The Best Credit Cards in India

The Bottomline

The average credit card in India gives you rewards worth 0.75% of your total spending on the card. The very best cards can boost your rewards to as high as 2.5-3.0%, adding up to savings of thousands or even tens of thousands of rupees every year.

Table 1: Extra savings with the best credit cards

We dug through the rewards programs and T&C documents of nearly 400 credit cards from all major providers in India and identified the very best cards for you. Our recommendations have you covered whether you are a newbie building up your credit score by spending a few thousand each month or you are a big spender with a monthly card bill in lakhs of rupees.

The Magnus Credit Card from Axis Bank offers a net reward yield of 4.0-6.7% on all your spending, making it far and away the best credit card in India for high spenders (> ₹1 lacs per month).

You earn EDGE Rewards points worth 6% for bookings done via the Axis TRAVEL EDGE platform and 1.2% for all other spends. The card also offers points worth ₹5,000 in each month that your card spend crosses ₹1 lacs.

If you convert the EDGE Rewards earned on Magnus into Club Vistara Points or KrisFlyer miles with Singapore Airlines at an exchange rate of 5 EDGE Rewards for 4 miles, your net reward yield could be as high as 14-24%.

We think this yield is too good to be true and could be reduced sooner or later. If you are a Magnus Card holder and can use miles on those airline programs you should convert your EDGE rewards while this option lasts.

However, even if that offer becomes unavailable or doesn’t work for you, the Magnus offers the best rewards of any card in India, by far.

Go for the ACE Credit Card from Axis Bank if you spend between ₹10,000-1 lacs a month on your card. The ACE offers 5% cashback on utility bill payments via Google Pay, 4% on Swiggy, Zomato & Ola and 2% on everything else, with no caps. We estimate that translates into a net rewards yield of 2.3-2.6% of your total spending.

Other great cards in this spending range are the HDFC Bank Millennia and the CASHBACK SBI Card, with similar net reward yields.

The RBL Bank Monthly Treats Credit Card is the best entry-level credit card in India. We estimate you could earn back as much as 2.7% of all your spending on this card, in the form of rewards points.

The Monthly Treats Card offers a cashback of 10% on groceries, BookMyShow and Swiggy with a monthly cap of ₹100 on each category. You could easily earn ₹130-200 in rewards each month if you spend around ₹5,000 a month using this card.

Opening a new account with another bank for the sake of improving rewards can be a chore. If you would rather stick to your current bank, the posts below identify the best credit cards from all major banks in India.

If you’re willing to manage multiple credit cards, you can boost your net reward yield meaningfully with very little extra effort. We think it is possible to earn as much as 3.0-3.5%+ in rewards by just combining 2 credit cards.

The Ultimate Credit Card + CASHBACK SBI Card is a simple and easy to use combo. Just use the CASHBACK for all online spending (5% cashback upto ₹10K a month) and the Ultimate for everything else (3.33% unlimited rewards).

Table 2: All our recommendations

Table 3: Recommended Reward Redemption Options

Everything we recommend

Who this is for

Whether you are looking for your first credit card or are a seasoned card user looking to boost your rewards, this guide is for you.

We have you covered if you just want to get a single credit card with great rewards or if you want to split your spends across multiple cards to optimize rewards.

We have friends who have raised maximizing credit card rewards to an art form, juggling many credit cards and obsessively tracking their spending on each card every month. However not everyone wants put so much effort tracking deals, discounts, reward caps and spending categories.

Most of us simply want a solution that is easy to manage – good enough, not perfect. Often, that means just a single great card will do the job for you.

But if you’re comfortable managing multiple cards, this post recommends a few that work well together and will supercharge your rewards without a lot of micromanaging.

How we picked

Major banks in India offer nearly 400 credit cards to choose from. Each credit card has a different set of rewards and other terms and conditions, which makes it difficult for most of us to figure out which card is best for us.

We cut through this complexity by ranking each card on its Net Reward Yield, which measures the total effective discount you receive in form of rewards, when you charge your expenses to the card.

To calculate the net reward yield of a credit card, we created 5 standardized spending profiles of a typical customer with different income levels. We then simulated the total rewards a customer with each spending profile would get on that card, based on the reward schedule for that card.

Table 4: Standardized Spending Profiles

Our reward calculations attempts to account for different types of rewards (cashback, points, miles etc.), reward caps by spending category, milestone bonuses, joining and annual fees and differences in realizable value of the rewards depending on how you redeem them (e.g. on Bank website as statement credit vs. for flight bookings).

We prefer cards with higher rewards yields, lower income thresholds and lower fees.

We applied this standardized methodology to every credit card offered by the major providers in India, allowing you to zoom in to the best credit cards for you.

If you’re willing to manage multiple credit cards strategically, you can supercharge your total rewards compared to using a single card. However, managing multiple credit cards requires some effort.

At a minimum, you need to:

• Sign up for the card
• Set up the monthly credit card bill payments (monthly effort or one-time depending on the banks involved)
• Review your statements periodically
• Remember to claim the rewards (in many cases)
• Remember to get the annual fee waived (in some cases)

More work is also required to figure out which card to use where and possibly change the setup on various sites and apps to use a different card.

So while adding more and more cards to the mix can keep increasing the potential benefits (at least for high spenders), we think most people would want to manage another card only if the additional benefit is meaningful and the additional mental load low.

With that in mind we decided to identify sets of 2 credit cards that will work well together for most people i.e. so that you can easily remember which card to use where, meet the minimum spend & other conditions and not lose track of all the admin stuff like paying the bill and getting annual fee waived.

To find the best card combinations, we considered 100’s of card pairs to figure out the combos that work best with each other to maximize rewards.

In testing a pair of cards, we assumed that only one card will be used for each spending category and it would be the one with the higher rewards in that category.

For example, if you get the Ultimate and the CASHBACK SBI Card, use the CASHBACK only for online & app-based spending and use the Ultimate for everything else.

Table 5: Two Card Strategy for monthly spend of up to ₹1 lacs

We think this is reasonable as you only need to know which card to use in which situation and don’t need to keep track of your spending on each card through the month.

We think most people do not want to obsessively track their spend by card and category on a daily basis. So we have tried to avoid a situation where you need to switch from one card to other based on how much you have spent on it during the month, in total or for a specific category. That’s too much work for most people.

Our recommended pairs maximize the rewards while increasing your probability of meeting the annual fee waiver spending limits and any other requirements for each card.

You can read more about our credit card recommendation methodology here.

How to use this guide

First look through your existing credit card statements to figure out how much you spend each month in total. Then find the section below with a monthly spending range that fits your pattern. The table in each of these sections shows the best card for that spending range and its key features.

If you’re comfortable managing multiple cards, look at the sections on best card combos instead. Be sure to go through the table containing the “Suggested Spend Categories” for the types of spend we suggest putting on each card. For instance in Table 9 below, for people charging more than ₹1 lacs a month to their cards, we suggest using the CASHBACK SBI Card for all online spending (food delivery, online shopping, flight booking etc.). For all other spends we recommend using the Ultimate Credit Card.

If you do get those cards, you should set up all your apps and other automatic payments to use the suggested cards for those categories. In this case that means setting up Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Big Basket, Netflix, Uber etc. to use the CASHBACK and using the Ultimate for everything else.

You will also need to remind yourself to use the CASHBACK for all other online transactions and may be even carry only the Ultimate in your wallet. This way you maximize the possibility of hitting the minimum annual spend on each card and also get the most rewards.

If you sign up for these credit cards, be sure to redeem your rewards as suggested in Table 3 above.

Different redemption methods can give you different value for a reward point and often the same redemption method will give different value for a point earned on different cards. The options recommended in Table 3 above are the best for the selected cards, in our opinion.

The Best Entry Level Credit Card

The RBL Bank Monthly Treats Credit Card is the best entry level credit card from RBL Bank. This card can earn you a net reward yield of 1.8-2.7%, if you spend less than ₹10,000 on your card each month.

Table 6: Feature Summary – RBL Bank Monthly Treats Credit Card

The Monthly Treats Card offers a cashback of 10% on groceries, BookMyShow and Swiggy with a monthly cap of ₹100 on each category. All other online spending earns 0.50% rewards and offline spending earns 0.25% with no caps.

The monthly cap of ₹100 on the categories earning the 10% cashback means you can only earn the rewards on the first ₹1,000 you spend on each category every month. Theoretically this means you could earn up to ₹300 just in cashback every month.

However it is unlikely that someone who spends less than ₹10,000 a month on their card, will end up spending ₹1,000 every month on Swiggy and BookMyShow.

It is more likely that most of us can collect the full ₹100 cashback for groceries every month and get another ₹20-150 in total from all other spending, including on Swiggy and BookMyShow. That is still enough to make this the best credit card for most people.

You can do a lot better if you are a big user of BookMyShow and Swiggy.

The Monthly Treats card has a monthly fee of ₹75 + taxes, which waived if you spend more than ₹3,000 in a month on the card. While the fee is relatively high (₹900 + taxes if you pay it every  month), the limit to get it waived is the lowest of any fee charging card in India.

There are quite a few credit cards that do not charge any joining or annual fee, but you earn much lower rewards with those cards. You will be better off with the Monthly Treats compared to any of those cards as long as you spend more than ₹3,000 a month on your card.

The Best Credit Card for Monthly Spends between ₹10,000 – 1 lacs

The ACE Credit Card from Axis Bank is the best credit card in India for people spending between ₹10,000 to 1 lacs a month on their cards. We estimate most people will get a net reward yield of about 2.3-2.6% using this card for all their spend.

Table 7: Feature Summary  – ACE Credit Card by Axis Bank

The ACE offers 5% cashback on utilities bill payments made via the Google Pay Android app, with no cap on monthly cashback.

It also offers unlimited 4% cashback for spends on Swiggy, Zomato and Ola. All other spends earn 2% cashback, again with no caps.

Because the ACE is a cashback credit card, you don’t need to worry about redeeming gifts vouchers, converting points or having the rewards expire. The rewards are automatically credited into your account and offset against bills due.

It carries a joining fee of ₹499, which is waived if you spend more than ₹10,000 in the first 45 days. There is also an annual fee from the 2nd year onwards, which can be waived if you spend more than ₹2 lacs in a year on the card.

One major limitation of the ACE is that the 5% cashback on utilities bills payments is only available if you make the payment via Google Pay app for Android phones.

This means that if you are an iPhone user, your net reward yield with the ACE may be between 0.20-0.70% lower because you will only earn 2% cashback on your bill payments. iPhone users can still get a reward yield of 1.9-2.1% with this card, which is good but not good enough to be the best credit card in India.

iPhone users will be better off with the CASHBACK SBI Card or the Millennia Credit Card from HDFC Bank. We discuss these cards in detail in The Competition section. If your monthly card spending in this range, you should also consider the Standard Chartered Ultimate Credit Card discussed in the next section.

The Best Credit Card for Monthly Spends above ₹1 lacs

The Magnus Credit Card from Axis Bank offers a net reward yield of 4.0-6.7% on all your spending, making it far and away the best credit card in India for high spenders (> ₹1 lacs per month).

You earn EDGE REWARDS points worth 6% for bookings done via the Axis TRAVEL EDGE platform and 1.2% for all other spends. The card also offers points worth ₹5,000 in each month that your card spend crosses ₹1 lacs.

The basic rewards available on the Magnus are not exciting. 6% for travel bookings and 1.2% for all other spend wouldn’t make this card competitive with the likes of the HDFC Bank Infinia or the Standard Chartered Ultimate, which offer 3.3% and 2.7% net rewards respectively.

However, the milestone reward of 25,000 EDGE REWARDS points every time you charge more than ₹1 lacs to the card in a month, is a game changer. Those points are worth ₹5,000, meaning you earn a reward yield of up to 5% just from the milestone reward. Add in the points earned on regular spend and you could end up north of 6.5%.

But that is not all. Our net rewards calculation values each EDGE REWARDS point at ₹0.20.

However, if you transfer the EDGE Rewards earned on Magnus into Club Vistara Points or KrisFlyer miles with Singapore Airlines at an exchange rate of 5 EDGE Rewards for 4 miles, your net reward yield could be as high as 14-24%.

This is because we estimate each CV Point is worth ₹0.90 and each KrisFlyer mile is worth ₹0.85. So if you transfer the REWARDS points into miles, suddenly they could be worth as much at ₹0.60-70 – a 3-3.5x multiplier.

It is this conversion that can take your effective net rewards yield up to 14-24% instead of an already best-in-the-market 4.0-6.5%.

We think this yield is too good to be true and could be reduced sooner or later. If you are a Magnus Card holder and can use miles on those airline programs you should convert your EDGE rewards while this option lasts.

There are a few other points to note with the Magnus. While you do achieve a net reward yield of up to 6.7%, that is only true if you spend exactly ₹1 lacs a month. There are no more milestone rewards once you cross that threshold, so your yield starts falling as you spend more.

Since you only earn about 1.2% on most spending with the Magnus, any additional spend over ₹1 lacs in a month will only earn 1.2%, bringing down the overall yield. We estimate the yield comes down to about 4% if you spend ₹2 lacs a month on the card.

The Magnus offers a number of other benefits, such as unlimited domestic & international lounge access, and a 24/7 dedicated concierge program. We have not valued these benefits but they are among the best of any card we have seen and could be worth a lot to some people.

Since there are no milestone rewards if you fall short of the ₹1 lacs spend in a month, so this card suddenly becomes a lot less attractive below that level.

