Marriott Bonvoy HDFC Bank
KeepA free night that pays the fee — if you actually sleep at Marriotts.
a year at ₹40,000 a month, after the fee
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Read the ₹0.4L figure carefully: ₹9,800 of its ₹13,700 gross is a voucher or a hotel night, not points — worth that only if you would have bought it anyway.
Welcome: Free Night Award (up to 15,000 pts) on fee payment — joining and every renewal
Priced on the everyday mix — 30% groceries · 10% utilities · 20% travel · 6% fuel · 34% everything else — with this card's published category rules applied: it earns nothing on fuel here, so that spend is dropped, not paid at the headline, and stops pacing milestones and the waiver. Plus milestones, minus the fee. No accelerator credit — the ranking model on /compare adds ~20% of spend at the card's best accelerator, so its ₹ for this card reads higher.
How these numbers are computed — and why the rankings show a bigger one →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
Pays from the first rupee
At ₹1,000 a month — ₹12,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹9,800 gross (earn ₹100 + milestones ₹9,800) against its ₹3,000 fee = ₹6,800 net — at or above ₹0 from the first rung we price. The ladder runs in ₹1,000 steps to ₹1,00,000 a month and ₹10,000 steps to ₹5,00,000; figures are rounded to the hundred, and the accelerator is never credited.
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants
Our #3 for First travel card — 1 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
Fee, justified: before you earn a single point, this card bundles ~₹1,000/yr of memberships + elite status you'd actually use — weigh that against the ₹3,000 annual fee. Rewards and milestones stack on top (run your spend → · every card's perks, ranked →).
The take
This is the rare co-brand where the maths is simple: the ₹3,000 fee buys an annual Free Night Award worth up to 15,000 Bonvoy points, plus automatic Silver Elite status and 10 elite-night credits. Redeem that night at a decent property and it clears the fee on day one, before you've spent a rupee. Add 8 points per ₹150 at Marriott and 12+12 lounge visits and it's a no-brainer for anyone who stays at Bonvoy hotels even twice a year. It also just dodged a bullet: when HDFC moved its whole ₹150 accrual grid to ₹200 on 15 May 2026 — knocking a quarter off Regalia and 6% off Regalia Gold — the change notice explicitly exempted Marriott Bonvoy and the other co-brands, so 8/4/2 per ₹150 survives intact. The asterisk is Marriott's 2025 shift to dynamic pricing, which keeps quietly eroding what that free night is actually worth — so book it before the property you want creeps past 15,000 points.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
This card covers its own renewal fee at any spend we model — the question is what else you hold, not whether to keep it.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹3,000/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹3,000/yr
Break-even It clears its own fee at every spend we model, from ₹1,000 a month up. The question here is whether you use it, not whether it pays.
At your spend
₹9,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹11,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹36,000 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹51,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend
₹51,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend
Everyday earn plus milestones, minus the fee — the same model as the value panel above, so the two cannot disagree. run your exact spend →
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
HDFC Bank publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and the numbers above are the whole of it.
What has changed under this card
- 23 Sep 2026 Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and Hilton a program these points reach
- 1 Sep 2026 SmartBuy moves Amazon Pay gift cards to 1X under Insta Deals issuer-wide
- 25 Aug 2026 Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus a program these points reach
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- Annual Free Night Award (up to 15,000 pts) that outvalues the ₹3,000 fee
- Automatic Marriott Silver Elite + 10 elite-night credits each year
- 8 Bonvoy points per ₹150 at Marriott hotels
- Milestone free nights at ₹6L / ₹9L / ₹15L annual spend; 12+12 lounge visits
- 2 golf-course accesses and 2 golf lessons every quarter, worldwide
- Escaped HDFC's 15-May-2026 earn cut — the ₹150 blocks survive here
Watch out
- Only worth it if you actually stay at Marriott properties
- Bonvoy's dynamic pricing (2025) keeps devaluing points and free nights
- No fee waiver; Diners acceptance still patchy abroad
- Base earn off-Marriott is a thin ~0.7% — this is a free-night card, not an earner
- 3.5% forex — HDFC's top markup tier, where Infinia/Diners Black/Regalia Gold pay 2%. Community-sourced: HDFC's own MITC merges the markup column across card rows, so this card's cell is unreadable and the bank publishes the number nowhere else
- Earns Bonvoy, not HDFC Reward Points — none of HDFC's 22 transfer partners apply; airlines are 3:1 out of Bonvoy
What these points actually fly
You hold this — the numbers below are your own points.
These points feed 17 programmes that publish an award chart. Cheapest verified seat per cabin, priced in YOUR points with this card's own ratio already applied:
- Bengaluru → Colombo Economy 19,500 Marriott Bonvoy via Avios (BA / Qatar / Finnair) at 3:1 the play
- Delhi → Mumbai Business 37,500 Marriott Bonvoy via Air Canada Aeroplan at 3:1 the play
- Mumbai → Hyderabad First 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy via Air Canada Aeroplan at 2.4:1 the play
What earns, what doesn't
14 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
- Fuel · excluded Zero Bonvoy points; no fuel surcharge waiver documented — single-source, verify
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero points; still counts toward milestone Free Night Award thresholds per CardInsider — medium confidence
- Wallet loads · excluded Wallet loads / gift & prepaid card loads / voucher purchases earn zero
- Government / tax · excluded Zero points; counts toward milestones per CardInsider — medium confidence
per HDFC Bank T&C (community-sourced) · rank every card by spend category →
Does your spend count toward the milestones?
not published — and we say which
A different question from the one above — earning points and counting toward a threshold are separate rules, and issuers write them separately.
Not published. HDFC Bank states what the Marriott Bonvoy HDFC Bank earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the milestones . We won't guess it from the earn table or from a sibling card: Axis published three cards' rules on one day and all three lists differed. If you hold this card and have it in writing from the issuer, send us the document and we'll source it.
Lounge access
91 of 793 tracked doors
Opens 91 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 63 airports , via Diners Club — see the full map →
Can you get it?
income, age and the route in
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
per the official HDFC Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the board by what you can get →
The fine print
7 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Fee ₹3,000, NO spend-based annual fee waiver (MITC marks it Not Applicable). Only HDFC card of the four at full 3.5% forex. Eligibility: community.
per the official HDFC Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 23 Sept 2026Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and HiltonAccor and Marriott off the grid since 2 April 2026; Club ITC live; no Cathay, Miles & More or Hilton → Accor live at the punished rates; ITC removed; Cathay, Hilton and Miles & More live; Marriott still gone
Axis's own Travel EDGE terms, re-read 25 September 2026, already show the grid that went live on 23 September. Accor ALL is back, and not at the old Atlas 1:2: EDGE Miles convert at 2:1 (Olympus 1:2) and EDGE Rewards at 5:1, with Magnus for Burgundy at 5:2 and only Burgundy Private still at 5:4. Club ITC is off the table. Three partners are new. Cathay Asia Miles sits on that same punished grid. Hilton Honors is the ordinary one: EDGE Miles 1:2, EDGE Rewards 5:2, Burgundy 5:4. Lufthansa Miles & More is the exception on Atlas, which converts 1:1 there while every other standard airline on that card is 1:2; the EDGE Rewards side of Miles & More is the ordinary 5:2. Marriott stays removed. Qatar Privilege Club was already back. Flying Blue, Air India and Qantas moved into Group A, which is the capped group. The Axis Rewards credit card's Amex network is advertised as joining-fee and annual-fee nil for a limited period; there is no separate Amex variant on this board, so that offer is not modelled as a fee change.
- 1 Sept 2026SmartBuy moves Amazon Pay gift cards to 1X under Insta Deals
- 25 Aug 2026Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite Plus
- 18 Aug 2026The Harley-Davidson Diners Club drops out of HDFC's bank-wide MITC
- 6 Aug 2026HDFC caps Regalia Gold miles transfers at 50,000 points a month
- 28 Jul 2026TAP's own-metal award table stops being a chart — every cell is now a floor
- 25 Jul 2026HDFC switches on 22 transfer partners for BizPower
- 16 Jul 2026Regalia Gold's cash-out rate quietly drops to ₹0.15
Every HDFC Bank change we've dated → 37 events since 2001, 23 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against HDFC Bank's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 4 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Official microsite — ₹3,000 fee and "joining fee or annual fee waiver is not available"; 1 Free Night Award (up to 15,000 points) on joining-fee realisation and on renewal
- official HDFC's 15-May-2026 rewards/fees change notice — the proof this card was NOT touched by the bank-wide ₹150→₹200 accrual cut
- official Marriott launch press release (24-Aug-2023)
- community CardInsider review — the ONLY source we have for this card's 3.5% forex markup