How we rate products
Every rating on Credsir is produced by a formula, not an opinion. Here is the formula.
The principle
Most product rankings in Indian personal finance are commercial arrangements described as editorial judgement. The tell is that the method is never published — you are asked to trust a number whose derivation you cannot check.
We publish ours. Every score below is computed from structured fields in our database. The same code runs on every product. There is no editorial override, no partner adjustment, and no field that says “featured”.
Credit card scoring
Cards are scored out of 5 across four dimensions, then combined with fixed weights.
What “effective reward rate” means
Issuers advertise the best case: 5% on one merchant, capped at ₹1,000 a quarter. We estimate the blended return across a typical spending mix, applying the caps. A card advertising “5% cashback” with a ₹1,000 quarterly cap and 1% elsewhere lands nearer 2.4% for most people — and that is the number we score.
Fees include GST
An 18% GST applies to credit card annual fees. A ₹2,500 card costs ₹2,950 a year. Almost no comparison site includes this. Every fee figure and every break-even calculation on Credsir does.
Rate tables
Loan, deposit and scheme rates are not scored — they are reported. Each table shows the date the figure was captured, the source it came from, and a confidence marker:
- Verified — cross-checked against the institution’s own published rate card or an official government notification.
- Reported — sourced from a credible aggregator or press report, with an issuer check still pending. These are marked visibly on the page rather than presented as settled fact.
Advertised rates are the floor, offered to the strongest applicants. We say so on every rate page rather than implying that the lowest number is the one you will be quoted.
Calculators
Every calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter — income, loan amount, PAN, salary — is transmitted to Credsir or to anyone else. Tax constants live in a single file that is updated once per Union Budget, so every tax-aware calculator moves together and none is left stale.
What would change a rating
A rating changes when the underlying data changes: an issuer devalues a reward programme, a bank moves a rate, a fee waiver threshold shifts. It does not change because of a commercial conversation. If a partner asked us to move a product up the list, the only honest answer available to us is that the formula does not have an input for that.
Corrections
If a figure here is wrong, it is a defect and we want to know. Write to us and we will correct it, note the correction on the page, and re-verify the source. Financial data that is quietly fixed is barely better than financial data that stays wrong.
See also: how we make money and our editorial policy.