TRAVEL & MILES CARDS
Best Travel Credit Cards in India 2026
Top travel credit cards in India for flights, hotels, and lounge access. Earn airline miles, Priority Pass, and hotel points. Ordered by our own shortlist, chosen and ranked by hand — weighing real-world return against whether you can actually get the card. For the order at your own spend, use the recommender.
Travel credit cards are built for flyers — they earn airline miles or transferable points, include airport lounge access, and often waive foreign currency markup. For Indians who fly even a few times a year, the lounge access and accelerated travel rewards can easily outweigh the annual fee.
The best travel cards pair a strong earn rate on travel spends with valuable transfer partners and complimentary domestic and international lounge visits. Premium travel cards add concierge, hotel memberships, and milestone flight vouchers.
Three things decide a travel card, and only one of them is the reward rate. The second is lounge access, which we deliberately price at nothing in our rupee figures — it is a convenience, not cash, and a card bought for lounges therefore looks weaker in our numbers than it is to you. The third is the forex markup, and it is bigger than it sounds: on ₹20,000 a month spent abroad, 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. So this list is not a pure earn ranking, and we say so rather than pretending a single number settles it.
The cards below are our editors’ picks for travel, strongest first — and a card you cannot apply for is not the strongest anything, so every card here is one you can simply apply for. Each card appears on one of our lists only: the invite-only HDFC Infinia now sits on our premium list, and the zero-markup Scapia Federal on our zero-forex list.
Travel & miles cards, ranked
₹4,999/yr
annual fee · ≈ ₹5,899 incl. GST
● BEST FOR: 24% airline miles on Travel at HSBC Travel with Points · hotels
₹2,500/yr
annual fee · ≈ ₹2,950 incl. GST
● BEST FOR: 6.25% reward points on Travel at HDFC SmartBuy
₹5,999/yr
annual fee · ≈ ₹7,079 incl. GST
● BEST FOR: 8.34% reward points on Travel at the IDFC FIRST app
₹999/yr
annual fee · ≈ ₹1,179 incl. GST
● BEST FOR: 6% reward points on Travel at MakeMyTrip hotels
₹3,000/yr
annual fee · ≈ ₹3,540 incl. GST
● BEST FOR: 5% airline miles on Travel at Axis Travel Edge & airlines
₹5,000/yr
annual fee · ≈ ₹5,900 incl. GST
● BEST FOR: 2.5% airline miles on Travel at British Airways, Qatar Airways
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Recent changes to these cards
The latest source-verified changes to the cards ranked above, from their value timelines. A strong travel & miles cards card can be devalued overnight — this is how each pick has actually behaved.
Dynamic Currency Conversion fee removed
0.99% DCC fee→No DCC fee
The 0.99% fee ICICI has charged on this card since 15 January 2026 when a purchase abroad, or with a merchant registered abroad, is billed in rupees no longer applies from 10 November 2026. The Signature and Platinum MakeMyTrip cards keep the standard fee.
Verification: ICICI Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Forex mark-up drops to zero
0.99%→0% (no mark-up)
From 10 November 2026 ICICI charges no foreign-currency mark-up on the MakeMyTrip ICICI card, down from 0.99%. The older MakeMyTrip ICICI Signature and Platinum cards are excluded. The same day international spends outside MakeMyTrip stop earning myCash, so a purchase abroad carries no ICICI mark-up and earns no myCash.
Verification: ICICI Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
International spends outside MakeMyTrip stop earning myCash
1% myCash→No myCash
From 10 November 2026 the card's terms list international spends outside MakeMyTrip as earning no rewards, where they earned 1% myCash, and the 1% on other MakeMyTrip spends becomes 1% on other domestic ones. It lands with the end of the forex mark-up: the 0.99% plus GST that goes is slightly more than the 1% myCash that goes with it.
Verification: ICICI Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
New myCash expires after 24 months
Never expires→24 months from credit
myCash earned from 10 November 2026 is valid for 24 months. myCash earned before that date keeps the rule it was earned under and never expires; until this revision the card's terms said all of it would never expire.
Verification: ICICI Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Accor ALL returns as a transfer partner, in Group A
Accor ALL unavailable since 2 April 2026→Accor ALL back, in Group A
Accor Live Limitless is back in the EDGE transfer table, almost six months after Axis removed it on 2 April 2026. It returns in Group A, so it shares the smaller annual cap, and on several cards at a less generous ratio than the card gives its airline partners; the Atlas, for instance, moves 2 EDGE Miles into 1 Accor point where most of its airlines get 1 into 2. Check the card's own transfer table before planning a large transfer.
