Complimentary airport lounge access is a perk offered by numerous credit cards, allowing cardholders to visit a lounge regardless of airline or cabin, whether in Singapore or overseas. 

When evaluating a credit card’s lounge benefit, it’s not enough to just look at the number of free visits. Which lounge network is used? Are visits tracked by membership year or calendar year?  Are guests allowed? Do supplementary cardholders get access too? 

In this post, we’ll cover the best credit cards for airport lounge access, and all the important details to know.

Summary: Credit cards with airport lounge access

Here’s a summary of the credit cards which grant airport lounge access, including:

• the network used
• how many free visits principal and supplementary cardholders are entitled to
• whether visits are tracked by calendar year CY or membership year MY
• whether lounge visits can be shared with guests Share

Card	Lounge Network	Free Visits (Per Year)
		Principal	Supp.
Income Requirement ≥S$30K
Diners Club Cards	Priority Pass	1 CY	N/A
Citi PremierMiles Card Apply	Priority Pass	2 CY Share	N/A
DBS Altitude Visa Apply	Priority Pass	2 MY Share	N/A
StanChart Journey Card Apply	Priority Pass	2 MY Share	N/A
HSBC TravelOne Card Apply	DragonPass	4 CY Share	N/A
UOB PRVI Miles Card Apply	Priority Pass	4 CY	N/A
Income Requirement ≥S$120K
CIMB Visa Infinite Apply	DragonPass	3 MY	N/A
BOC Visa Infinite Apply	Plaza Premium	4 1 Nov to 31 Oct Share	N/A
Maybank Visa Infinite Apply	Priority Pass	4 MY	N/A
StanChart Visa Infinite Apply	Priority Pass	6 MY Share	N/A
UOB Lady’s Solitaire Metal Card	DragonPass	6 CY	6 CY
DBS Vantage Card Apply	Priority Pass	10 MY Share	N/A
Citi Prestige Card Apply	Priority Pass	12 CY Share	N/A
OCBC VOYAGE (all versions) Apply	DragonPass	∞	2 CY
HSBC Visa Infinite Apply	LoungeKey	∞	∞ Max 5x supp. cards
UOB VI Metal Card Apply	DragonPass	∞ + 1 guest	N/A
AMEX Platinum Charge Apply	Priority Pass, Plaza Premium, AMEX & Centurion Lounges, and others	∞ + 1-2 guests Priority Pass visits for supp. card capped at 4x + 1 guest
StanChart Beyond Card Apply	Priority Pass	∞	∞ Max 4x supp. cards
		6x guest visits shared bet. principal and supp. cards
Income Requirement ≥S$500K
DCS Imperium Apply	DragonPass	6 CY	N/A
DBS Insignia Apply	Priority Pass	∞	N/A
HSBC Prive Card Apply	Priority Pass	∞	∞ Max 3x supp. cards
Citi ULTIMA Apply	Priority Pass	∞	∞ Max 2x supp. cards
UOB Reserve Apply	Priority Pass	∞ + 1 guest	∞
AMEX Centurion Apply	Priority Pass, Plaza Premium, AMEX & Centurion Lounges, and others	∞ + 1-2 guests
Priority Banking Customers
Maybank Premier World Mastercard Apply	Plaza Premium	2 CY Share	N/A
OCBC Premier VI Apply	DragonPass	2 MY	N/A
HSBC Premier Mastercard Apply	Priority Pass	4 Premier 6 Premier Elite MY Share	N/A
StanChart Priority Banking VI Apply	Priority Pass	2 AUM < S$200K 12 AUM ≥ S$200K MY Share	N/A

When comparing lounge benefits across cards, consider the following factors.

Which lounge network is used?

The main lounge networks used by credit cards are Priority Pass, LoungeKey, DragonPass and Plaza Premium.

Network	Airports	Lounges
Priority Pass	730	1,700+
Lounge Key	730	1,700+
DragonPass	740	1,300+
Plaza Premium Lounges	~100	200+

Priority Pass, Lounge Key and DragonPass are the three big names, and have significant overlap in coverage.

Plaza Premium, however, is a much smaller group, and your if your card partners with this network your options will be more limited.

Priority Pass & LoungeKey

Priority Pass and LoungeKey offer access to more than 1,700 lounges worldwide. They are owned by the same company, and basically, if a lounge accepts Priority Pass, you can bet it’ll accept LoungeKey.

While there was a two-year period where they lost access to Plaza Premium lounges, that was resolved in June 2023, and most Plaza Premium Lounges have rejoined since.

DragonPass

DragonPass is a China-based lounge programme with more than 1,300 lounges, including some at railway stations in China.

Plaza Premium

Plaza Premium has a much smaller network of 200+ own-branded and third-party managed lounges worldwide.

That said, its lounges tend to be of higher quality than the average contract lounge, and in some airports (e.g. Penang and Langkawi), Plaza Premium is the only lounge operator.

Plaza Premium also has a chain of Plaza Premium First Lounges (which require an upcharge)  which offer an experience that, in theory, is supposed to rival that of some First Class airline lounges. I visited the lounge in Hong Kong prior to COVID and found it to be great, but my most recent visit was a letdown. 

Of course, it should be noted that almost every Plaza Premium lounge is accessible through Priority Pass, LoungeKey and DragonPass.

How are free visits tracked?

There are two main ways of tracking lounge visit entitlements:

• Calendar year: 1st January to 31st December
• Membership year: Based on the date when you obtained your lounge membership (e.g. if your Priority Pass was obtained in April, your free visits will be tracked from 1 April to 31 March of the following year)

I want to specifically emphasise that membership year here refers to your  lounge pass membership, and not your credit card.

Of course, if you applied for your Priority Pass as soon as you got your credit card, then it’s likely the two will be the same. However, if you delayed your application for whatever reason, then the two will be different. 

