Purchase Advisor

Most people hold two or three cards and use whichever is nearest. On a single large purchase that habit is expensive, because the accelerated category differs on every card.

Enter what you are about to buy and the tool checks:

For the wider question of which cards to hold at all, use the card value calculator.

Category rates in India are narrow and heavily capped, so the right card for a Rs. 40,000 purchase is rarely the right one for a Rs. 400 one. Online shopping is where accelerated rates are highest and caps bite soonest — a 5% rate capped at Rs. 2,000 a cycle stops paying after Rs. 40,000 of spending. Fuel is usually a surcharge waiver rather than a reward, and the waiver itself is capped per statement. Groceries and food delivery are where the 10% rates live, inside the tightest caps of all.

If the purchase is large enough to exhaust a cap, the flat-rate card often wins even at a lower headline rate. See the lists for online shopping, groceries, dining and fuel.

Two checks. Will it clear in full on the statement? At roughly 3.5% a month, interest on a carried balance overwhelms any reward rate in India — a 5% cashback card that you revolve on loses money inside the first month. Does the category earn at all? Rent, fuel, wallet loads, EMI conversions and often UPI are excluded on most cards, and converting a purchase to EMI usually cancels the rewards on it entirely.