If you spending fluctuates around the ₹1 lacs a month mark, higher in some months and lower in others, this card can still make sense for you as long as you can cross the ₹1 lacs mark at least 4-5 times in a year. You could still earn a net reward yield of 3%+ in that case, better than most other cards in the country.

The Best Credit Card Combos

A relatively easy way to increase the net rewards yield on your credit card spending is by using more than one credit card, strategically. Whenever you are about to charge something, choose the credit card that offers better rewards for that spending category (e.g. grocery, dining, online shopping etc.).

This strategy usually only works for people who charge more than about ₹50,000 a month to their cards. This is because most of the cards offering good rewards have an annual fee that you must pay and this fee is usually only waived if you charge more than ₹1-3 lacs to the card in a year.

So you may not be able to get the fee on one or both cards waived if you total spending is less than about ₹50,000.

This can be a very complex topic that we will tackle in detail in a separate post. Here we recommend some simple 2-card combinations that are very easy to manage and yet can boost your reward yields in a big way.

These combos can make sense if you spend between ₹50,000 – 1 lacs a month on your cards. Once your spending crosses the ₹1 lacs a month mark, you would be better off with the Magnus.

Table 9: Combo 1 – Ultimate Credit Card + CASHBACK SBI Card

The CASHBACK SBI Card offers 5% cashback on all online spending with a cap of ₹10,000 a month. The Ultimate Credit Card by Standard Chartered offers 3.33% on all spending. So if  you use the CASHBACK for all online transactions and the Ultimate for everything else, you could earn a net rewards yield of 3.6%.

This is a very simple and easy to implement card strategy. Anytime you are using a credit card, all you need to know is if it is an online transaction or an offline one and choose the correct card accordingly.

In fact, it can be even easier than that. Once you receive your CASHBACK SBI Card, simply register it in all the apps and shopping websites you commonly use e.g. Amazon, Flipkart, Uber, Ola, Swiggy, Zomato etc. and only carry the Ultimate in your wallet. You may still occasionally need to find the CASHBACK to register in a new app or site but otherwise you just use the card in your wallet.

The CASHBACK has an annual fee of ₹999, which is waived for the first year and can be waived subsequently if you spend more than ₹2 lacs in a year or about ₹17,000 a month.

Even if you cannot spend that much, the CASHBACK will improve your rewards yield vs. using just the Ultimate as long as you can spend more than about ₹5,000 a month online.

Table 10: Combo 2 – Ultimate Credit Card + Airtel Axis Bank Credit Card

This is another great card combo that can boost your net reward yield to as much as 4%, IF you are an Airtel customer. The Airtel Axis Bank Credit Card offers 25% cashback on Airtel services (max ₹300 p.m), 10% cashback on utility bill payments via the Airtel Thanks App (max ₹300 p.m) and on Swiggy, Zomato and bigbasket (max ₹500 p.m).

The cashback rates on all these transactions is very high and the utility bill transactions should be very predictable and regular. Airtel customers should comfortably be able to get the ₹600 available for telco and utility bill payments each month. If you are a regular user of Swiggy / Zomato / bigbasket, the additional ₹500 each month would be the cherry on top.

Again, this strategy is quite easy to implement. Set up the Airtel Axis card in Airtel Thanks app and for Swiggy / Zomato / bigbasket. Use the Ultimate Credit Card for all other transactions.

The Airtel Axis card has an annual fee of ₹500, which gets waived if you charge more than ₹2 lacs to the card in a year. Even if you cannot hit the ₹2 lacs in a year, the additional rewards are high enough and the fee low enough that Airtel customers will still be better off with the combo than just using the Ultimate Card on its own.

The Competition

We evaluated nearly 400 credit cards from 15 banks and card companies to identify our picks above. In the process, we also found a number of other cards that were great but did not make our cut.

In some cases these cards missed out by the thinnest of margins. Since our net reward yield estimates are just that, estimates, it is quite possible that some people get better results with these cards instead.

In other cases, these cards had the potential to offer even better rewards for some people but not for everyone.

We will discuss these cards in more detail in another post, but here’s a quick look at some of them.

Entry Level Credit Cards

The Airtel Axis Bank Credit Card offers 10-25% cashback on telco & utility bill payments and 10% for Swiggy, Zomato and bigbasket. The monthly cashbacks are capped at ₹300 each for telco and utilities and at ₹500 for the delivery / grocery apps.

It has a relatively low annual fee of ₹500, which is waived on spending more than ₹2 lacs in a year. This makes it a great entry and mid-level card, as well as a great second card in a combo.

We estimate a net reward yield of 2.4-3.0% with this card for monthly spend up to ₹50,000, but only for Airtel customers.

