Some of these cards I don't have yet, but here are some recommendations.
No annual fee, no paid membership requirements
Fidelity American Express: 2 WorldPoints/$ = 2% cash back or 2 Aeroplan mile/$. Also has other redemption options you might want to check, such as buying airplane tickets directly.
http://personal.fidelity.com/product...r?showcard=all
Fidelty Visa: 1.5 WorldPoints/$ on first $15k/year, thereafter 2 WP/$.
http://personal.fidelity.com/product...ard.shtml.cvsr
Capital One Venture One (not to be confused with Venture Rewards): 1.25 "miles"/$. This card may offer some or all of the specials for earnings and redemptions available for Venture Rewards, such as an extra 4 miles/$ on priceline. However, I have not verified this. See the Capital One discussion below.
American Express Hilton Honors?
http://www201.americanexpress.com/ge...Hilton-HHonors
Edit 5/5/2011: While almost all no annual fee cards are potentially worth keeping, a subset that will keep your life interesting is the "rotating bonus" cards.
http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/2011/...-credit-cards/ shows a recent discount calendar for Discover More, Citi Dividend, Chase Freedom, and American Express Blue.
No annual fee, but requires paid membership
CostCo AmEx: 3% on dining, 3% capped at $90/year on gas (including Costco gas, which like all Costco purchases has a 2% "executive member" rebate), 2% on travel (Fidelity AmEx is a better deal), 1% on all other purchases. Rebate is paid annually. Costco membership costs $50-100/year. The business version is the same but raises the gas discount to 4% capped at $240/year, but you represent that the purcahses are for business, and business cards aren't subject to certain consumer protections.
http://www201.americanexpress.com/sb...Nav-_-Amex_gas
Chase AARP Visa. Associate membership is open to everyone for something like $10-15 annually, and I thought I read a report of someone being offered free membership during the phone application process. The 3% discount on travel may make this a keeper, although most of the excitement on the internet is, justifiably, about the sign-up offers: 0% for 12 months on balance transfers (transfer fee: 3%, $5 minimum) and balances from purchases and, what makes this potentially the best sign-up offer for any credit card today, a 5% rebate on the first six months of spend, with no cap. So you can potentially net thousands of dollars in those fix six months by using your credit card to pay taxes, rent (williampaid.com) and some other non-credit-card bills (chargesmart.com) in addition to your usual spending. Note that Chase frowns on high volume purchases from the mint. Anyhow, as a card to keep, the basic argument is simply that the 3% travel discount may be worth the AARP annual membership dues.
Annual fee cards possibly worth keeping, even without negotiating a retention bonus
Capital One Venture Rewards and Capital One Venture For Business Visa. 2 "miles" per $ if you redeem for travel, which works out to 2%. The restrictions on redemptions mean you will probably have enough of a "miles" balance when it comes time to renew that you won't be able to negotiate a retention bonus. However, what might make these cards worth keeping are some of additional earning and redemption options that Cap1 seem to change frequently and without warning, such as $900 stay certificates for Hyatt and Ritz Carleton for 64,500 miles (up from 51,500 miles a few days ago) via the personal card (but you can transfer miles from the business card), and earning additional miles on many major vendors, currently including 4 miles/$ on priceline (6 miles/$ total). Some of these discounts require "activation", so be sure visit the "perk central" part of the web site to activate them. The first year's annual fee is waived, and there is a 10k mile sign up bonus for both cards, and, I believe a bonus for adding an authorized user to the business card. Beware that this program had "massive devaluation" in the past (see
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfr...t-capital-one/ ), and you do
not have an automatic right to downgrade the personal card to the fee-free "Venture One Rewards" card, although perhaps you could negotiate it if you threaten to cancel the personal card.
Note on Cap1 vs. Fidelity: Assuming a 2% redemption rate on the cap1 cards, the $59/year annual fee may make this
not as good a deal as the AmEx/Visa pair if your Visa-only purchases are less than $983/month, and the maximum savings versus Fidelity combination are $15/year (if you have at least $1250/month of Visa-only purchases, as the Fidelity Visa earns 2% after $15k/year). This calculation omits, on the one hand, some additional discounts and redepmtion specials on cap1, but also omits, on the other, the argument that Aeroplan miles from Fidelity and other redemption options may be worth more than $.01/WorldPoint, although that will be harder argument after Aeroplan's scheduled devaluation this July.
Cap1 personal rewards cards:
http://www.capitalone.com/creditcard...e-all/rewards/
Cap1 Venture for Business:
http://www.capitalone.com/smallbusin...-for-business/
US Airways Barclays Premier World MasterCard and World Platinum MasterCard. This is a special offer that includes a 10k US Air Dividend Miles on each annual renewal, thereby offsetting the annual fee of $89 or $49. The cards also have annual companion voucher offers which are valuable if you actually fly USAir operated flights. The offer URL is a single application that will give you one of the two cards, depending on which one Barclays thinks you qualify for. Contrary to the complaining on the FlyerTalk thread about this, the lesser $49/year is, in my opinion very much worth keeping, and, for some people a better deal than the $89/year card for those who don't fly USAir. My understanding is that without the special offer, the cards do not include the annual bonuses that would make them worth keeping in my estimation.
http://www.mostmiles.com/Chairmans
If you value PriorityPass airport lounge access (there are different levels of this), the $150/year Ameriprise World Elite MasterCard might be worth keeping.
http://banking-credit.ameriprise.com...mastercard.asp
I'll mention one last obscure possible "keeper" card for some people, just for variety. Asiana Bank of America American Express costs a $99 annual fee, offers a $100 annual rebate on Asiana purchases and earns 3 miles/$ on Asiana purchases, and, most importantly, 2 miles/$ on all other purchases (similar to Fidelity AmEx). I only learned about this card from Gary Leff's View from the Wing blog a few days ago. Like ANA, Asiana offers distance based redemptions to Star Alliance and possibly other partner carriers, which may be advantageous for inter-continetnal flights between near coasts that don't span so much distance.
https://www.bankofamerica.com/credit...000|2047565|JU
Even though this posting is too long already, I want to clarify that this is not a complete list of cards worth keeping. For example, I hope others will comment on hotel cards that typically pay for their annual fee in automatic annual bonuses. Also, the a credit card of whatever airline you fly regularly will often have some perks that make it worth its annual fee even if you rarely use it to buy anything.