5. No Frills, Low Rates

Winner: Simmons First Visa Platinum
Runner-up: Capital One Platinum Prestige (for applicants with perfect credit)

If you carry balances, your best bet is to go with a low-rate card. Otherwise, the interest you pay on rebate cards -- typically higher than that on cards not affiliated with a rewards program -- will far outweigh your rewards, Sherry says.

The tough part: The cards that offer the most favorable rates typically come from smaller, local banks that have stringent application requirements, warns Cardratings.com's Arnold. "You'd have to fax in your pay stub, and they're going to look at your application very carefully," he says. That's because the smaller a bank is -- and the lower interest rate it charges -- the less risk it can afford to take that a card holder will default on his or her payments. Consider this: While the average default rate at the big banks is three percent to four percent, Arnold says, the default rate at Arkansas-based Pulaski bank, which offers a card with an impressive 7.99% APR, is just 0.3%.

But if you have perfect credit, these cards are tough to beat. The Simmons First Visa Platinum has a 7.25% fixed APR, while Pulaski's APR runs as low as 7.99% (but comes with an annual fee of $35 or $50 for the classic and gold cards, respectively). Among the big issuers, Capital One is excellent with 7.89% APR on its Capital One Platinum Prestige card, reserved for people with excellent credit, namely those who have had a loan or credit card for at least five years and at least one of their credit cards has a limit of $10,000 or higher. These strict requirements prevented the card from taking our No. 1 spot.

For more details and links to the featured credit cards, click here.

Credit Card	Annual Fee	APR	Bonus Features
Simmons First Visa Platinum	None	7.25% fixed	None
Capital One Platinum Prestige	None	7.89% variable	· No fee on balance transfers. (APR for balance transfers is the same as that for purchases.)
Pulaski Bank Credit Card	$35 for Visa Classic and Standard MasterCard; $50 for Gold MasterCard Account.	7.99% fixed	· No fees for balance transfers and cash advances; · 0% APR on balance transfers for your first six billing periods.

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