The Bharat Credit Card from HDFC Bank is another good option at the entry level. The Bharat offers 5% cashback on groceries, utility bills, fuel and IRCTC bookings, with a total monthly cap of ₹150. You also get 5% on online shopping via HDFC Banks PayZapp and SmartBuy options, with a separate cap of ₹150.

While the rewards scheme on the Bharat is complicated and has low monthly caps, we estimate a net reward yield of 1.9-2.4% for mothtly spends below ₹10,000, making it a solid choice.

Mid-Range Credit Cards

The Axis Bank Vistara Infinite Credit Card offers great rewards of 3.4-7.0%, but only if you can redeem all your rewards in the form of Vistara flights.

You earn 6 Club Vistara (CV) points for every ₹200 charged to the card, an effective reward rate of 2.7%, with no limits. This is based on our valuation of 1 CV point = ₹0.90.

The Vistara Infinite has a ₹10,000, non-waivable annual fee. However, you get a free business class ticket on Vistara every time you pay this fee and the card also has a milestone benefit of 10,000 CV points (worth ₹9,000) once you charge more than ₹1 lacs to the card in a year.

In addition, the Vistara Infinite also offers up to 4 business class tickets if your annual spend is between ₹2.5-12 lacs.

A quick search through the Vistara website shows the price of a business class ticket is between ₹15,000 – 20,000. Even taking the lower end of the range, someone spending ₹1 lacs a month on the card will get tickets worth ₹60,000 in a year or a reward yield of 5% just from the tickets.

However, we also think most people are happy to fly economy class domestically. So if that business class ticket is saving you from buying a ₹5,000 economy ticket, is it really worth ₹15,000?

We discounted the value of these tickets heavily, partly also to account for smaller flight network of Vistara and the very short 6 month expiry of these vouchers.

Despite that we estimate a net rewards yield of 3.4-4.3% for people charging ₹50,000 or more to the Vistara Infinite every month, making this a solid choice for those who can fly Vistara.

If you are willing to fully value those business class tickets, your net reward yield could be higher than 7%.

The Allahabad Bank SBI Card ELITE can offer net rewards yields as high as 2.3-2.9% if you charge between ₹25,000 – 1 lacs on your card each month.

However, a very large chunk of the rewards are in the form of milestone rewards earned when you cross annual spends of ₹3 lacs, 5 lacs and 8 lacs. Outside this range, the awards are relatively low. A lot lower (~1.3%) if you fall below the range and gradually declining with increasing spend above the range.

The problem with this card is that if you just miss the reward milestones narrowly, your net reward yield falls by a lot. Because of this uncertainty the Allahabad ELITE was not our pick.

We estimate a net rewards yield of 2.3-2.8% for monthly spends of ₹50,000+ with the Etihad Guest SBI Premier Card.

However it was not our pick because we are concerned that a lot of reward miles could end up unused for many people if they can only be redeemed for international flights via Etihad.

The SpiceJet Axis Bank Voyage Black Credit Card also offers a net reward yield of 2.3-2.6% for monthly spends above ₹50,000. It was not our pick because the smaller flight network of SpiceJet can make rewards harder to redeem for many people.

High-end Credit Cards

The Kotak IndiGo Ka-ching 6E Rewards XL Credit Card has a net reward yield of 2.3% for high spenders, effectively identical to the ACE from Axis Bank and the CASHBACK SBI Card.

However we prefer the other two cards because they are cashback cards, which means you don’t need to worry about redeeming rewards or having points expire usused with those cards. They also have a lower and waivable annual fee (₹499 for the ACE and ₹999 for the CASHBACK).

The Ka-ching hands out rewards in the form of IndiGo points, that can only be redeemed with IndiGo at ₹1 per point. It has a non-waivable fee of ₹2,500, reduced to ₹1,500 in their introductory offer.

The Club Vistara IndusInd Bank Explorer Credit Card is similar to the Axis Bank Vistara Infinite Credit Card discussed in the previous section.

The Explorer also offers 1 business class ticket on Vistara for every ₹3 lacs charged to the card, up to a maximum of 5 tickets a year.  Therefore the Explorer could offer net rewards yield of 4.5-5.5% for people willing to fully value the business class tickets.

This is lower than the Vistara Infinite because the Explorer has a lower base reward rate of 0.90% vs. the 2.7% on Vistara Infinite. The Explorer also has a joining fee of ₹40,000, which the Vistara Infinite does not. So between the two we would prefer the Vistara Infinite.

Table 11: Net Reward Yield for All Our Picks

Table 12: Key Terms for All Our Picks