Chase's 5/24 Rule, Explained: What Counts and How It's Calculated

If you've applied for a rewards credit card recently and gotten an unexpected denial — despite a strong credit score and no missed payments — there's a good chance you ran into Chase's 5/24 rule. It's one of the most consequential issuer policies in the entire rewards-card world, and also one of the strangest: Chase enforces it consistently, but has never currently published what it actually is.

What the rule is

The widely reported mechanic, consistently documented by applicants and card-industry trackers for nearly a decade, is this: if you've opened five or more personal credit or charge card accounts — from any bank, not just Chase — in the trailing 24 months, Chase will generally deny your application for most of its personal rewards cards, regardless of your credit score or income. It's not a credit-score cutoff or a debt-to-income test. It's a pure count of new-account activity.

Chase has never currently published this threshold anywhere — not in a Schumer Box, not in cardmember terms, not in a press release. There's exactly one documented exception. In 2016, Chase's own Chase Sapphire Reserve application page briefly spelled it out in writing: "You will not be approved for this card if you have opened 5 or more bank cards in the past 24 months." That language was pulled from the page on September 1, 2016, and Chase hasn't put a number in writing since. Everything known about how the rule works today comes from years of consistent, crowdsourced applicant outcomes rather than an official Chase disclosure — worth keeping in mind as a caveat on every specific detail below.

What counts toward your "5"

Based on that same body of consistently reported outcomes, here's what typically counts:

- Personal credit and charge cards from any issuer — Chase, Amex, Capital One, Discover, Bank of America, and so on — opened in the past 24 months, whether the account is still open or already closed. - Authorized-user accounts that show up on your credit report, even if you never asked to be added and never used the card. Some applicants report success getting these excluded by calling Chase's reconsideration line and explaining the account isn't theirs, but that outcome isn't guaranteed. - Certain store and co-branded cards that run on a general payment network rather than being store-only credit.

The business-card wrinkle

This part trips up a lot of applicants, so it's worth stating precisely, because the two halves of it point in opposite directions. Most business credit cards — including Chase's own Ink line — generally don't count toward your 5/24 total once you're approved for one, because business cards typically aren't reported on your personal credit file the way personal cards are. But that doesn't mean 5/24 ignores business cards entirely: if you're already over 5/24 based on your personal-card history, Chase will typically still deny you for one of its own business cards, even though approval for that business card wouldn't have added to your count. Getting the card doesn't cost you a slot — but being over the limit already can still keep you from getting it.

The exception inside the exception: business cards from Capital One and Discover generally are counted, because those specific products do report to your personal credit file.

How the 24-month window is actually counted

Consistently reported applicant data suggests Chase counts by calendar month rather than the exact calendar date, which changes eligibility timing more than most applicants expect. If your fifth new-account opened in a given month, you generally don't become eligible again until the first day of the 25th month after that — not the exact anniversary date. For example: a fifth account opened in October 2024 would put someone back under 5/24 starting November 1, 2026, not October 2024 plus exactly two years. If you're planning around this rule, build in that extra buffer rather than counting to the day.

Why Chase can run an unpublished rule like this at all

It's not unusual, and it's not a compliance gap. Federal law — specifically the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B — restricts what issuers can use against you: your age, sex, marital status, race, color, religion, national origin, whether you receive public assistance income, or the fact that you've exercised a right like disputing a billing error. Beyond those protected categories, the CFPB's own guidance confirms issuers are free to set their own underwriting criteria — credit history, income, existing relationship with the bank, and internal risk models of their own choosing. An internal, new-account-velocity rule like 5/24 falls squarely into that discretionary space; Chase simply has no legal obligation to publish it, and — aside from that one 2016 slip — hasn't. (Federal law does step in and mandate specific underwriting terms in narrower cases — the CARD Act's [ability-to-pay rule for applicants under 21](/blog/credit-cards-under-21-card-act-cosigner-rule) is one — but general new-account velocity isn't one of them.)

What people report doing about it

A few workarounds show up consistently in applicant reporting, though none is guaranteed and Chase's own practice around them has shifted over the years: pre-qualified "Selected For You" offers received by mail or in the Chase app have sometimes bypassed 5/24 review; applying in a physical branch or on a paper application has, in some reported cases, gotten a different outcome than an online application; and which specific co-branded cards are treated as exceptions to the restriction (rather than just to the count) has changed over time and is genuinely contested even among people who track this closely. Don't plan a card strategy around a specific "exempt" card without checking current reporting close to the date you apply.

The practical takeaway

If you're building a multi-card strategy — for a welcome bonus, a specific rewards category, or just picking the right card for how you spend — treat your Chase applications as the scarce resource. Get any Chase card you actually want before opening four more cards elsewhere, and keep a running count of every personal card you've opened in the trailing two years, including ones you've since closed. It's not a credit-score problem, and no amount of on-time payments will override it — it's simply a count Chase runs before it looks at anything else.

Not sure which card actually fits how you spend, independent of any issuer's application rules? [Take the quiz and see what matches](/find-my-card).