HDFC Regalia Gold
KeepQuietly great value for the fee — you may just have outgrown it for miles.
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
Welcome: Complimentary Swiggy One + MMT Black Gold memberships, on ₹1L spend in the first 90 days
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 for itself at ₹14,000 a month
At ₹14,000 a month — ₹1,68,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹2,600 gross (earn ₹2,600) against its ₹2,500 fee = ₹100 net — the first rung at or above ₹0. 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 #2 for RuPay & UPI — 1 of the 23 questions this desk ranks.
One catch on that ₹1.00: Regalia Gold can't reach it. Its points cap out at ₹0.65 (Gold Catalogue) or ₹0.50 (flights/hotels) — a 35–50% haircut vs the HDFC house value. Our 1.6% reward rate already prices that in.
Best real exit: Accor Live Limitless (ALL) at ₹1.07/pt (2:1 transfer, above house value).
The take
For years the Regalia Gold was the sensible mid-premium pick — and by our own numbers it still earns its keep. The ₹2,500 fee waives at ₹4L, and the ₹5,000 milestone vouchers at ₹5L/₹7.5L plus a ₹1,500 Myntra/Nykaa voucher each quarter push net value to roughly ₹20,000 a year at ₹50k/month — top-five on this entire list. It reaches all 22 HDFC transfer partners, which for two years made it the only card outside the Infinia / Diners Black pair that did; HDFC switched the same 22 on for the business-only BizPower on 25 July 2026, so the right claim today is that it is the only PERSONAL card below the super-premiums with the full grid. Either way it is genuinely not miles-dead — it just pays a 2:1 or 3:1 toll where they pay 1:1, and a 50,000-point monthly ceiling now sits on the transfer itself. The May 2026 revision (5 points per ₹200 instead of 4 per ₹150) trimmed the effective rate from ~1.73% to ~1.63%, and the same notice bought back some goodwill with Boarding Edge — any 2 of spa, airport transfer, dining or a room upgrade per quarter, for uploading a boarding pass. If you already hold an Infinia or Diners Black, that is your engine and this becomes a keep-for-the-freebies second card. On its own merits, though, it comfortably earns its keep — which is why calling it a "downgrade" was wrong.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
Here is the fee, the spend that clears it, and everything that has moved under this card since you last decided.
Keep, downgrade or cancel
₹2,500/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹2,500/yr
The waiver ₹4,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹33,333 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹14,000 a month — ₹1,68,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹2,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹14,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹34,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹71,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹1,07,900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹60,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
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
- 15 Sep 2026 Wyndham splits its three flat free-night tiers into four a program these points reach
- 8 Sep 2026 Flying Blue splits award tickets into Light / Standard / Flex — a 25% rise for the same product 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
- Low ₹2,500 fee, waived at ₹4L spend
- Boarding Edge: any 2 of spa / Uber airport transfer / dining / room upgrade every quarter
- 5x on a curated brand list
- ₹5,000 flight vouchers at ₹5L and ₹7.5L, plus ₹1,500 every ₹1.5L quarter
- All 22 HDFC transfer partners — the only personal card below Infinia/Diners Black with the full grid (business-only BizPower joined it in Jul-2026)
Watch out
- Cashing out to your statement is ₹0.15 a point, down from ₹0.20 — HDFC's MITC dates it 1 Nov 2025, though its own page printed ₹0.20 until Jul-2026 and still does in one place
- Jul-2026: 3 domestic lounge visits/quarter now need ₹60k prior-quarter spend
- May 2026 cut lowered the effective earn ~6%
- Outclassed by Infinia/Diners Black for miles chasers — they transfer at 1:1 where this pays 2:1 or 3:1
- Miles transfers are capped at 50,000 reward points a calendar month — a ceiling on the way OUT, added to HDFC's rewards T&C on 6 Aug 2026, so a year's earn cannot be moved to an airline in one go. Two more 50,000/month ceilings sit beside it: SmartBuy flight and hotel redemptions, and cash-back-to-statement
- Points can only cover 70% of a SmartBuy travel booking; the rest is cash
- 5x brand list is narrow
- 2% + GST forex markup abroad, plus a 1.75% DCC markup on INR-billed foreign spends since 15-May-2026
What these points actually fly
You hold this — the numbers below are your own points.
These points feed 23 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 13,000 HDFC Reward Points via Avios (BA / Qatar / Finnair) at 2:1 the play
- Chennai → Colombo Business 28,000 HDFC Reward Points via Avios (BA / Qatar / Finnair) at 2:1 the play
- Mumbai → Delhi First 75,758 HDFC Reward Points via Air Canada Aeroplan at 100:33 the play
What earns, what doesn't
13 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
- Fuel · excluded Zero RP; 1% surcharge waiver (community: ₹400–₹5k txns, cap ~₹500/cycle)
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero RP since 1-Jan-2023; 1% fee from 2nd rent txn/month (1-Jul-2025)
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero RP on wallet loads
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · capped 5 RP/₹200 post-15-May-2026 up to 2,000 RP/month since 1-Sep-2024 — about ₹80,000 of utility spend
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹4,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹2,500 fee. 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 HDFC Regalia Gold earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹4,00,000 bar. 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.
Where the miles go
22 programs
Ratios read card points : partner miles — 2:1 means 2 points become 1 mile. Never the other way round.
every HDFC Bank route, side by side → · the HDFC Reward Points hub →
Lounge access
735 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: ₹60k prior-quarter spend for domestic visits (from 1 Jul 2026)
Opens 735 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 294 airports , via Visa, Priority Pass India, Priority Pass Global — 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 ₹2,500, waiver at ₹4L spend. 2% forex but standard 3.75%/mo APR tier. DCC markup on this card hiked to 1.75% w.e.f. 15-May-2026 (community-reported). Priority Pass domestic visits billed at $27/visit. 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.
- 15 Sept 2026Wyndham splits its three flat free-night tiers into four
- 8 Sept 2026Flying Blue splits award tickets into Light / Standard / Flex — a 25% rise for the same product
- 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
- 21 Aug 2026Club ITC pays up to 50,000 bonus Green Points for spreading 10 nights across all five brands
- 20 Aug 2026IHG Hotels & Resorts becomes a Maharaja Club earning and conversion partner
- 18 Aug 2026Amex India re-rates Virgin Atlantic upward — 2:1 becomes 5:4, the first MR buff in years
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 — 12 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — "5 Reward Points on every Rs. 200 spent"
- official HDFC Bank Key Fact Statement cum MITC, version 4.6 dated August 2026 — clause I(x) prices a Regalia Gold point at 15 paise against the statement balance, with effect from 1 November 2025
- official Product-feature-change notice PDF — Boarding Edge and "Earn 5 Reward Points for every ₹200 spent" both effective 15th May 2026
- official Regalia Gold Rewards Points Program T&C — the 50,000 RP/month cap on MILES TRANSFERS, the four named 5X merchants, and the 1.75% dynamic & static conversion markup "W.e.f 15th May, 2026"
- official Product page (AMP mirror) — ₹4L waiver, 5X brands, milestones, redemption grid
- community CardInsider — May-2026 revision (5 RP/₹200, ₹60k lounge gate w.e.f. 1-Jul-2026, DCC 1.75%)
- community CardExpert — 3 visits/qtr behind ₹60k gate, PP 6/yr unchanged, Boarding Edge
- community CardInsider — RuPay Select variant launch (9-Oct-2025)
- community TechnoFino — issued on both Visa Signature and Mastercard World
- community CardInsider forex table — Regalia Gold 2% forex markup (below the 3.5% norm)
- community pointsmath HDFC transfer grid — the eligibility check for our 22 routes; Only Infinia, Diners Club Black and Regalia Gold have "all 21 transfer partners available"
- official HDFC's BANK-WIDE 15-May-2026 revision notice — its accrual table names "Regalia Gold | 5 | 200", corroborating the card-specific product-feature-change PDF