You can check when your membership allowance refreshes via the Priority Pass website/app, or the DragonPass/Airport Companion/Mastercard Travel Pass app.

The majority of cards track entitlements based on membership year. However, there are a handful of cards which track entitlements by the calendar year instead.

• Diners Club
• Citi PremierMiles Card
• Citi Prestige Card
• HSBC TravelOne Card
• UOB Lady’s Solitaire Metal Card
• UOB PRVI Miles Card

The BOC Visa Infinite is the exception, following neither membership year nor calendar year. Instead, entitlements are based on a 12-month period running from 1 November to 31 October.

Can free visits be stacked?

Yes. 

For example, if you have both the DBS Altitude Visa (2x free Priority Pass visits) and the Citi PremierMiles Card (2x free Priority Pass visits), you’ll have a total of four visits to use. You will need to register and keep track of separate Priority Pass accounts, however, as it’s not possible to combine entitlements from different cards in a single account. 

How I keep track of multiple Priority Pass cards

It’s easier to manage multiple DragonPass accounts, on the other hand, since you simply add them to one single user account.

Can I bring a guest?

Some high-end cards allow you to bring a guest for free every time you visit the lounge.

Card	Guest Allowance
AMEX Centurion	1-2, depending on lounge
AMEX Platinum Charge	1-2, depending on lounge
UOB Visa Infinite Metal Card	1
UOB Reserve Card	1

With other cards, bringing a guest means you’ll have to use one of your free visit entitlements. For example, bringing a guest with you on the DBS Altitude Visa’s Priority Pass would use up your two visit allowance.

However, the following cards do not allow you to share your lounge visits. 

• CIMB Visa Infinite
• DCS Imperium Card
• OCBC Premier Visa Infinite
• OCBC VOYAGE (supplementary cards)
• Maybank Visa Infinite
• Maybank World Mastercard
• UOB Lady’s Solitaire Metal Card
• UOB PRVI Miles

Refer to the following article for more details. 

Which credit cards allow you to share lounge visits?

The policy on children is more nebulous and varies by lounge. In general, infants under the age of 2 will be admitted for free, while some lounges may permit free entry for kids up to 12 years old.

Do supplementary cardholders get access?

As a rule of thumb, lounge privileges are only accorded to the principal cardholder. That said, there are a few exceptions. 

Card	Supp. Cardholder Entitlement
AMEX Platinum Charge	Priority Pass: 8x visits per calendar year Max 1x supp. card Other lounges: Unlimited visits + 1-2 guests
Citi ULTIMA	Unlimited visits Max 2x supp. cards
HSBC Prive Card	Unlimited visits Max 3x supp. cards
HSBC Visa Infinite	Unlimited visits Max 5x supp. cards
StanChart Beyond Card	Unlimited visits Max 4x supp. cards
UOB Lady’s Solitaire Metal Card	6 visits per calendar year
UOB Reserve Card	Unlimited visits

Not just airport lounges!

If the lounge is too crowded (and they are these days), your lounge pass can also be used for non-lounge experiences like restaurants, spas and nap pods. 

Restaurants

DragonPass, LoungeKey and Priority Pass members can redeem lounge visit entitlements for set menus or dining credits at selected restaurants. 

I’ve summarised the options available at Changi Airport below.

Full list of Priority Pass & DragonPass restaurants at Changi Airport

Spas, transit hotels, gaming lounges

Alternatively, your visit entitlements can also be used for spa treatments, capsule hotels, sleep pods and even video game lounges, depending on airport.

In Changi Airport, for example, you can visit TranSpa in Terminal 2 and enjoy a 20 minute head and shoulder or foot massage, or Be Relax in Terminal 3 for a 15-minute foot massage.

Can I lounge hop?

If your lounge membership comes with unlimited visits, you might be tempted to hop from lounge to lounge or restaurant to restaurant to make the most of it.

If you have a Priority Pass or LoungeKey, the short answer is that there’s nothing stopping you from doing so. You can’t visit the same lounge or restaurant more than once per 24 hours, but you can visit a different one. Of course, this is probably why so many card issuers have been nerfing unlimited-visit Priority Pass memberships…

If you have a Dragon Pass, the picture is a bit more complicated. The DragonPass fair use policy sets the following restrictions on airport lounge and restaurant visits:

• A maximum of one lounge visit every two hours
• A maximum of one set meal every five hours (except for cards using the Mastercard Travel Pass, where the limit is two hours)

As mentioned earlier, both these categories now interact with each other, so you can’t redeem a set meal and then visit a lounge until a two-hour window has passed.

However, banks are free to tighten these policies even further, and the UOB Visa Infinite Metal Card now has a cooldown period of at least four hours .

What if I get an annual fee waiver?

Lounge entitlements are not linked to your payment of the annual fee. For example, if you get an annual fee waiver for the DBS Altitude Visa, you’ll still enjoy two lounge visits per membership year.

However, there are some credit cards which do not offer fee waivers, like the Citi Prestige. In this case, not paying the annual fee means cancelling the card, which means no lounge visits (obviously).

Conclusion

The quality of airport lounges can be extremely variable. The best precaution against wasting your free visit on a crappy lounge is to simply ask whether you can have a quick look inside before deciding.

Here’s some things to look out for when surveying a lounge:

• How plentiful are power outlets and USB charging ports?
• What’s the quality of the F&B selection (especially alcohol!) like?
• Are there shower rooms, and do they look clean?
• Does the lounge have productivity pods or workstations?
• Is there a napping area, or better yet, nap rooms?

Remember, your lounge pass need not necessarily be used for a lounge- sometimes you might be better off having a nice meal in a restaurant, or perhaps a relaxing spa treatment instead.