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The Miles by Discover Card and the Escape by Discover Card are very similar cards, and it depends on how much you plan to use the cards (i.e. how much you plan to spend on the card) as to which one is better. For most people, whose credit card spending is small and/or unpredictable, we recommend the Miles By Discover card, which is why it is ranked #1 overall.
The Miles by Discover card does not have an annual fee, whereas the Escape by Discover card has an annual fee of $60. So upfront, the cardholder is required to pay for use of the credit card.
To justify this cost, Discover offers additional bonus miles - Miles By Discover card offers 12,000 bonus miles, whereas the Escape By Discover offers 25,000 miles. Typical redemption rates make one (1) mile usually worth about 1 cent ($0.01), and so 13,000 miles has a value of about $130. However, if you read the fine print, the Escape By Discover card structures their promotion so that those extra miles are backended - you only receive those miles if you continue to make at least one purchase every month in months 13-25 of your membership (i.e. more than a year after you first receive the card).
Thus, you need to be a member for two years + 1 month (or parts of three membership years) to fully cash in on all the bonus miles, and as such you would be required to pay $180 (three years of annual fees) in order to receive all the bonus miles. Thus it actually costs you $180 to receive all 25,000 miles with the Escape card, whereas it costs you nothing additional to receive the 12,000 miles offered by the Miles By Discover card. As such, it is clear that the Miles By Discover card is the better deal, as 13,000 bonus points are worth less than $180.
As well, while the studious cardholder might mark his or her calendar to ensure that they make a purchase with their Escape By Discover card every one of those months, it is not likely the case. Cardholders often miss months or their financial situation changes such that they dont use the card anymore. Given that the $60 is paid upfront, and continues to be charged each year, the extended bonus period means that there are that many more months in which a cardholder could forget to make a purchase and thus not receive his or her bonus miles.
So in summary, the MIles By Discover Card is a much better card than the Escape By Discover card because it offers the same exact level of benefits and service, without any cost...and the extra bonus miles are not enough to compensate.
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