Buying decision
Where to Buy Discounted Gift Cards
Last verified · How we are paid
The short answer
The real discounts are at the warehouse clubs, not the resale sites. A restaurant bonus card is not a discount. If you buy resale, spend the card inside the guarantee window or you are uninsured.
Where to buy
Sam's Club and Costco, if you belong to one. When we checked on September 1, 2026, Sam's Club listed a $50 Outback card at $39.98 and a $30 Cold Stone card at $20.79. Costco's restaurant cards were mostly $100 of value for $79.99. 1 2
When to buy
When a chain you already eat at runs a gift-card bonus, and only then. In late summer 2026 The Cheesecake Factory and IHOP each gave a $10 bonus card per $50, with an expiry weeks later. Check that date before you buy. 6 7
Codes
No code to hunt. When we checked on September 1, 2026, CardCash's own pages showed no promo-code offer, and Raise's brand tiles showed cash back rather than a discount. The saving here is the price on the card, not a code at checkout. 3 4 5
Cards
Unsettled. The Blue Cash Preferred page promises 6% back on eligible purchases at U.S. supermarkets, capped at $6,000 a year. It never says whether a gift card bought there counts. Ask your issuer before counting on it. 9
Where to buy it
-
Sam's Club 1
——
The deepest discounts we could actually read a price for. On 2026-09-01 its savings listing showed a $50 Outback Steakhouse card at $39.98, a $100 Domino's multi-pack of four $25 cards at $79.98, a $75 Topgolf card at $59.98, a $100 inKind card at $74.98 and a $30 Cold Stone Creamery card at $20.79. Most are email delivery, so there is no shipping wait.
Membership only, and the listing says prices may vary in club and online. The range is wide: the same page had Southwest at $474.98 for $500, which is 5% off, next to the Cold Stone card at nearly a third off. Some items, such as a $200 Disney card, hide the price behind a sign-in, so you cannot compare before joining.
-
Costco 2
——
The same warehouse-club trade, aimed squarely at restaurants. Costco states its discounted eGift cards and card packs typically offer a 20% to 25% discount, and the 24 listings we read on 2026-09-01 bear that out: Landry's, Fogo de Chao, Outback, Texas de Brazil, California Pizza Kitchen, Domino's, Papa Johns, Shake Shack, Red Lobster, Cracker Barrel and others at $79.99 for $100 of value.
Membership only, and the pricing is flatter than it looks. Almost everything is the same trade: $100 of value for $79.99. The band has an edge on both sides, with Potbelly, Sullivan's and Logan's Roadhouse at $74.99 for $100, and one item well outside it, an inKind card at $64.99 for $100 of value after a $10 discount.
-
—
Where you go when you do not want a membership, or you want a brand the clubs do not carry. It is a resale market: people sell cards they will not use. The one thing here worth more than the discount is the written guarantee, which promises every card will be valid for the amount ordered for 45 days from purchase, with a full refund on a balance discrepancy reported inside that window.
The discounts are thin. When we read its front page on 2026-09-01 the featured-brand bands ran from about 1% to about 13% off, with the restaurants band at the top of that range. A resale market reprices through the day, so treat any single figure as a reading rather than a rate. And the guarantee is a clock: CardCash states in bold that even if you checked the balance and it was fine, the guarantee expires 45 days from your purchase date. Buy it, spend it.
-
Raise 5
——
Named in almost every article about discounted gift cards, so it needs addressing. Raise, as of September 1, 2026, still sold gift cards and had a Shop gift cards link, and its own pitch was Shop, Pay, Earn, with over 1,200 brands and cash rewards earned on a purchase.
When we checked on September 1, 2026, it was no longer selling what this question asks for. Every brand tile we examined on its all-brands page was labelled Earn a percentage back, not a percentage off. Sephora read Earn 5% back. We found no percent-off language anywhere on that page. A reward you earn after paying full price is a different product from a card sold below face value.
