Credit Card Portfolio Optimiser
Stop carrying 5 cards "just in case". The right 2-card combo covers 80% of your spend at 3-5% reward — versus a single card averaging 1.5%. Input your monthly spend by category; we'll find the combo.
Best single card for your spend pattern: SC Ultimate — ₹14,585/year reward.
The recommended 2-card combo earns +₹1,603/year more (11% more rewards) via category specialisation.
The two-card combo math
Most premium-card users hold 2-3 cards. A typical optimal pattern: one cashback-heavy card for everyday spend + one rewards/travel card for high-value or international.
For each spend category, we know which card returns the highest effective reward rate:
- Online / e-commerce → SBI Cashback (5% unlimited)
- Bills / utilities → Axis ACE (5% via Google Pay)
- Dining / food delivery → HSBC Live+ (10% capped) or Axis ACE (4%)
- Travel + hotels → HDFC Infinia / Axis Atlas / Diners Black
- International / USD → ICICI Emeralde (1.5% FX + 1.5% reward)
- Fuel → BPCL SBI Octane / IndianOil HDFC (5% on fuel)
- Groceries → SBI SimplySAVE (5% capped) or HSBC Live+ (10% capped)
- OTT / streaming → HSBC Live+ / Tata Neu Infinity
For your input spend per category, the optimiser computes the weighted reward earnings of every possible 2-card pair across our top 8 cards and returns the highest-yielding combo.
Effective reward rates reflect typical cap structures — for cap-limited categories (HSBC Live+ 10% capped at ₹1K/month), the calculator returns the lower of "your spend × headline rate" and "monthly cap × 12". Annual fees are NOT subtracted from gross rewards — review each card's break-even spend on its detail page.