Verification: Axis Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Show 10 more changes
Dynamic currency conversion markup more than doubles to 3.5%
1.5% + GST→3.5% + GST
Axis Bank raised the dynamic currency conversion mark-up from 1.5% to 3.5% plus GST. DCC applies when an overseas merchant offers to bill you in rupees instead of the local currency, and it stacks on top of the usual foreign-currency mark-up. Declining the rupee option at the terminal and paying in the local currency avoids the charge entirely.
Verification: Axis Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Qatar Airways Privilege Club returns as a transfer partner
Qatar Airways Privilege Club unavailable — removed 2 April 2026→Privilege Club available again at 2 EDGE Miles : 1 Avios on the Horizon
Qatar Airways Privilege Club is back in Axis Bank's published EDGE Miles transfer table. Axis gave no notice either way: it was absent from our 16 July 2026 capture of the Travel EDGE terms and present in the 5 August 2026 capture, which now lists 24 partners, so the return landed somewhere in that window and 5 August is the date we verified it. This reverses only part of the April cull — Accor Live Limitless and Marriott Bonvoy remain gone — and Privilege Club does not come back on its old terms. The Horizon converts at 2:1, the same premium-Avios rate the Atlas gets. Group A caps the route at about 1,00,000 EDGE Miles a year.
Verification: Axis Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Fee-waiver clause widened — add-on spends count, anniversary year, GST reversed
₹8L on the primary card, measured over the financial year→₹8L across primary + add-on cards, measured over the card anniversary year
HSBC republished the TravelOne MITC and rewrote the ₹4,999 fee-waiver clause without moving the ₹8,00,000 threshold. Spend on add-on cards now counts towards it; the measurement window moved from the financial year to the card anniversary year, so a card set up mid-year no longer gets a stub window to clear ₹8 lakh in; and the reversal now covers the fee including GST — ₹5,899 back rather than ₹4,999. All three shifts favour the cardholder. HSBC published no effective date: the document is stamped 7/26 and carried the new wording when read on 31 July 2026, so the date here is the observation date, not an announced one.
Verification: HSBC India ↗ · Confidence: Reconstructed
Boarding Edge programme introduced
Partly offsetting the lounge cut, the 2026 revision added Boarding Edge: upload an airline boarding pass on SmartBuy and pick any two arrival-city benefits per quarter — a spa session, a free Uber airport transfer (~₹750), a partner buffet, or a one-night ITC Hotels room upgrade.
Verification: HDFC Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Domestic lounge access made spend-gated
12 domestic visits/year, unconditional→3 visits/quarter, only if ₹60,000 spent prior quarter
From 1 July 2026 domestic airport lounge access requires ₹60,000 of spend in the preceding calendar quarter to unlock 3 visits that quarter; the previously unconditional domestic lounge benefit is gone. The 6 international Priority Pass visits/year stayed unconditional.
Verification: HDFC Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
SmartBuy brand-voucher earning capped
Up to 4,000 RP/mo via vouchers→3,000 RP/mo via Brand Vouchers
Effective 1 July 2026 accelerated points on SmartBuy Brand Vouchers (GyFTR/Woohoo) were capped at 3,000 RP per month for Regalia Gold. The overall SmartBuy monthly cap is unchanged; the rest must now come from other categories.
Verification: CardAdvisor Research · Confidence: High
Domestic lounge access loses its exemption from the ₹75,000 quarterly spend gate
Lounge visits with no spend condition→₹75,000 of spend in the preceding calendar quarter
ICICI put domestic lounge access behind ₹75,000 of quarterly spend across its range from 1 January 2025 but exempted the MakeMyTrip card. That exemption was written to run only until 30 June 2026, and it duly lapsed: from 1 July 2026 the card needs ₹75,000 of spend in a calendar quarter to unlock its two domestic lounge visits in the next one. The single international visit a year, via Priority Pass and for the primary cardholder only, is untouched. This removes the card's one benefit that did not depend on either MakeMyTrip or a spend threshold.
Verification: ICICI Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Earning capped at the credit limit per billing cycle
All eligible spend earned points→Only spend up to the assigned credit limit per cycle earns
From 18 June 2026 reward points accrue only on spends up to your assigned credit limit within a billing cycle; anything beyond that earns nothing. It bites only the pattern of spending past the limit and repaying mid-cycle to free it up again, so most holders will never touch it — but it puts a hard ceiling on what the card can earn in a month.
