Best Travel Credit Cards in India 2026: Lounge Access, Miles and Hotel Points

Three things decide a travel card: lounge access, a transfer programme worth using, and the forex markup you pay on every rupee spent abroad. The third is the one most lists bury, and it is usually the biggest number on the page — on ₹20,000 a month spent overseas, the gap between a 0% card and a 3.5% one is ₹8,400 a year, which is more than several travel cards earn in rewards in total.

The figures above are what each card returns on a frequent traveller's spend. They count rewards only — never lounge access, never the markup you save — so a card bought for either reads lower there than it is worth in your hand. The table below is the specification. The note under each card is the reason it is on the list, and says only what the table cannot.

Every card on this list

HSBC TravelOne

Of the cards you can walk in and apply for, this returns the most on a traveller's spend, and its 1:1 transfer into Accor ALL is the best Accor rate on any card open to application.

• The return comes from HSBC's own Travel with Points portal — hotels earn 24 points per ₹100 there, flights 16 — and it stops at 18,000 points a month.
• ⚠ A poor card to actually swipe abroad — see its markup in the table. Pair it with one of the zero-markup cards below for that.

Full fees, rewards and eligibility → — our full review →

HDFC Diners Club Black

The best SmartBuy rates on any card you can apply for, and lounge access where the card itself is the credential — nothing to enrol in and no membership to carry.

• SmartBuy pays 10X on hotels and 5X on flights, but the ceiling is 10,000 reward points a month and it is shared with SmartBuy shopping, so heavy hotel booking and heavy online shopping compete for one pot.
• ⚠ Diners acceptance fails often enough at smaller merchants, here and abroad, that this cannot be your only card.

Full fees, rewards and eligibility → — our full review →

HDFC Regalia Gold

The same SmartBuy engine as the cards above it, at a fifth of the Infinia's fee and with no invitation needed.

• The catch is the ceiling: its accelerator stops at 4,000 reward points a month, a quarter of the Infinia's, and that is where this card's travel value ends.
• ⚠ The base rate is 1.25%, so without the portal this is an ordinary card with a fee. The ₹2,500 welcome benefit also needs ₹1 lakh of spend in your first 90 days, whatever HDFC's own FAQ says.

Full fees, rewards and eligibility →

Scapia

It costs nothing to hold and nothing to use abroad, which on the overseas spending this page assumes is worth more than several of these cards earn in rewards.

• No income proof for an app application — one of very few genuinely open-access cards in India.
• ⚠ Coins redeem only for travel inside the Scapia app, never as cashback, so the earn rate is worth its face value only if you were booking through Scapia anyway. The RuPay version earns half the everyday rate of the Visa one.

Full fees, rewards and eligibility →

IDFC FIRST Mayura

The deepest lounge and golf programme you can get on a card that charges nothing abroad.

• Up to two golf rounds a month, and points that never expire.
• ⚠ The in-app travel rate every review quotes shares one 25,000-point monthly ceiling across hotels and flights, so a hotel booking and a flight booking compete. With a 0.83% base rate and no fee waiver, the perks have to carry the fee on their own.

Full fees, rewards and eligibility →

Axis Horizon

The most lounge access on this list with no spend test attached, which is rare now that almost every card at this price has added one.

• The international visits run on Axis's own programme rather than Priority Pass, opened with a USD 1 card transaction.
• ⚠ Hotels and online travel agencies earn only the base 2 EDGE Miles per ₹100 — the accelerated rate is the Axis Travel EDGE portal and direct airline bookings only.

Full fees, rewards and eligibility →

MakeMyTrip ICICI

A sub-1% forex markup is class-leading at any fee, and this is the cheapest card on the list.

• 6% back on MakeMyTrip hotels is the highest uncapped hotel rate here, and it comes with MMTBLACK Gold status and a ₹1,000 voucher on joining and again each year.
• ⚠ myCash only spends on MakeMyTrip, and MakeMyTrip's own fare pricing can quietly claw back what the card pays. Excellent if you book there anyway; a trap if you price-shop across portals.

Full fees, rewards and eligibility →

Axis Magnus

Here as a caution rather than a recommendation. Its reputation was built on a transfer table that April 2026 cut.

• EDGE Reward Points are a different and weaker currency from the EDGE Miles the Atlas earns. Their transfer ratio was halved from 5:4 to 5:2 in September 2023, and April 2026 took away the last milestones and three partners — Accor and Qatar have since returned, but only at 5:1. Read any older Magnus write-up with that in mind.
• ⚠ It returns less on a traveller's spend than anything else on this page, and its waiver needs the highest annual spend of any mainstream card.

Full fees, rewards and eligibility → — our full review →

The two you cannot apply for

Both of these are in the table because knowing what the benchmark is has value. Neither is something you can act on today, so neither leads the list.

HDFC Infinia is still the best travel card in India: unlimited Priority Pass for you and your add-on cardholders, and the highest SmartBuy ceiling HDFC grants anyone, at 15,000 points a month. There is no application form — it comes by invitation or through an HDFC relationship manager — and from FY2026-27 keeping it requires ₹18 lakh of annual card spend or ₹50 lakh of HDFC relationship value.

Axis Atlas still has the best transfer ratio in India below a ₹20,000 fee, and the April 2026 partner cull left that ratio untouched. But Axis has quietly stopped sourcing it: its own line-up shows the card with no way to apply while the cards it still sells keep theirs, and Axis has published no notice either way. Existing holders are unaffected.

Infinia → — Atlas →

Most travellers should hold two

One card to earn on, and one to swipe abroad. Every strong earner here charges 2% or more overseas, and the cards that charge nothing earn modestly — so the usual setup is a rewards card for bookings and domestic spend, plus a zero-markup card you use the moment you leave the country. Run your own spend through the rewards calculator before choosing either.