Credit cards
Best travel credit cards in India — matched to the kind of travel you actually do
Lounge access is now a spend test and the markup usually outranks the miles. What three issuers' own pages and fee documents say, read on 10 September 2026.
There is no single best travel credit card in India, because the three things a travel card sells — reward miles, airport lounge access and a lower foreign-currency markup — are priced separately and almost never sit together on one card. Axis Bank’s Atlas pays 5 EDGE Miles per ₹100 on direct airline and hotel spending and charges a 3.50% foreign currency transaction fee. HDFC Bank’s Regalia Gold charges 2% on foreign spending and gates its domestic lounge access behind ₹60,000 of spending in the preceding quarter; it charges a joining fee and a renewal fee of ₹2,500 each plus applicable taxes, waived on ₹4 lakh of spending within 12 billing cycles of the anniversary year. Which of them is right for you turns almost entirely on whether your travel is domestic, international or by rail.
Every fee, rate, cap and lounge condition below was read on 10 September 2026 from the issuer’s own product page, fees page or Key Fact Statement. Read it again at the source before you apply. Card terms move without notice, and what binds you is the figure disclosed on your own application screen, not a figure on any comparison page, this one included.
The three levers, and which one is worth most
The earn rate is not a rate until you price the currency. “5X reward points” is a multiplier over an earn base, and the base is points per ₹100 or per ₹200 of spending. Multiply the base by the rupee value of one point on the route you will actually redeem, and you have a percentage you can compare with a plain cashback card.
Lounge access is now a spend test. HDFC has moved off unconditional visits, gating the benefit on prior-quarter spending. Axis still gives the entry Silver tier 8 domestic visits on issue with no spend test, and gates only the uplift to 12 and 18 visits on a tier earned by the previous anniversary year’s spending — a tier that is re-evaluated every year and downgraded if the threshold is missed. Axis counts guests inside the same quota, so a cardholder travelling with a spouse halves it. HDFC does not extend the quota to guests at all — each accompanying person on a Priority Pass visit is charged USD 27 plus taxes.
The markup is the most durable of the three, because it applies to every foreign-currency transaction whether or not you earn anything, and it carries no cap. For someone with real international spending it usually outranks the miles. That comparison has its own page — zero forex markup credit cards — and the point not to miss there is that declining dynamic currency conversion at a foreign terminal is free and often saves more than switching cards would.
Domestic flights and hotels: what a miles card returns
Axis Bank’s Atlas is the clearest example of the airline-agnostic miles card, and Axis publishes enough to check it.
| Atlas, as Axis prints it | Terms |
|---|---|
| Joining fee | ₹5,000 |
| Annual fee, second year onwards | ₹5,000, with no spend-based waiver printed on the fees table |
| Base earn | 2 EDGE Miles per ₹100 |
| Accelerated earn | 5 EDGE Miles per ₹100 on the Travel EDGE portal, direct airline and direct hotel spending |
| Cap on the accelerated earn | ₹2,00,000 of such spending a month; above that it drops to 2 miles per ₹100 |
| Value of a mile | ₹1, stated by Axis |
| Milestones | 2,500 miles at ₹3 lakh of spending, another 2,500 at ₹7.5 lakh, another 5,000 at ₹15 lakh |
| Tiers | Silver on issue, Gold at ₹7.5 lakh, Platinum at ₹15 lakh in an anniversary year |
| Annual tier miles | Nil at Silver, 2,500 at Gold, 5,000 at Platinum, on payment of the annual fee |
| Foreign currency transaction fee | 3.50% of transaction value |
| Redemption fees | ₹99 per redemption; ₹199 per transfer of miles to a partner programme |
Two conditions in the terms do more work than the headline. Bookings through any travel agent, including online travel agencies, earn the base 2 miles rather than 5 — the accelerated rate is for airline-owned and hotel-owned channels, identified by merchant category code. And spending on gold and jewellery, rent, wallet loads, government institutions, insurance, fuel, utilities, telecom, gift cards and bridge, road and toll fees earns nothing at all, and is excluded from the milestone and tier thresholds as well. Toll and bridge fees joined that list with effect from 21 August 2026.
What the card’s own value table counts
Axis publishes a benefits table putting a Silver cardholder’s annual value at ₹29,700 on ₹3,00,000 of spending. It is worth taking apart, because the same structure appears on most issuers’ travel pages.
Of that ₹29,700, ₹14,500 is lounge visits — 8 domestic at an implied ₹800 each and 4 international at an implied ₹2,025 each. That value is real only if you take all twelve. A further ₹2,500 is the welcome benefit, which is paid once on the first transaction and is not an annual amount at all, yet it appears in the Gold and Platinum tables too. Strip both, and ₹12,700 is left, of which ₹300 is a 1% fuel surcharge waiver on the ₹30,000 of fuel Axis assumes — a category it excludes from earning and from the milestone and tier thresholds. The steady-state miles are 12,400 — 7,500 from ₹1,50,000 of travel at the accelerated rate, 2,400 from ₹1,20,000 of other spending, and the 2,500 milestone. Against the ₹5,000 fee that is ₹7,400, or 2.47% of the ₹3,00,000 spent, before the tax charged on the fee.
Note also what the split assumes: half of a cardholder’s ₹3,00,000 goes on direct airline and hotel bookings. If your travel is a fraction of that, so is the card.
A separate warning applies to airline co-brands specifically. HDFC Bank’s Key Fact Statement records the 6E Rewards IndiGo and 6E Rewards XL cards as discontinued, all product features withdrawn from 1 December 2025, the reward programme phased out from 1 November 2025 and unredeemed balances converted to the airline’s own currency. A co-brand ties your rewards to a commercial arrangement that can end while you still hold the card.
Rail: the one co-brand with a clean case
HDFC Bank charges a railway ticket purchase fee of 1% of the transaction amount plus tax on every card it issues except the IRCTC HDFC Bank Credit Card, where that 1% is reversed on bookings made through the IRCTC app or website, capped at ₹1,000 a month. That single line is most of the argument.
| IRCTC HDFC Bank Credit Card | Terms |
|---|---|
| Joining and renewal fee | ₹500 plus applicable taxes each |
| Renewal waiver | ₹1.5 lakh of spending in the year before the renewal date |
| Earn on IRCTC site and Rail Connect app | 5 reward points per ₹100 |
| Earn elsewhere | 1 reward point per ₹100, with fuel, wallet loads, gift vouchers, rent, education, government charges and EMI repayments excluded |
| Value of a point | ₹1, but only against a train ticket booked through HDFC Bank SmartBuy |
| Redemption limit | 70% of the fare, inclusive of all passengers and IRCTC service charges |
| Point validity | 2 years from the date of earning |
| Railway fee reversal | 1% of the ticket value, capped at ₹1,000 a month |
| Lounges | 8 IRCTC executive lounge visits a year, maximum 2 per quarter |
| Milestone, cards issued from 1 October 2025 | ₹500 gift voucher each calendar quarter on quarterly spending of ₹30,000 or more |
At 5 points per ₹100 and a point worth ₹1 on a train ticket, that is a 5% return on IRCTC bookings, so about ₹12,000 of annual ticket spending covers the ₹500 fee plus tax — and only if you have at least ₹715 of fare to redeem against, since points cover no more than 70% of a ticket. HDFC states that a SmartBuy booking earns an additional 5% cashback on top of the product’s reward points.
The honest limits: the reward currency is close to worthless if you stop travelling by train, since redemption is confined to rail bookings through one portal; the 70% cap means a ₹2,000 ticket absorbs at most ₹1,400 of points; and the lounges are railway station executive lounges, not airport lounges. Read the name carefully before assuming otherwise.
Lounge access is a spend test, not a card feature
This is the change most comparison pages have not caught up with.
HDFC Bank’s Regalia Gold gives 3 lounge visits within India per calendar quarter, and only on spends of ₹60,000 or more in the preceding calendar quarter — about ₹20,000 a month, and a threshold that bites in exactly the quarter after a quiet one. Outside India it gives 6 complimentary visits per calendar year through Priority Pass. Within India, HDFC’s own Key Fact Statement states that Priority Pass visits are charged at USD 27 plus taxes per person per visit, guests included, for Regalia Gold among others. So the two benefits are not interchangeable, and the domestic one is the conditional one.
Axis structures it differently but no more generously. Atlas gives 8 domestic and 4 international visits a year at Silver, 12 and 6 at Gold, 18 and 12 at Platinum — and the terms state plainly that those totals include guests, so a cardholder who travels with a spouse halves the quota. As read on 10 September 2026, the Atlas terms also carried the line that the international lounge programme on the card “is under maintenance”, which is a good reason to confirm the position with Axis before paying a fee for it.
A card that advertises lounge access and then withholds it below a spending threshold is not lying, but it is selling you a benefit you may never see. If lounge access is the reason you are considering a fee card, work out how many visits you realistically take in a year, price them at HDFC’s Priority Pass rate of USD 27 plus taxes, and compare that with the fee.
International spending: the markup outranks the miles
Travel cards are not automatically good at foreign currency, and one of the best-known is among the worst.
Axis prices Atlas’s foreign currency transaction fee at 3.50% of transaction value, with dynamic currency conversion at the same 3.5%, revised with effect from 21 August 2026. HDFC’s Regalia Gold fees page answers the markup question with 2%, and HDFC’s Key Fact Statement adds a separate 1.75% markup, effective from May 2026, on transactions carried out in Indian currency at an international location or at merchants located in India but registered overseas — which is the charge for accepting dynamic currency conversion, and it stacks on top of the loss the conversion itself causes.
SBI Cards publishes the clearest per-card ladder of the three. Its Key Fact Statement sets the foreign currency transaction fee at 3.5% across the range, then names the exceptions: 3% on SBI Card Miles, 2.5% on SBI Card Miles Prime and 1.99% on SBI Card Miles Elite and a short list of other cards. The same document prices those three cards at ₹1,499, ₹2,999 and ₹4,999 a year, waived on preceding-year spending of ₹6 lakh, ₹10 lakh and ₹15 lakh respectively. What that document does not carry is the earn rate, the reward cap or the lounge quota on any of them, and SBI’s product pages render their content in the browser rather than in the page source, so none of those could be read here. They are not published below for that reason.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. A percentage point of markup on ₹4,00,000 of annual foreign spending is ₹4,000 — more than the whole steady-state mile earning of a mid-tier card. If most of your travel budget is spent in a foreign currency, choose on the markup first and the miles second.
Milestones ask you to spend more than you would
Milestone benefits reward you for spending more, not for spending as you already do, so they need a harder look than the rest of the card.
Atlas pays 2,500 miles at ₹3 lakh, a further 2,500 at ₹7.5 lakh and a further 5,000 at ₹15 lakh in an anniversary year, on eligible spending only. Regalia Gold pays ₹1,500 of vouchers on quarterly spending of ₹1.5 lakh and ₹5,000 of flight vouchers at ₹5 lakh and again at ₹7.5 lakh of annual spending — and HDFC states that a milestone benefit, once earned, must be used within 60 days. A benefit with an expiry date is worth less than its face value, and a threshold that pulls your annual spending up by ₹50,000 to earn ₹5,000 of vouchers has cost you money.
One inconsistency worth knowing about, because it shows how far marketing copy can sit from terms: HDFC’s Regalia Gold page states the earn rate as 5 reward points per ₹200 of retail spending in its benefits section, while a savings break-up on the same page describes “4RPs on daily and retail spends”. Take the benefits section, and check your statement.
The fee-versus-benefit break-even
Break-even annual spend is the card’s fee divided by the extra return it gives you over the free card you would otherwise hold. Goods and services tax on the fee is charged on top of every figure here, so treat each as a floor.
| Annual fee, before tax | Break-even at a 0.5-point advantage | At 1 point | At 2 points | At 3 points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ₹500 | ₹1,00,000 | ₹50,000 | ₹25,000 | ₹16,667 |
| ₹1,500 | ₹3,00,000 | ₹1,50,000 | ₹75,000 | ₹50,000 |
| ₹2,500 | ₹5,00,000 | ₹2,50,000 | ₹1,25,000 | ₹83,333 |
| ₹5,000 | ₹10,00,000 | ₹5,00,000 | ₹2,50,000 | ₹1,66,667 |
Apply your own numbers. Regalia Gold’s base earn of 5 points per ₹200 is 2.5 points per ₹100; at HDFC’s published ₹0.50 a point on flight and hotel bookings that is 1.25%, at ₹0.20 as a statement credit it is 0.5%, and at the ₹0.15 the same page prints elsewhere, 0.38%. Against a free card returning 1%, the first case is a quarter of a point of advantage and the second is a loss — which is why the ₹4 lakh renewal waiver, rather than the reward rate, is what makes that card defensible. Atlas at Silver needs about ₹1,66,667 of direct airline and hotel spending for its three-point uplift over its own base rate to cover the ₹5,000 fee.
Two adjustments push every break-even out. The reward cap on Regalia Gold is 50,000 points a statement cycle, and travel redemptions there are limited to 70% of the booking value; on Atlas, the accelerated rate stops at ₹2,00,000 of travel spending a month. And a fee is certain while a benefit is conditional, so when the sums come out close, take the free card — the genuinely lifetime-free options are the right starting point, and the charges that actually cost money dwarf any reward rate.
Who each of these is wrong for
| If your travel is | The case for | Who it is wrong for |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic flights and hotels booked direct, ₹1.5 lakh a year or more | Axis Atlas — 5 miles per ₹100 at a stated ₹1 a mile, milestones from ₹3 lakh | Anyone who books through online travel agencies (base rate only), spends abroad (3.50% markup), or spends under about ₹1.7 lakh a year on direct travel |
| Long-distance rail | IRCTC HDFC Bank — the 1% railway ticket fee reversed, 5 points per ₹100 at ₹1 a point | Anyone who does not book trains, since the points redeem for nothing else; and anyone expecting airport lounges from the 8 station lounge visits |
| Mixed, with regular domestic flying and ₹20,000 a month of card spending | HDFC Regalia Gold — 3 domestic lounge visits a quarter, 2% markup; note that ₹20,000 a month clears the ₹60,000 quarterly lounge gate but not the ₹4 lakh renewal waiver, so the ₹2,500 renewal fee plus tax is payable | Anyone whose quarterly spending dips below ₹60,000, since the lounge quota goes with it; and anyone redeeming points to a statement credit at ₹0.20 |
| Mostly international | Choose on markup, not miles | Anyone buying a miles card first — see zero forex markup credit cards |
| One holiday a year | No travel card at all | Nobody. Decline dynamic currency conversion, use a card you already hold, and read the main round-up if you want to change cards for a better reason |
Before you apply, three checks. Read the card’s own fees page and Most Important Terms and Conditions rather than its product page, because RBI’s 2025 card Directions require the joining fee and the annual membership fee to be disclosed separately for primary and add-on cardholders in that document, and para 34 requires your explicit consent for any change to the terms. Screenshot the fee disclosed on your application screen, since issuers reserve the right to vary it by applicant. And count your realistic lounge visits and your genuine direct-travel spending for last year before you accept an annual fee against next year’s optimism.
Common questions
Is an annual-fee travel credit card worth it in India?
Only above a spending level you can work out in advance. Divide the card's annual fee by the extra return it gives you over a free card you would otherwise hold, and that is the annual spend at which you break even. A ₹5,000 fee needs ₹1,66,667 of spending a year to be covered by a three-percentage-point advantage, and ₹5,00,000 if the real advantage is one point. Goods and services tax is charged on the fee on top, so every one of those figures is an understatement.
Do travel credit cards still give unlimited airport lounge access?
On the cards read for this page, no. HDFC Bank gives its Regalia Gold three lounge visits within India per calendar quarter, and only on spends of ₹60,000 or more in the preceding calendar quarter. Axis Bank gives Atlas cardholders a fixed annual quota by tier — 8 domestic visits at Silver, 12 at Gold, 18 at Platinum — and counts guest visits inside the same quota. HDFC prices a Priority Pass lounge visit within India at USD 27 plus taxes per person per visit for Regalia Gold among others. Axis publishes no charge for a visit beyond the Atlas quota, and its Atlas terms state that the card's international lounge programme is under maintenance.
What is one reward point or mile actually worth?
Whatever the issuer's redemption table says on the route you will genuinely use, which is rarely the best route in the catalogue. Axis Bank states that 1 EDGE Mile equals ₹1 on its Atlas card. HDFC Bank publishes four rupee values for one Regalia Gold reward point — ₹0.65 in its Exclusive Gold catalogue, ₹0.50 on flight and hotel bookings, ₹0.35 on products and vouchers and ₹0.20 as a statement credit — and a second table on the same page prints the statement credit at ₹0.15 instead. The same earn rate is a 1.63% card or a 0.38% card depending on which line you use.
Which credit card is best for booking train tickets?
The IRCTC HDFC Bank Credit Card is the only card read here with a rail-specific case. HDFC charges a 1% railway ticket purchase fee plus tax on every card it issues except this one, where the 1% is reversed on bookings made through the IRCTC app or website, capped at ₹1,000 a month. It earns 5 reward points per ₹100 on the IRCTC website and Rail Connect app, and a point is worth ₹1 — but only against a train ticket booked through SmartBuy, and only for 70% of the fare.
Does a travel credit card remove the foreign currency markup?
Usually not, and some travel cards charge the market's highest markup. Axis Bank prices the foreign currency transaction fee on its Atlas travel card at 3.50% of transaction value. HDFC Bank answers the same question on its Regalia Gold fees page with 2%. SBI Cards' Key Fact Statement sets 3.5% as the default across its range and cuts it only on named cards. Removing the markup is a separate product decision from earning miles, and it is worth more to most international spenders.
Sources
Rates and rules on this page were read directly from the following sources on the dates shown. Figures change — if you are about to act on one, confirm it at the source.
- Axis Bank Atlas Credit Card — features, tiered benefits, fees and charges
- Atlas Credit Card Features T&Cs (PDF)
- HDFC Bank Regalia Gold Credit Card
- HDFC Bank Regalia Gold Credit Card Fees and Charges
- IRCTC HDFC Bank Credit Card
- IRCTC HDFC Bank Credit Card Fees and Charges
- PART I Key Fact Statement cum Most Important Terms & Conditions for Credit Cards, Version 4.9, September-2026, updated 08 September 2026
- SBI Card Key Fact Statement
- RBI (Commercial Banks — Credit Cards and Debit Cards: Issuance and Conduct) Directions, 2025