Savings
HDFC Bank RD interest rates: the FD card, one instalment at a time
HDFC Bank pays 6.50% on RDs of 39 to 54 months, 7.10% to seniors, from 19 August 2026 — its FD rate for the tenure. Instalment rules and what closing early costs.
HDFC Bank’s recurring deposit rate is its fixed deposit rate for the same tenure, and on the schedule the bank publishes today that means 6.50% a year on any RD of 39 to 54 months for the general public and 7.10% for resident depositors aged 60 and above, with those rows dated 19 August 2026. Every tenure longer than 54 months pays less — 6.40% at 57 and 60 months, 6.15% from 63 months to ten years — and the 6-month minimum pays 4.25%. The bank publishes two columns, general and senior; there is no 80-plus band.
Rates below are read from HDFC Bank’s interest-rates page, its fixed deposit card and its recurring deposit terms on 10 September 2026, and apply to resident rupee recurring deposits. The rate on an RD is the one prevailing on the day the account is opened and stays fixed for the tenure; read it on the NetBanking confirmation screen before you book.
The tenures that actually pay
HDFC Bank’s interest-rates page carries a 39-row RD schedule — every tenure from 6 to 120 months in steps of three — and each row prints its own effective date, so you can see which rates moved last. The rows below collapse neighbours the bank prices identically.
| Tenure | General | Age 60 and above | Effective from, as printed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 months | 4.25% | 4.75% | 10 June 2025 |
| 9 months | 5.50% | 6.00% | 10 June 2025 |
| 12 months | 6.25% | 6.75% | 10 June 2025 |
| 15 months | 6.35% | 6.85% | 25 June 2025 |
| 18 months | 6.45% | 6.95% | 17 December 2025 |
| 21 to 36 months | 6.45% | 6.95% | 10 June 2025 |
| 39 to 54 months | 6.50% | 7.10% | 19 August 2026 |
| 57 and 60 months | 6.40% | 6.90% | 10 June 2025 |
| 63 to 120 months | 6.15% | 6.65% | 10 June 2025 |
Every figure is what the fixed deposit card, applicable from 19 August 2026, pays on the bucket the tenure falls into: a 6-month RD takes the “90 days to 6 months” FD rate of 4.25%, not the 5.50% that starts a day later; a 12-month RD takes the “1 year to under 15 months” rate; 39 to 54 months sit inside the card’s peak band of 3 years 1 day to under 4 years 7 months. The bank says as much on its RD product page — the interest rate for recurring deposits is the same as the rate applicable for a simple fixed deposit — so the RD schedule moves whenever the card does. The questions printed on the RD rate page still quote rates of 5.50% to 7.00%, and up to 7.75% for seniors; those are older figures, and the dated table is what the bank pays.
For orientation, the savings account pays 2.50% a year across all balances, revised from 24 June 2025. The 6-month RD pays 1.75 percentage points over that and takes away access to the money.
Because the RD rate is the FD rate, our comparison of FD interest rates across major banks is the RD comparison too, and the full card, with its single-day rows and closure rules, is in our page on HDFC Bank FD interest rates.
Nothing longer than 54 months pays more
From 12 to 18 months the schedule climbs in ten-point steps to 6.45%, holds that through 36 months, steps up to 6.50% at 39 months and holds it to 54. At 57 months it drops to 6.40%, and at 63 months to 6.15%, where it stays to 120. An RD booked for ten years earns 0.35 percentage point a year less than one booked for three years and three months, on every rupee for the whole decade.
The five-year RD is the one to watch. Sixty months is the tenure most people ask for, and it pays 6.40% — ten basis points less than 54 months, about ₹930 on ₹5,000 a month across the sixty instalments. If the plan is “about five years”, the shorter tenure is the better-paid one.
How the instalments work
- Minimum ₹1,000 a month, in multiples of ₹100, up to ₹1,99,99,900 a month. The bank’s 2011 application form, still on its site, prints ₹500 and ₹1,00,000, and the RD calculator page markets ₹500 in its copy and accepts ₹500 in its input; the product page and the calculator’s FAQ both say ₹1,000, the figure the features page states.
- Tenure from 6 months to 10 years in steps of three months. Non-resident customers start at 12 months.
- The debit date is the value date. Under the bank’s RD terms the date the first instalment is debited becomes the value date, and every later instalment is debited on the same date each month from the linked savings or current account. If the linked account cannot fund the first instalment, the RD is not booked at all.
- The instalment cannot be changed once fixed, and partial payment is not permitted. To save more, open a second RD.
- Interest runs from the date each instalment is paid, actual/actual with quarterly compounding, and is paid only at maturity — the bank’s stated method since 24 October 2015.
Resident individuals, Hindu Undivided Families, companies, trusts and societies can all open one, and the bank sets no minimum age.
What ₹5,000 a month becomes
The table applies quarterly compounding to each instalment from the month it is paid, with simple interest inside the quarter. The bank’s own calculator page says ₹5,000 a month for five years at 7.0% grows to about ₹3,59,696; the same method gives ₹3,59,672, a ₹24 gap on the intra-quarter day count — the size of difference to expect against your advice.
| Tenure | General rate | Deposited | Maturity value | Interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 36 months | 6.45% | ₹1,80,000 | ₹1,98,970 | ₹18,970 |
| 39 months | 6.50% | ₹1,95,000 | ₹2,17,524 | ₹22,524 |
| 48 months | 6.50% | ₹2,40,000 | ₹2,74,532 | ₹34,532 |
| 54 months | 6.50% | ₹2,70,000 | ₹3,14,098 | ₹44,098 |
| 60 months | 6.40% | ₹3,00,000 | ₹3,54,028 | ₹54,028 |
| 120 months | 6.15% | ₹6,00,000 | ₹8,28,918 | ₹2,28,918 |
At the senior rate of 7.10% the 39-month deposit matures at about ₹2,19,751 and the 54-month one at ₹3,18,588; at 6.90% for 60 months, ₹3,58,724. Run your own figures through the RD calculator. The advice states the maturity amount on the assumption that every instalment arrives on time.
Missing an instalment
HDFC Bank prints no late fee on its current RD pages. What it prints is the mechanism.
- If more than one instalment is overdue when a payment arrives, the bank recovers up to six instalments from the linked account, provided the balance is there; a payment large enough for one instalment goes against the earliest overdue.
- Any delay changes the maturity amount: late money earns from the date it actually arrives.
- If six instalments fall into arrears the bank reserves the right to close the account and pay interest under its premature withdrawal rules, set out below.
The only charge the bank publishes for a late instalment is on its 2011 application form: penal interest at the RD rate plus 2% a year on the delayed instalment for the actual days of delay, on a 30/360 basis — about ₹12 on a ₹5,000 instalment ten days late at 6.50%, and ₹35 for a month. Whether that clause still governs an RD booked through NetBanking today is not something the current pages say; treat it as the bank’s last published figure and ask the branch. The RD has a cushion of six instalments and no fee that hurts; what a missed month costs is the maturity value.
Closing it early
Three rules stack.
The lock-in: a closure inside the first month returns the principal with no interest at all.
The rebuild: the bank’s RD terms provide that, with effect from 22 July 2023, the rate on a premature withdrawal is the rate that applied on the booking date to the period the deposit actually stayed with the bank — not the contracted rate.
The penalty: the RD page’s own answer on premature withdrawal says the bank charges 1%, and the FD card the RD rate is drawn from states it precisely — 1% below the booking-day rate for the period served. The RD terms page does not print the 1% itself; assume it applies.
Take ₹5,000 a month booked for 39 months at 6.50% and closed after the twelfth instalment. At the contracted rate the ₹60,000 paid in would have accrued about ₹2,144. Rebuilt to the 12-month rate on the booking-day card, 6.25%, it is ₹2,061; less 1%, at 5.25%, it is ₹1,727. The rebuild costs ₹83 and the penalty ₹334 — the reverse of a broken FD, where the rebuild is the larger loss, because an RD closed after a year has served most of the tenure its money was priced at. The figures use the same quarterly compounding as the table above; the bank’s day count will move them by a few rupees.
The exemption is death: the deposit policy allows premature termination without a penal charge where the primary holder dies before maturity.
There is no loan against an RD
HDFC Bank’s Comprehensive Deposit Policy, dated June 2025, states that no advance is given against a tax-saver deposit or a recurring deposit; the overdraft facility on its site is for fixed deposits of at least ₹25,000 booked for at least six months and a day. The RD page’s FAQ mentions loan facilities against the deposit, but the policy governs. On a cash squeeze the choice is to let instalments lapse inside the six-instalment cushion, or to close and take the rebuild and the penalty.
Maturity, and the day after it
Interest is paid only at maturity, and the RD matures on completion of the contracted tenure even if instalments are still unpaid. Unlike an HDFC Bank FD, which the policy renews for a period equal to the original if you give no instruction, recurring deposits are listed among the products that are not auto-renewed, and the application form’s maturity instruction offers a transfer to your savings or current account or a manager’s cheque, with “no auto renewal possible” printed beside it. Money that goes unclaimed is transferred, ten years after the maturity date, to RBI’s Depositor Education and Awareness Fund.
