Annual fee
The most visible fee and the easiest to compare, because it is a single number charged on a predictable schedule. Most cards in this database disclose no annual fee at all. Where there is one, check whether the filing describes it as waived for the first year — that waiver is a marketing cost, and the recurring figure from year two is the real one. Our card pages flag the first-year waiver where the filing states it.
An annual fee is only expensive relative to what it buys, and a filed agreement does not describe what it buys. Rewards and benefits are not in these documents, so the fee here should be read as a cost without the offsetting side of the ledger.
Late payment fee
Charged when a payment misses the due date. Regulation caps it, and agreements disclose it as a maximum — commonly up to $41, with a lower figure for a first offence. Our data records the maximum.
The fee itself is rarely the real damage. A late payment can trigger the penalty APR, and if it goes 30 days past due it is reported to the credit bureaus, where it affects your pricing on every other product you hold for years.
Penalty APR
Not a fee, but it belongs in any honest list of what going wrong costs. After a missed payment, many agreements move the account to a penalty rate — frequently near 30%, sometimes higher — applied to the existing balance as well as new purchases.
The clause worth finding is the one that says how you get off it. Some agreements restore the ordinary rate after six consecutive on-time payments; others say the penalty rate may apply indefinitely. That difference matters far more than a few dollars on the late fee, and it is the thing to check before taking a card with a balance you expect to carry.
Cash advance fee and APR
The most expensive routine transaction on a credit card, for three reasons at once. There is an upfront fee, usually the greater of about $10 or 3–5% of the amount. The cash advance APR is higher than the purchase APR, often by five points or more. And there is no grace period, so interest starts the day the money leaves.
Check how the agreement defines a cash advance before assuming this does not apply to you. Many include money transfers, wire transfers, cryptocurrency purchases, gambling transactions, and bill payments made through certain third-party services — transactions most people would consider purchases.
Balance transfer fee
Typically 3–5% of the amount transferred, charged upfront. This is the number that decides whether a 0% balance transfer offer is worth taking: moving $5,000 at a 3% fee costs $150 on day one, which is cheap against a year of interest at 24% but is not free, and the comparison only works if you clear the balance before the promotional period ends.
These fees are disclosed as conditions rather than clean numbers — "either $10 or 3% of the amount, whichever is greater" — so our pages reproduce the wording rather than reducing it to a figure that would lose the condition.
Foreign transaction fee
Usually 3%, applied to anything processed outside the US — which includes online purchases from foreign merchants even when you never leave home. A growing number of cards disclose none at all. If you travel or buy from abroad with any regularity, this is a larger annual cost than most annual fees, and it is one of the few fees where the difference between cards is clear-cut. The agreements that charge nothing are listed on the no foreign transaction fee page.
Minimum interest charge
A floor, typically $0.50 to $2.00. If your calculated interest for a cycle comes to less than the floor, you are charged the floor. It only bites on very small balances and is rarely a reason to choose one card over another.
Returned payment and over-limit fees
Returned payment fees sit near the late fee in size and apply when a payment fails. Over-limit fees have largely disappeared: since the CARD Act an issuer cannot charge one unless you have specifically opted in to allowing over-limit transactions, and most people have not.
Next
To compare fee schedules across the database, start with the cards disclosing no annual fee. For how the interest rate interacts with all of this, see what APR actually means, and for finding these clauses in a document yourself, how to read an agreement.