Best Beauty Store Credit Cards (2026)

Ulta, Sephora, and Sally Beauty each have their own store credit card, and they’re not interchangeable. Ulta’s card is a real Mastercard that earns everywhere Mastercard is accepted; Sephora’s and Sally Beauty’s only work inside their own store. Picking the wrong one means locking your rewards to a beauty retailer that isn’t actually where most of your spending happens.

This page ranks the three cards side by side, but not against each other on a shared spending scale. Ulta’s Mastercard, Sephora’s closed-loop card, and Sally Beauty’s closed-loop card each earn on a different footprint, so the question isn’t which card pays the highest flat rate. It’s which retailer you actually shop, and whether you want a card that also works everywhere else you spend. A Sephora prestige-skincare shopper, an Ulta shopper who buys both prestige and drugstore brands, and a salon professional buying hair color and supplies are looking for three different things here, even though all three are shopping for “a beauty credit card.”

If you’re choosing specifically between the Ulta and Sephora cards, our Sephora Credit Card vs Ulta Beauty Store Card comparison already ran that exact earn-rate math across several spending profiles, and Ulta came out ahead in nearly every one. This page leans on that finding rather than re-deriving it, and adds Sally Beauty’s hair-and-salon-supply card into the mix for readers whose beauty spending doesn’t touch Sephora or Ulta at all. All three cards are issued by the same bank, Comenity Capital Bank (Bread Financial), which explains why their application terms and rewards mechanics rhyme even though the cards themselves work in very different ways.

Quick Picks

Don’t read the “Key Rate” column as one scale. Ulta’s rate applies to a real Mastercard usable anywhere, while Sephora’s and Sally Beauty’s rates only apply inside their own stores. All three charge no annual fee, so the fee isn’t what separates them: where you actually shop is. If you don’t shop any of these three stores often enough to justify a store-specific card, a general 2% flat-rate cash-back card will usually out-earn all three outside their own bonus categories.

Card-by-Card Breakdowns

1. Ulta Beauty Rewards® Mastercard® Credit Card — Best Overall

The Ulta Beauty Rewards Mastercard is the only card in this lineup built on a real payment network, so it earns 2 points per $1 at Ulta, in-store and on ulta.com, and 1 point per $3 on every other purchase anywhere Mastercard is accepted, including Target, DoorDash, and Instacart. That everywhere-else rate is what neither of the closed-loop cards below can offer.

New cardholders get 20% off their first Ulta purchase with no minimum spend, plus 500 bonus Ultamate Rewards points, worth $17.50, after spending $500 outside Ulta within 90 days of opening the account. That second component rewards you for using the card as a general-purpose Mastercard right out of the gate, not just for shopping at Ulta. Ulta’s own marketing page currently shows only the 20% discount, but the $500-spend bonus is confirmed through two independent secondary sources and still applies as stated.

Purchase APR runs 23.09% to 32.00% variable. Ulta doesn’t publish an official minimum credit score for the Mastercard version, but NerdWallet, The Points Guy, and WalletHub all independently recommend Good credit, roughly 700 or higher, as a realistic approval bar.

For anyone who shops Ulta regularly but doesn’t want a card that goes dead the moment they leave the store, this is the pick. Our own Sephora Credit Card vs Ulta Beauty Store Card comparison found it beats the Sephora card’s earn rate across every spending profile tested.

Because it’s a real Mastercard, this is also the only card in the lineup that’s worth carrying as a general-purpose card, not just a beauty-store card. Someone who wants a single card in their wallet that earns at Ulta, at the grocery store, and at the gas station doesn’t have that option with either of the two closed-loop cards below.

Full review: Ulta Beauty Rewards® Mastercard® Credit Card

2. Sephora Credit Card — Best for Sephora-Only Shoppers

The Sephora Credit Card has no payment network behind it: it earns 4% back on Sephora purchases, in-store and online, and $0 anywhere else. That flat 4% rate is higher than what Ulta’s Mastercard pays at Ulta itself, but only if Sephora is genuinely where most of your beauty spending happens.

The sign-up bonus is 25% off a first purchase, with no minimum spend required, usable within 30 days of account opening. Rewards earned on the card expire 90 days after issuance, so they need to be redeemed on a real timeline rather than left to accumulate.