So an RD does not roll into anything: the proceeds want a fixed deposit booked the same week, or they sit in a savings account earning 2.50%.
Seniors get the FD uplift, and no 80-plus band
| Category | What the RD schedule pays |
|---|---|
| Age 60 and above, every tenure except 39 to 54 months | +50 basis points over the general rate |
| Age 60 and above, 39 to 54 months | +60 basis points: 7.10% against 6.50% |
| Age 80 and above | No separate column; the same senior rate |
| Retired staff who are senior citizens | Staff rate and senior rate together, on resident deposits below ₹5 crore |
Eligibility follows the FD card: only senior citizens and retired personnel aged 60 and above who are resident individuals get the special rates. The deposit policy adds that the uplift is not paid on NRE or NRO deposits, nor on an HUF deposit even where the karta is a senior citizen, and that it applies to resident deposits below ₹5 crore.
The extra ten basis points on the peak band is worth about ₹370 on ₹5,000 a month over 39 months, or ₹750 over 54 — small, but on the band that pays best for everyone. The Post Office five-year RD pays one rate to everyone — 6.7% for the quarter ending 30 September 2026 — with no senior column; our Post Office RD guide sets out its advance-deposit rebate and default rules, which differ from HDFC Bank’s in almost every particular.
A retiree with a lump sum rather than a monthly surplus should look past both. The Senior Citizens Savings Scheme pays 8.2% for the quarter ending 30 September 2026 — 1.1 percentage points above HDFC Bank’s best senior RD rate — with sovereign backing, a quarterly payout, a ₹30 lakh ceiling and entry at 60, subject to its own exit rules and a fresh notification each quarter. An RD is for money that arrives monthly; the scheme is for money that has arrived.
Tax, TDS and the ₹5 lakh cover
RD interest is taxable at your slab rate as income from other sources in the year it accrues, even though the bank pays nothing until maturity; a 39-month RD spreads its interest across at least four financial years, none of which sees a payout. The old claim that recurring deposits escape TDS has been wrong since 1 June 2015, and the bank’s product page says so: TDS on RDs applies under the Finance Act 2015 and is recovered from the linked savings or current account — or, since February 2018, from the RD interest itself if that account is no longer maintained.
The thresholds are bank-wide: the deposit policy says tax is deducted once the aggregate interest paid or credited across all FDs and RDs exceeds the threshold specified under the Act, and that threshold has been ₹50,000 in a financial year, or ₹1,00,000 for a resident senior citizen, since 1 April 2025 — at 10% with PAN on record and 20% without. The product page still prints the pre-2025 figures of ₹40,000 and ₹50,000; the law, not the page, sets the threshold. The nil-deduction declaration is Form 121, which replaced Forms 15G and 15H from 1 April 2026 — the June 2025 policy still names the older forms — and it needs nil estimated liability and total income below the basic exemption limit, at any age. Our guide to tax on FD interest covers the thresholds, the declaration and the accrual rule, all of which apply to an RD unchanged.
At 6.50% before tax, a depositor in the 30% slab keeps about 4.5% after cess. That is the number to compare with anything else the same ₹5,000 a month could go into.
The RD sits inside the same ₹5 lakh
Deposit insurance covers eligible principal and accrued interest up to ₹5 lakh per depositor per bank, in the same right and capacity, after lawful set-off, and HDFC Bank’s policy spells out that the cover takes in savings, fixed, current and recurring deposits together. ₹8,000 a month at 6.50% for 54 months matures at about ₹5,02,600 and crosses it on its own — our arithmetic, not a figure either institution states — and every FD and savings balance at the bank sits inside the same cover. Joint accounts, different capacities and claim timing are in our page on DICGC deposit insurance.
Before you book
| If you can commit for | Book | General rate | The trap next to it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Six months | 6 months | 4.25% | 9 months pays 5.50% — 1.25 points more for three months more; the 6-month rate is only 1.75 points over the 2.50% savings rate. |
| About a year | 12 months | 6.25% | 15 months pays 6.35% |
| Two to three years | 21 to 36 months | 6.45% | 39 months pays 6.50% |
| Three to four and a half years | 39 to 54 months | 6.50% | 57 months pays 6.40% |
| Five years | 57 or 60 months | 6.40% | 54 months pays more; 63 months pays 6.15% |
| Longer than five years | 63 to 120 months | 6.15% | The longest commitment is the worst paid beyond 15 months |
Set the instalment you can pay in a bad month rather than a good one, because it cannot be changed later; pick a debit date a few days after your salary lands, since the bank debits the same date every month; read the rate on the confirmation screen, because the rate is the one prevailing on the day the account opens; and give a maturity instruction that moves the money somewhere useful, because this deposit will not renew itself.
