercard stopped earning rewards and working for Bilt payments after February 7, 2026. In its place, Bilt relaunched its card program as Bilt 2.0 — a three-tier lineup (Blue, Obsidian, Palladium) issued by Column N.A. and serviced by Cardless, not Wells Fargo. The new cards keep the feature that made the original card famous — earning points on rent or mortgage with no transaction fee — but change how much you earn and add two paid tiers with real travel perks. Here’s exactly how the three cards differ and which one fits your spending.

Bilt 2.0 at a Glance

All three cards earn the same way on housing payments and carry no foreign transaction fees. Rent/mortgage rewards and the welcome-bonus math are explained below, followed by a full side-by-side comparison and a tier-by-tier breakdown.

How Rent and Mortgage Points Work on Bilt 2.0

Bilt 2.0 kept the no-fee housing payment, but changed the earning formula. On the original card you earned a flat 1X on rent as long as you made five or more card transactions that statement period, capped around 50,000 points a year. On Bilt 2.0, all three cards — Blue, Obsidian, and Palladium — earn up to 1.25X points on rent or mortgage with no transaction fee, and Bilt has removed the old 100,000-point annual housing cap entirely. There’s no fee-paying required to earn points on your own rent; that 3% fee only applies if you’re using a Bilt card to cover someone else’s rent or mortgage (for example, paying for a parent or adult child).

The catch is that the multiplier is now tiered to how much you spend on the card outside of housing each month, relative to your rent or mortgage amount:

• Spend at least 25% of your monthly rent on non-housing purchases → 0.5X on rent
• Spend the full amount of your monthly rent on non-housing purchases → 1.25X on rent (the maximum)
• Spend less than the 25% threshold → a guaranteed floor of 250 points that month

In practice: someone paying $2,000/month rent who also puts at least $2,000/month of everyday spending on the same Bilt card earns the full 1.25X on that rent payment — 2,500 points instead of 2,000. Put less non-housing spend through the card, and the rent multiplier scales down toward the 250-point floor. There’s also a second option on every tier: route your 4% Bilt Cash earnings from everyday spending toward your housing payment instead of taking points, which sidesteps the tiering question altogether.

This is a real behavior change from the original card, so if your Bilt status or points strategy was built around the old flat-rate rent earning, it’s worth re-reading how it interacts with your Bilt status tier and point redemption value before assuming nothing changed.

Full Comparison: Blue vs. Obsidian vs. Palladium

Bilt Blue: The No-Fee Default

Blue is the direct no-annual-fee successor to the original Bilt card. You still get fee-free points on rent or mortgage (now up to 1.25X instead of a flat 1X), 1X on everything else, and a handful of bonus categories through Bilt’s own ecosystem — up to 4X at Bilt partner restaurants, 3X on hotels and 2X on flights booked through the Bilt Travel Portal, and 3X on Lyft once you link accounts. There’s no hotel credit, no Bilt Cash perk, and no lounge access, but there’s also nothing to lose if you rarely use those extras. For renters who mainly want housing points without paying for a card, Blue is the obvious pick and it costs nothing to add to a wallet already built around other rewards cards.

Bilt Obsidian: The Middle Tier Built for Dining Spenders

Obsidian’s $95 fee buys a real bump in everyday earning: 3X on either dining or groceries (you choose which category applies, and grocery spend is capped at $25,000/year), 2X on other travel, and stronger Bilt Travel Portal rates (4X hotels, 3X flights) than Blue. The $100/year hotel credit, split into two $50 statement credits for qualifying 2+ night Bilt Travel Portal bookings, can offset roughly the entire annual fee on its own if you book even one or two hotel stays a year through Bilt. World Elite Mastercard protections add purchase and travel coverage Blue doesn’t have. Obsidian makes sense for someone who already spends meaningfully on dining or groceries and wants that spend to pull double duty boosting Bilt points, without jumping to Palladium’s $495 fee.

Bilt Palladium: Premium Perks, Flat-Rate Earning

Palladium trades category bonuses for a flat 2X on everything and leans on a larger package of statement credits and lounge access to justify its $495 fee: a $400/year hotel credit, a $200/year Bilt Cash allowance (with up to $100 rolling into the next year), and complimentary Priority Pass Select for the cardholder plus two guests. The welcome offer is also the richest of the three — $300 Bilt Cash on approval with no spend required, plus 50,000 points and Gold status after $4,000 in non-housing spend within the first 90 days. Run the math before applying: between the hotel credit and the Bilt Cash perk, Palladium can return roughly $600 a year in credits against its $495 fee if you actually use the Bilt Travel Portal for hotel stays, which makes it a reasonable pick for frequent travelers who’d otherwise pay for Priority Pass separately — but a poor fit if you’d never book through Bilt Travel or use a lounge.

Which Bilt 2.0 Card Should You Get?

• Just want fee-free rent points: Bilt Blue. It costs nothing and keeps the core housing benefit intact.
• Spend heavily on dining or groceries and book the occasional hotel: Bilt Obsidian. The category bonuses and hotel credit typically outweigh the $95 fee.
• Travel often, already use Priority Pass or book hotels regularly: Bilt Palladium, if you’ll actually redeem the Bilt Travel Portal credits and lounge access — otherwise the $495 fee is hard to justify over Obsidian.
• Still have the old Wells Fargo Bilt Mastercard: It stopped earning rewards and working for Bilt payments on February 7, 2026, so applying for one of the three Bilt 2.0 cards is the only way to keep earning on rent going forward.

Whichever tier you pick, the points themselves still work the same way across Bilt’s airline and hotel transfer partners, and Bilt Cash now functions as the flexible redemption option across all three cards rather than a separate milestone perk.

Frequently Asked Questions