On the surface, the HSBC Platinum MasterCard with Cash or Fly Rewards and the Capital One Venture card seem comparable, Consumer Reports notes. If you like to travel, you might find their pitches enticing: Both let you earn points that you can use for plane tickets. But a cardholder charging $1,500 a month would get $460 worth of points in the first year with the Capital One card and only $180 with HSBC’s card.

Many credit cards have complex formulas for determining how much cash or how many points you’ll earn. Some cards come in two versions: one with no annual fee and another with a fee but higher rewards. To help you make sense of the wide range of credit-card deals, the Consumer Reports Money Lab developed a computer model for evaluating cards. It takes into account the total costs of carrying and transferring a balance and estimates the rewards you stand to earn based on your spending patterns. It tracked down the terms of 53 mass-market credit cards and used the calculator to determine the best ones for three types of users: families looking for cash rewards, leisure travelers who want free trips and cardholders who carry a balance.

Findings include: