Best Cashback credit cards

Cashback credit cards credit money against your statement at a fixed value, which makes them the simplest card to judge: no points, no catalogue, no expiry. Fourteen cashback cards are tracked here, with annual fees from nil to Rs. 1,000 and headline rates from 1% flat to 10% in one category.

The rate is not the thing to compare. Almost every high rate here is capped monthly, and the cap decides what the card actually pays.

MagniFi's 20% is the clearest example of why the cap matters: at Rs. 100 a month it is worth Rs. 1,200 a year, less than SBI Cashback returns in two months.

For most people a 5% card with a Rs. 2,000 cap pays more over a year than a 10% card capped at Rs. 400.

Three cards here carry no fee at all: Jupiter Edge, RoarBank RuPay and MagniFi Fi-Federal.

The rest reverse their fee at a spend threshold — Rs. 1,00,000 on HDFC Pixel and IDFC FIRST EA₹N, Rs. 1,50,000 on Kiwi PNB, Rs. 2,00,000 on SBI Cashback, Swiggy BLCK, Kotak Cashback Plus and HSBC RuPay Cashback. BOB Cashback publishes no waiver, so its Rs. 499 is charged every year.

A Rs. 999 fee needs about Rs. 20,000 of cashback-earning spend a year at 5% to break even, before the waiver is even counted.

Cashback is also usually credited as a statement credit in the next cycle, not instantly, and cards with a minimum transaction value pay nothing on very small purchases.

Price any of them against your own monthly spending with the card value calculator.