When to buy it
- Restaurant bonus-card offers, when a chain runs one
- The bonus card comes with its own redemption dates and rules, and those decide what it is worth. The Cheesecake Factory's 2026 offer ran from August 10 to September 7, 2026: a $10 Bonus Card per $50 in gift cards bought online in a single transaction. Its bonus cards had a redemption window of September 8 to 30 and could not be combined with another offer. IHOP's ran from August 10 to September 13, 2026, with no limit on how many you could earn. Its bonus cards had an October 13, 2026 expiry, could not be redeemed on the day issued, and were limited to one per party, per table, per visit, so five of them required five separate visits. 6 7
- No end date printed (Sam's Club and Costco)
- Neither club prints a deadline on its discounted gift card pages. The prices are simply what they are on the day you look, which is why this page quotes the date we read them. Sam's Club adds that prices may vary in club and online. 1 2
- 45 days from your purchase (CardCash)
- The only deadline on a resale card is the one your own purchase starts. The guarantee covers a balance discrepancy for 45 days from the date of purchase, and CardCash's own advice is to use the full balance of the card within that time. 3
The long answer
A bonus card is not a discount, and the fine print is where that shows
The two late-summer 2026 offers we read, at The Cheesecake Factory and IHOP, both looked like 20% off: pay $50, get $60 of value. Neither worked that way. The Cheesecake Factory's bonus cards in 2026 were unusable until September 8, were dead after September 30, and could not be combined with any other discount or offer. IHOP's bonus cards in 2026 could not be redeemed on the day they were issued, had an October 13 expiry, and were limited to one card per party, per table, per visit. That last clause is the expensive one. Five IHOP bonus cards required five separate visits before that expiry to see the money. You pay full price on the day for a restricted coupon you might not spend. If you were going to eat there anyway and you can name the visit, take it. Otherwise it is a discount on paper only. 6 7
The resale sites discount less than the clubs, by a wide margin
The resale marketplaces are the answer most articles give, and on the numbers we could read they are the weaker one. CardCash's own front page, read on 2026-09-01, advertised its featured brands in a band running from about 1% to about 13% off, restaurants strongest. On the same day Sam's Club listed a $30 Cold Stone card for $20.79 and a $50 Outback card for $39.98. The club prices are several times the resale discount on comparable dining brands. The resale market's real advantage is not the size of the discount, it is that you can buy one card for one brand without paying a membership fee. 1 3 4
Raise has stopped answering the question people ask it
Raise built the category and still turns up first for it. As of September 1, 2026, what it sold was different. Its home page led with Shop, Pay and Earn, and described earning cash rewards instantly on every purchase. On its all-brands page every tile we examined was labelled with an amount earned back rather than an amount off, Sephora at 5% back among them, and a search of that page turned up no percent-off language at all. That is a rewards programme, not a discount market. The distinction matters at checkout: with a discounted card you pay less today, and with a rewards programme you pay full price today and are credited afterwards, on the issuer's terms. 5
The guarantee is a clock, and it starts whether you use the card or not
A resale card can arrive already drained, and CardCash is unusually direct about why. It names the two causes itself: the card was bought with a stolen credit card and later cancelled by the issuer, or the original owner spent the balance after selling it. Its answer is a 45-day guarantee of the ordered amount and a full refund on a discrepancy reported inside that window, plus two instructions: check the balance before you go to the store, and use the full balance within 45 days. The trap is in its own bold warning. Checking the balance and finding it fine does not extend anything. On day 46 a card that drains is your loss. Treat a resale gift card as perishable. 3
One rule from the FTC that outranks everything else on this page
Everything above is about saving a few percent. This part is about losing the whole amount. The FTC's position is blunt: only scammers will tell you to buy a gift card and give them the numbers off the back, and no real business or government agency will ever tell you to buy a gift card to pay them. The tactics it lists are consistent, and the tell is who started the conversation. Someone contacts you, says it is urgent, names the card to buy and the store to buy it at, then asks for the number and PIN. The FTC also gives the step people skip: keep the card and the store receipt, because that is what you use to report the scam to the card company and ask for your money back. 8
Why nothing on this page pays us
We list cashback only where we can pay it and prove the rate. Here we can do neither, on every row. Costco and Raise are not partners of ours at all. CardCash is a programme we joined in September 2026, but it has no store page here yet, so nothing on this page links to it or claims a rate for it. Sam's Club is a partner, on a network that works, but it has no page on this site for us to send you to, so no rate is claimed for it. That leaves a page with four rows and no money link on it, ranked purely on what each one costs you.
