What counts as a low annual fee credit card in India?

There is no official definition. In this guide it means a card whose joining and annual fee is ₹0 to ₹500 (plus taxes), either permanently or until a spend threshold is met.

Is a lifetime free card the same as a low fee card?

No. A lifetime free card has no joining or annual fee at all. A low-fee card charges a small fee that is often waived once you spend a set amount in a year.

How do I know if an annual fee is worth paying?

Divide the fee by the card's earn rate. A ₹499 fee on a card that returns 1.5% needs about ₹33,000 of spending a year just to earn the fee back, before counting waivers or caps.

Do low fee cards charge more elsewhere?

Sometimes. Forex markup, finance charges and late fees are set separately from the annual fee and can be the same or higher on a cheap card. Check the fee schedule, not just the headline fee.

Low annual fee credit cards in India (2026)

Low annual fee credit cards in India range from permanently free to about ₹500 a year, and that ₹500 is often waived if you spend enough. The headline fee is only one part of the price, though: what the card pays back, how the waiver works and what it charges for foreign spends all change what a "cheap" card really costs. This guide lays out the numbers from the issuers' own pages.

In short

₹0 fee: Amazon Pay ICICI (invite-only) and IDFC FIRST's lifetime-free range.
About ₹500 with a spend-based waiver: Axis ACE (₹499, waived above ₹2,00,000 a year) and HDFC MoneyBack+ (₹500 + taxes, waived at ₹50,000 a year).
Check the exclusions: fuel, utilities and EMI spends are often capped, excluded or restricted to one app.

Fees and benefits side by side

Sorted by annual fee, lowest first — an ordering by price, not a ranking of quality.

Joining and annual fee shown before GST. Source links are at the end of the post.
Card	Joining fee	Annual fee	Fee waiver	Headline benefit
Amazon Pay ICICI Bank	₹0	₹0	Not applicable	Up to 5% on Amazon.in for Prime members, 3% for non-Prime
IDFC FIRST Millennia, Select and WOW!	₹0	₹0	Not applicable	10X rewards (Millennia, Select); "Zero Forex" on Select and WOW! per IDFC FIRST
Axis ACE	₹499 (waived on ₹10,000 spent within 45 days)	₹499 from year 2	Spends above ₹2,00,000 a year	5% on utility bills, DTH and recharges via Google Pay; 4% on Swiggy, Zomato, Ola; 1.5% on the rest
HDFC MoneyBack+	₹500 + taxes	₹500 + taxes	₹50,000 spent in a year	10X CashPoints at selected merchants (capped); ₹500 voucher on ₹50,000 quarterly spend
SBI SimplySAVE	₹499 in year 1 on the variants SBI Card's booklets describe	Varies by variant	Spend-based reversal; threshold set per variant	10X points on dining, movies, groceries and department stores (capped)

The ₹0 cards: what the fee-free label comes with

Amazon Pay ICICI Bank credit card

ICICI Bank's page lists a nil joining fee and nil annual fee. It also lists a 1.99% forex markup, a 1% fuel surcharge waiver, and says the card is an invite-only programme for applicants aged 21 or over with a monthly income of at least ₹30,000. Reward rates for spends outside Amazon are stated inconsistently on the same page — 1% in one section and 2% at "100+ partner merchants" in another — so confirm the current figure with ICICI.

IDFC FIRST lifetime-free range

IDFC FIRST Bank groups Millennia, Select and WOW! under lifetime-free cards. Millennia is labelled "10X Rewards Shopping" on the bank's menu, Select "10X Rewards Lifestyle Zero Forex", and WOW! is a fixed-deposit-backed card also labelled "Zero Forex". The bank's pages state different minimum income figures for different cards, and some variants carry optional paid add-ons, so read the card's own page. See what "lifetime free" actually covers.

The ~₹500 cards: how the waiver works

A ₹499 or ₹500 fee that disappears at a spend threshold is cheap only if you reach the threshold with spending you would have done anyway. The thresholds in this list, in monthly terms:

Axis ACE: ₹2,00,000 a year is about ₹16,700 a month.
HDFC MoneyBack+: ₹50,000 a year is about ₹4,200 a month.

Axis also waives the ₹499 joining fee if you spend ₹10,000 within 45 days of card set-up. The mechanics are covered in how spend-based waivers work.

Does the fee pay for itself?

A simple test: fee ÷ earn rate = spend needed to earn the fee back. On Axis ACE's flat 1.5% base rate, ₹499 ÷ 0.015 is about ₹33,300 of annual spending. HDFC MoneyBack+ earns 2 CashPoints per ₹200 on most spends; at up to ₹0.20–₹0.25 per point that is roughly 0.2%–0.25%, so the fee alone needs ₹2 lakh or more of spending to earn back — which is why the ₹50,000 waiver matters more than the points. This is arithmetic on published rates, not a prediction of what you will earn.

Small print on "low fee" cards

Forex: Axis ACE lists 3.5%; Amazon Pay ICICI lists 1.99%. See charges beyond the annual fee.
Fuel: waivers are capped — HDFC MoneyBack+ at ₹250 per statement cycle on fuel transactions of ₹400–₹5,000; SBI SimplySAVE at ₹100 a month on transactions of ₹500–₹3,000.
Platform limits: Axis ACE's 5% applies to utility payments made on Google Pay.
Terms change: Axis's page notes its ACE terms were updated from 28 August 2026.

To filter by fee yourself, use the card list or compare cards side by side.

Sources

Each figure above was read from the issuer's own page or terms document linked here. Where an issuer's pages disagree with each other, the post says so.

Low annual fee credit cards in India (2026): fees and benefits compared