PayperWIZ

Best credit cards in India, by what they actually pay

Every card in the India catalogue, ranked by what it genuinely returns on each kind of spending — after the monthly cap, and after the minimum spend some cards require before any bonus rate applies.

83 cards · catalogue v101 · 54 of 83 read from the issuer's own terms

The best rate here with nothing attached to it

IndusInd EazyDiner pays 4.00% on travel with no monthly cap and no minimum spend to unlock it — which is rarer, and worth more over a year, than most of the larger numbers in the table below.

The 54 India cards read off the issuer

Every rate on this page came from somewhere. These ones came from the bank's own published terms, read by a person on the date shown, with the cap and the minimum spend that the comparison tables leave out. Each has its own page.

Every category in India

In the order people spend, not biggest number first. The highest rate on a card is routinely the one that means least, so what limits it is shown beside it.

Best published return per category in India, from 83 cards. The headline rate is one that covers the whole category; where a bigger rate covers only part of it, that is shown underneath with what it covers.
Spending onBest returnCard
groceries10.00%HSBC Live+checkedHSBC · INR 999 a year
dining10.00%HSBC Live+checkedHSBC · INR 999 a year
fuel4.00%or 6.25% (BPCL fuel bought through BPCL's own channels), with BPCL SBI Card OCTANEICICI HPCL Super SaverICICI Bank · INR 500 a yearat most INR 200 back a month
supermarkets10.00%HSBC Live+checkedHSBC · INR 999 a year
online and delivery10.00%Airtel Axis BankcheckedAxis Bank · INR 500 a yearat most INR 400 back a month
travel4.00%or 20.00% (domestic hotels booked via EaseMyTrip), with Standard Chartered EaseMyTripIndusInd EazyDinercheckedIndusInd Bank
phone and internet0.40%or 25.00% (Via the Airtel Thanks app), with Airtel Axis BankIndusInd LegendcheckedIndusInd Bank
entertainment10.00%Airtel Axis BankcheckedAxis Bank · INR 500 a yearat most INR 200 back a month
pharmacy0.40%or 1.00% (insurance), with HDFC InterMiles SignatureIndusInd LegendcheckedIndusInd Bank
education1.00%IDFC FIRST Hello CashbackcheckedIDFC FIRST Bank · INR 0 a year
government10.00%HSBC Live+checkedHSBC · INR 999 a year
rent and property1.00%IDFC FIRST Hello CashbackcheckedIDFC FIRST Bank · INR 0 a year
everything else2.00%or 5.00% (travel feature), with AU Bank LITAxis AtlascheckedAxis Bank · INR 5,000 a year
How these were worked out. 54 of the 83 cards here have been read against the issuer's own terms line by line and are marked checked in the tables below. The rest come from each issuer's published material and have not been checked that way. Every rate is converted to what the card actually returns — points and miles are valued at the redemption rate the programme publishes, using the rate anyone can take rather than the best one available after a transfer. Where a card's programme publishes no redemption value, the card is left off this page rather than listed at a number that would be a guess. Caps and minimum monthly spends are shown because they are usually what decides whether a headline rate is real.

This is a table. Your wallet is a decision.

PayperWIZ holds the cards you actually own and names the right one at the till — after the cap you have already used this month, and after the foreign-currency fee. It works offline and needs no bank connection.

Download on the App Store See how it works

Other markets

The same working, for the other countries in the catalogue.