Questions people ask
Where is the cheapest place to buy discounted gift cards?
A warehouse club, if you have a membership. On 2026-09-01 Sam's Club listed a $30 Cold Stone card at $20.79 and a $50 Outback card at $39.98, and Costco's restaurant listings were mostly $100 of value for $79.99, inside the 20% to 25% band it claims. Resale sites are the fallback when you want one brand and no membership. 1 2
When is the best time to buy gift cards?
When a brand you already eat at is running a bonus offer, and only then. In late summer 2026 The Cheesecake Factory and IHOP each ran one, a $10 bonus card per $50 spent. Club prices, by contrast, carry no end date and no reason to rush. 1 2 6 7
Is there a promo code for discounted gift cards?
We found none when we checked on September 1, 2026. A search of CardCash's own homepage, guarantee and FAQ pages turned up no promo-code offer, and Raise presented rewards rather than discounts. Do not spend time hunting for one; the saving is in the price of the card itself. 3 4 5
Are resale gift cards safe?
They carry a specific risk, and the sellers say so. CardCash names both failure modes, a card bought with a stolen credit card and later cancelled, or an original owner who spends the balance after selling. Its cover is 45 days from purchase, full refund on a discrepancy reported in time. After that the loss is yours, so spend the card quickly. 3
Which credit card should I use to buy gift cards?
We cannot tell you, and be wary of anyone who can. The Blue Cash Preferred page promises 6% back on eligible purchases at U.S. supermarkets, up to $6,000 a year, then 1%. It does not say whether a gift card bought at a supermarket is an eligible purchase, and we found no statement either way. Ask your issuer first. 9
How we are paid
No row on this page earns us anything. Costco and Raise are not partners of ours at all, so we make nothing whichever you use. CardCash is a programme we joined in September 2026, but it has no store page here yet, so nothing on this page links to it or pays us. Sam's Club is different: it is a programme we joined, on a network that still works, but we have no page for it on this site, so there is no link to send you through and no rate we could honestly claim. It is ranked first anyway, because its prices were the lowest we could read. Nothing here is placed or paid for.
What we don't cover
- Whether any resale marketplace actually pays out on its guarantee. We read CardCash's written terms; we have not tested a claim, and we have no data on how disputes are decided. A written 45-day guarantee is a promise, not a track record.
- Every other resale marketplace. We did not check Gift Card Granny, GiftCash, EJ Gift Cards or the rest, so this page is not a survey of the field.
- Costco prices beyond the first 24 of 44 listings, and warehouse prices generally. The page says prices may vary, and we read the delivery listing for one ZIP code on one day.
- Whether a gift card bought at a supermarket earns a card's supermarket bonus rate. The issuer page we checked does not address it either way.
- What other cashback portals pay at these retailers. We do not track that.
- Whether these bonus offers return next year, or on these dates. We are recording two windows that were open in late summer 2026.
- Membership fees. Both clubs charge one, we did not price them, and on a single gift card purchase the fee can easily exceed the saving.
- Balances on cards you already hold. This page is about buying, not about recovering value from a card in a drawer.
Sources
- Sam's Club — the Up to 25% Savings gift card listing, with per-card prices — accessed 2026-09-01
- Costco — Restaurant Gift Cards: the first 24 of 44 listings with prices, and the section stating the 20% to 25% band — accessed 2026-09-01
- CardCash — the 45 Day Money Back Guarantee terms and its balance advice — accessed 2026-09-01
- CardCash — front page, the advertised discount bands on featured brands — accessed 2026-09-01
- Raise — all-brands page, where the tiles read earn-back rather than percent-off — accessed 2026-09-01
- IHOP — gift card promotion page, offer dates and the bonus card restrictions — accessed 2026-09-01
- The Cheesecake Factory — August 10, 2026 announcement and its terms and conditions — accessed 2026-09-01
- FTC Consumer Advice — Avoiding and Reporting Gift Card Scams — accessed 2026-09-01
- American Express — Blue Cash Preferred, the supermarket earn rate and its cap — accessed 2026-09-01
