CardAdvisor exists to give Indian cardholders unbiased, evidence-based guidance. This page explains how we produce our content so you can trust it — and check our work.
Our sources
Facts about a card come from primary sources: the issuer's Most Important Terms & Conditions (MITC), its official fee schedule, and its reward programme terms. Fees, reward rates, caps, waiver thresholds, exclusions and transfer ratios are all read from those documents, we track changes to them, and every card carries the date we last checked it.
Some numbers on this site aren't facts about a card, though, and we won't present them as if they were. What a reward point is worth in rupees is our estimate, because most programmes never publish a figure and the ones that do usually quote their cheapest redemption. So is what a year of lounge access is worth, what a milestone voucher is worth to someone who has to spend inside one brand to use it, how much of a category a merchant-gated rate actually reaches, and our 0–5 rating for a card. Those are judgement, they move the rupee figures you see, and each one is published with the reasoning rather than asserted: the point values and the method behind them are on the value calculator, and every weight and assumption in the ranking engine is on the methodology page. If you disagree with one of our estimates, you can see exactly which number to argue with.
How we score cards
Recommendations come from a transparent, weighted engine — a net annual value in ₹ that dominates the score, then reward-type fit, eligibility confidence, and card quality — applied identically to every card. We show the estimated ₹ value and the reasoning behind each pick. The algorithm, not opinion or payment, sets the ranking. The full engine — every weight, filter, and assumption — is published on our methodology page.
Independence
We accept no payment for placement or ranking, and carry no advertising. Some Apply links are affiliate links — carrying a "sponsored" tag, disclosed site-wide via the footer, and with zero weight in rankings. How we fund the site, and the commitments that hold around it, is documented on How we make money.
Who writes and reviews
Content is researched and reviewed by Devchandra Sah, CardAdvisor's founder and editor. First-person experience claims appear only for cards he has personally held; everything else is presented as editorial analysis.
How we use AI
We use AI tools to help draft and structure content, but they never set the facts. Every factual claim on this site — a fee, a reward rate, a waiver threshold, a transfer ratio — traces to our card catalogue or a primary issuer source, not to a language model's memory. On card guides and reviews these numbers are increasingly rendered live from that catalogue rather than typed in, so what you read matches the data our recommendation engine uses. Three things are never AI-generated: first-person experience (only a real cardholder's), the ranking itself (a transparent algorithm, published on our methodology page), and card artwork (every card face is our own original illustration — we never scrape or host issuer images). A human reviews everything before it publishes.
Accuracy & corrections
Card terms change often. Every card shows a "last updated" date, which is when that card's data last changed — not a claim that someone re-read the issuer's document on that day. You should always confirm current terms on the issuer's official site before applying. Spotted an error? Tell us via the suggest/report form and we'll fix it promptly. When we get something wrong we say so in public: every correction that could have changed a reader's decision is dated and described on our corrections page.