Verification: IDFC FIRST Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Movie buy-one-get-one spend-gated
Unconditional, twice a month→Needs ₹20,000 spend in the previous calendar month
From 18 June 2026 the buy-one-get-one movie-ticket offer only unlocks if you spent ₹20,000 or more on the card in the previous calendar month — IDFC's own example: to claim it in August 2026 you must have spent ₹20,000 in July 2026. The offer still runs every month, but a benefit that had been unconditional since launch now has a spend condition attached.
Verification: IDFC FIRST Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
Base earn rate cut
4 RP per ₹150 (~1.33%)→5 RP per ₹200 (~1.25%)
Effective 15 May 2026 the base earn dropped from 4 Reward Points per ₹150 to 5 per ₹200, thinning the everyday return from ~1.33% to ~1.25% at ₹0.50/point. The 5X partner-brand and SmartBuy accelerators were left unchanged.
Verification: HDFC Bank ↗ · Confidence: High
How this list has changed
Our picks move when the cards do — these are CardAdvisor’s own list updates, dated, with the reason. They are editorial decisions, not issuer events.
- 25 Sept 2026 · Removed Hdfc Diners Black — Now on our reward-points list only, where it ranks first. It still returns strongly on travel booked through SmartBuy — we now list each card once.
- 25 Sept 2026 · Removed Hdfc Infinia — Now on our premium list only, where it ranks first. It is issued by invitation only, so here it served as a benchmark rather than a card most readers can apply for — we now list each card once.
- 25 Sept 2026 · Removed Scapia Federal — Now on our zero-forex list only, where it ranks first — its 0% markup is the reason to hold it. We now list each card once.
- 25 Sept 2026 · Removed Bob Etihad Guest Premium — Now on our zero-forex list only. That list has no other open 0%-markup card to take its place, while this one keeps other airline-miles routes — we now list each card once.
- 20 Sept 2026 · Added HDFC Regalia Gold Credit Card — The SmartBuy route at a fifth of the Infinia’s fee: ₹2,500, no invitation, and 3.1% on a traveller’s spend once travel is booked through SmartBuy. It is the answer to “I want the HDFC travel engine and cannot get an Infinia”.
- 20 Sept 2026 · Added Scapia Federal — Lifetime free, 0% forex markup and unlimited domestic lounge access unlocked by ₹20,000 of spend. It earns less in points than most of this list, but the reward figure counts neither lounges nor the forex saving — on this page’s own ₹20,000/month abroad the markup difference alone is ₹8,400 a year.
- 20 Sept 2026 · Added IDFC FIRST Mayura Credit Card — 0% forex markup with up to 16 domestic and 16 international lounge visits (activated by ₹20,000 of spend in the previous month), and 3.6% on a traveller’s spend through the IDFC FIRST app’s hotel and flight rates — the strongest zero-markup card in the catalogue that anyone can apply for.
- 20 Sept 2026 · Added MakeMyTrip ICICI Bank Credit Card — A ₹999 travel co-brand with a 0.99% forex markup and MakeMyTrip hotel and flight rates — the cheapest way onto this list, and the only sub-₹1,000 card on it.
- 20 Sept 2026 · Added Bob Etihad Guest Premium — 0% forex markup, 12 domestic and 8 international lounge visits a year, and Etihad Guest miles earned directly rather than transferred — the airline-first route the list was missing.
- 20 Sept 2026 · Removed Indusind Tiger — Lifetime free and a fine first card, but it returns 0.4% on a traveller’s spend, has no travel reward row and no lounge benefit worth the slot. It stays on the no-annual-fee list, where the claim it answers is the one it can meet.
- 14 Aug 2026 · Removed Axis Magnus — Post-April-2026 the transfer table and milestones that justified it are gone; ~1.2–2% real return at ₹12,500 loses to every remaining pick.
- 14 Aug 2026 · Added Axis Bank Horizon Credit Card — 5 EDGE Miles/₹100 on travel with 1:1 transfers — about 5% back on travel at a ₹3,000 fee, with ungated lounge access.
- 14 Aug 2026 · Added IndusInd Bank Avios Visa Infinite Credit Card — Direct Avios earning with welcome and milestone boosts — a premium-cabin currency the list previously had no route to.