Purchase APR is a flat 32.0% variable, the same rate for every approved applicant regardless of credit profile. That figure comes from Comenity’s official Schumer box disclosure; some third-party aggregators still list 31.99% for this card, but the official issuer rate governs. Comenity publishes no minimum credit score for this card, which also means approval isn’t gated by a published number the way Ulta’s Mastercard is. Sephora’s own site returned an error on direct verification this session, so the bonus and rewards terms above are confirmed through CNBC and a WalletHub-aggregated source instead, both consistent with what’s already published in our full review.

This card makes sense for someone who shops almost exclusively at Sephora, already carries a separate everyday card for spending outside it, or can’t clear Ulta’s higher recommended credit bar. The tradeoff is a flat 32.0% APR with no better tier to grow into, and rewards that need to be used within 90 days rather than banked for a bigger redemption later.

Full review: Sephora Credit Card

3. Sally Beauty Rewards Credit Card — Best for Sally Beauty & CosmoProf Shoppers

Sally Beauty’s card pays the highest raw earn rate on this list: 12.5 points per $1 at Sally Beauty and CosmoProf at the Preferred Tier, a combination of 10 base Sally Beauty Rewards loyalty points and 2.5 cardholder bonus points on every purchase. Spend $200 or more per year and the rate rises to 15 points per $1 at Elite Tier. Like the Sephora card, it’s closed-loop and earns nothing outside its own stores.

The sign-up bonus is $20 off a $50-or-more purchase, but it comes with a tight window: the qualifying purchase has to be made and charged to the new card the same day it’s approved, and it’s a one-time offer that excludes gift cards, shipping and handling, taxes, and returns or exchanges. That same-day requirement makes this the easiest bonus on this page to miss if you apply for the card and plan to shop later.

Purchase APR is a flat 35.99% variable, the steepest of the three cards here, with a penalty APR of up to 39.99% for late or missed payments. Comenity publishes no minimum credit score for this card either. The card’s foreign transaction fee is listed as none, though that’s practically moot given it’s a closed-loop, U.S.-only card that can’t be used internationally in the first place.

Sally Beauty serves a different beauty sub-niche than Sephora and Ulta, hair color and salon supplies rather than prestige makeup and skincare, so it’s worth holding alongside one of the other two rather than instead of it if your spending covers both categories. A stylist or salon professional who buys from CosmoProf regularly gets more practical use out of this card’s earn rate than someone whose beauty spending is mostly cosmetics and skincare.

Full review: Sally Beauty Rewards Credit Card

How We Picked These Cards

All three cards on this list charge no annual fee, so fee wasn’t a differentiator. We ranked first by versatility: a real payment network that keeps earning after you leave the store beats a closed-loop card that only works at one retailer, which is why Ulta’s Mastercard tops the list. From there, we ranked Sephora and Sally Beauty by the raw earn rate each pays at its own store, since neither earns anything outside it. We only considered cards with an already-published, independently verified review, and we didn’t build a cross-store spending table, since none of these three cards earns anything at a competing beauty retailer. Every figure in this article was checked against each card’s own data record and, where the issuer’s own site couldn’t be reached directly, against at least one independent secondary source before publication.

Bottom Line

The Ulta Beauty Rewards® Mastercard® Credit Card is the top pick on this page for one reason: it’s the only card here with a real network, so it keeps earning on spend the other two can’t touch. A shopper who wants one card that covers Ulta trips and everyday purchases alike doesn’t have a better option in this lineup.

That doesn’t make the Sephora and Sally Beauty cards filler. Sephora’s flat 4% and no-minimum 25%-off bonus are the better math for someone who shops almost exclusively there, and Sally Beauty’s 12.5-to-15-points-per-$1 rate is the highest raw earn rate on this list for anyone stocking up on hair color and salon supplies. Each pays a real, uncontested rate at its own store; the right card depends on where your beauty spending actually goes, not on which one has the flashiest headline number.

None of these three cards charges an annual fee, so there’s little downside to holding more than one if your spending genuinely splits across two of these retailers. The real cost to watch is the APR on all three, especially Sally Beauty’s 35.99% and Sephora’s 32.0%, since a card that pays a strong rewards rate can still cost more than it earns if you carry a balance instead of paying it off in full each month.

If your spending splits between Sephora and Ulta specifically, read the full head-to-head math in Sephora Credit Card vs Ulta Beauty Store Card before applying for either one.

• Sephora Credit Card vs Ulta Beauty Store Card
• What Is Comenity Bank (Bread Financial)?
• What Credit Score Do You Need for a Store Credit Card?
• Deferred Interest Explained: The Store-Card Trap
• Best Store Credit Cards