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Seven weighted components decide a card’s position. Every weight below is read from the file the ranking engine itself uses — this page cannot describe a model the engine is not running.
Each component is scored from 0 to 1, then weighted. The weights add up to 100%.
Rewards earned on the monthly figures you gave, at the bank’s published rates, with reward caps applied and the annual fee subtracted. What is left, not what is earned.
Cashback, travel, fuel and so on. One component of seven — a stated goal steers the ranking, it does not filter it.
The share of your spending that lands on the categories this card accelerates, rather than on its headline category.
Only benefits the card can prove from its published terms. Your first choice counts for three times your third.
Judged on net value rather than the headline figure, so a fee a card earns back is not treated the same as one it does not.
Read from what the issuer states about income and employment. Never an approval probability — only the bank decides that.
A second card that earns on the same categories as your first is worth less than one that covers a gap.
The value term cannot be computed honestly without figures, so its weight is redistributed across the preference terms rather than scored as zero — which would have punished every card equally and flattened the list.
There is no penalty score. A card either competes on the weights above, or it is taken out of the running and the results page names the reason.
Applied in order until one of them separates.
| You said | What the model does |
|---|---|
| Lifetime-free cards only | Cards above this are removed |
| Under ₹1,000 | Weighed against net value, not removed |
| ₹1,000 – ₹3,000 | Weighed against net value, not removed |
| ₹3,000 and above | Weighed against net value, not removed |
| A fee is fine if the value beats it | Weighed against net value, not removed |
No issuer pays for placement, and commission is not a term in the model — there is no weight set to zero, because there is no weight. Where we earn a commission, the card page says so.
Fees, reward rates, caps and eligibility come from the bank’s own terms. Where a card states no rate for a category, its base earn rate is used and the result is labelled as such rather than invented.
When a fee or reward rate changes, both the old and the new value are recorded on the change tracker with the date.
Welcome bonuses, one-off milestone gifts and unused lounge entitlement are excluded from the score. They are real, but they are one-time or hard to value consistently, and counting them would flatter expensive cards.
A card whose figures have not been re-checked in 180 days is flagged on its results row rather than silently trusted.
Everything worth knowing before you choose. All of it is on this page — open only what you need.
Think a score is wrong? Tell us which card and why — corrections are published on the card’s own page, with the date they were made.