Common questions
Is the HDFC Bank RD interest rate the same as its FD rate?
Yes. The bank's product page states that the interest rate for recurring deposits is the same as the rate applicable for a simple fixed deposit, and the 39-row RD schedule on its interest-rates page is the FD card read at each RD tenure. A 12-month RD takes the 1-year-to-under-15-months FD rate of 6.25%; 39 to 54 months take the FD peak of 6.50%, or 7.10% for seniors, dated 19 August 2026. The one trap is the 6-month RD, which takes the up-to-6-months FD rate of 4.25%, not the 5.50% that starts at 6 months and a day.
What happens if I miss an RD instalment at HDFC Bank?
Nothing immediate, and no fee is printed on the current pages. The instalment is debited on the same date each month; if it fails, the bank recovers up to six overdue instalments from the linked account once money is there, applying any payment to the earliest one first. Late instalments earn from the date they actually arrive, so the maturity value on your advice falls. If six instalments are in arrears the bank may close the account and pay interest under its premature withdrawal rules. The only late charge the bank publishes — the RD rate plus 2% a year for the days of delay — is on its 2011 application form.
Can I take a loan or overdraft against an HDFC Bank RD?
No. HDFC Bank's Comprehensive Deposit Policy of June 2025 states that no advance is given against a tax-saver deposit or a recurring deposit, and the overdraft-against-FD facility on its site is for fixed deposits of at least ₹25,000 booked for at least six months and a day. An FAQ on the RD rate page refers to loan facilities against the deposit, but the policy is the governing document. If you need the money, the choices are to let instalments lapse inside the six-instalment cushion or to close the RD and accept the rebuilt rate less 1%.
Does a 60-month HDFC Bank RD pay more than a 54-month one?
Not per rupee. On the schedule read on 10 September 2026, 39 to 54 months pay 6.50% while 57 and 60 months pay 6.40%; from 63 months to ten years the rate is 6.15%. A 60-month RD of ₹5,000 a month matures at about ₹3,54,028, and at the 54-month rate the same sixty instalments would have grown to about ₹3,54,961 — the ten basis points cost roughly ₹930. If the plan is about five years, 54 months is the better-paid tenure; if you want the sixtieth instalment's worth of saving, accept the lower rate knowingly.
Is TDS deducted on HDFC Bank RD interest?
Yes, and it has been since 2015. The bank's product page states that TDS on RDs applies under the Finance Act 2015 and is recovered from the linked savings or current account, or from the RD interest itself if that account is no longer maintained. Tax is deducted once interest across all your fixed and recurring deposits at the bank crosses ₹50,000 in a financial year, or ₹1,00,000 for a resident senior citizen, at 10% with PAN and 20% without; the page still prints older thresholds. The nil-tax declaration is Form 121, which replaced Forms 15G and 15H from 1 April 2026.
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.
- Interest Rates — Recurring Deposit Rates (Resident / NRO / NRE Customers), the 39-row RD schedule with an Effective From date on each row, latest Aug 19, 2026
- Recurring Deposit Interest Rate (September 2026) — the RD rate page, whose FAQs quote 5.50%–7.00%, 5.00%–7.75% for senior citizens, the 1% premature-withdrawal penalty and loan facilities against the deposit
- FD Interest Rates (September 2026) — Domestic / NRO / NRE fixed deposit rate, less than ₹3 crore, applicable from 19th August, 2026
- Recurring Deposit Terms and Conditions
- Recurring Deposit — features, payment of instalment, lock-in period, maturity and overdue instalments
- Recurring Deposit Eligibility Criteria
- Recurring Deposit Calculator
- Comprehensive Deposit Policy, June 2025
- Recurring Deposit Form (form reference 91272/V3.0/11-08-2011)
- Savings Account Interest Rate — Domestic, NRO and NRE savings rate revised from June 24th, 2025
- Overdraft Against Fixed Deposits
- Guide to deposit insurance
- Small savings schemes — interest rates
- National Savings Recurring Deposit Account Scheme — rate since inception, final row 1.10.2023 to 30.09.2026 at 6.7%
- Income Tax Department e-Filing portal