SBI Card MILES ELITE
KeepSBI finally built a real miles card — the partner list is the point.
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: 5,000 Travel Credits on ₹1L spend in 60 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 utilities and 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 ₹50,000 a month
At ₹50,000 a month — ₹6,00,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹5,000 gross (earn ₹5,000) against its ₹4,999 fee = ₹0 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.
3 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · the network variants · why it ranks #95
Why #95 Score credits the 15k-TC/month ceiling and transfer breadth; held lower because Travel Credits carry redemption friction and the ₹1.5L fee-waiver bar is steep for the segment.
Best real exit: Accor Live Limitless (ALL) at ₹1.07/pt (2:1 transfer, above house value).
The take
MILES ELITE is SBI Card's first serious answer to Atlas and TravelOne: Travel Credits that move 1:1 into Air India Maharaja, BA Avios, Flying Blue, Aeroplan, Asia Miles and a dozen more — 25 partners in all (17 airlines, 8 hotels, printed in SBI's own rewards T&C), the widest 1:1 airline list on any Indian bank card. The catch is the engine: 1% on general spend is weak, so this card only sings on travel spend (3%) and the ₹12 lakh milestone's 20,000 bonus credits. Pair it with a stronger everyday earner and use it as your transfer hub.
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
₹4,999/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹4,999/yr
The waiver ₹15,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹1,25,000 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹50,000 a month — ₹6,00,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
−₹2,500 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹0 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend
₹5,100 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend
₹50,200 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹70,400 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 the issuer publishes
SBI Card publishes exactly one downgrade, and it is a reversal: "Downgrade may be initiated by a customer only within a period of 90 days post upgrading" — and after it you cannot upgrade again for six months. Outside that window the bank publishes no route down.
SBI Card's own document · read 29 Aug 2026
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
- 25 transfer partners (17 airlines + 8 hotels); 1:1 to Maharaja, Avios, Flying Blue, Aeroplan, Asia Miles
- 6 Travel Credits per ₹200 on travel — 3% effective
- 20,000 bonus credits at ₹12L; fee reversal at ₹15L
- 1.99% forex — SBI's lowest markup; only AURUM, SBI Card ELITE, Tata Neu Infinity SBI and PRIME NRI Secured share it
- 8 complimentary domestic lounge visits/yr (max 2/quarter) plus up to 15 more earned at 1 per ₹1L spend, and 6 international Priority Pass visits (max 2/quarter)
Watch out
- Travel Credits expire in 24 months; redemptions only in 2,000-credit multiples
- Earn capped at 15,000 Travel Credits a statement month (≈₹15L general / ₹5L travel spend) — the excess earns nothing
- Fuel, rent, utilities, insurance, wallets and education earn zero
- 1% base earn — everyday spend belongs elsewhere
- Emirates, Turkish, United, JAL, Saudia, Ethiopian and Air Arabia transfer at a weaker 2:1
- Portal redemption halves the value to ₹0.50/credit
- Priority Pass complimentary for the first 2 years only, and the 6 free visits are outside India only — within India the extra visits are spend-earned vouchers you generate yourself
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 6,500 SBI Travel Credits via Avios (BA / Qatar / Finnair) at 1:1 the play
- Delhi → Mumbai Business 12,500 SBI Travel Credits via Air Canada Aeroplan at 1:1 the play
- Mumbai → Hyderabad First 25,000 SBI Travel Credits via Air Canada Aeroplan at 1:1 the play
What earns, what doesn't
13 sourced rules · 9 pay zero
- Fuel · excluded MCC 5172/5541/5542/5983; 1% surcharge waiver ₹500–₹4k txns, cap ~₹250/cycle — community
- Rent & property management · excluded MCC 6513; SBI Card also levies ₹199+tax processing fee per rent txn — community
- Wallet loads · excluded MCC 6540, 6541
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · excluded MCC 4900/4814/4899/9399 — full exclusion, no partial earn
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹15,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹4,999 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. SBI Card states what the SBI Card MILES ELITE earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹15,00,000 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
26 programs · 25 live
Ratios read card points : partner miles — 2:1 means 2 points become 1 mile. Never the other way round.
every SBI Card route, side by side → · the SBI Travel Credits hub →
Lounge access
689 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: Not a Set A/Set B card; the spend-earned visits arrive as Priority Pass vouchers (15/membership year cap); Priority Pass complimentary for the first 2 years only
Opens 689 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 275 airports , via Mastercard 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.
SBI Card publishes no income cutoff for MILES ELITE, and the application is old-school paper-heavy: expect three months of payslips or an ITR alongside PAN and address proof, with a 750+ score the commonly reported comfort zone. An existing SBI banking or SBI Card relationship is consistently reported to smooth approval — neither is required, but this issuer visibly prefers the devil it knows.
per the official SBI Card 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 ₹4,999 + GST. Card replacement ₹100–₹250. One of only two cards here under 2% forex. SBI does not publicly disclose Miles Elite income cutoffs.
per the official SBI Card 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
- 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
- 17 Aug 2026ALL Accor+ adds a ₹2,500 dining voucher for sign-ups through 7 September
- 6 Aug 2026MaxCoins' full transfer catalogue surfaces — Accor at 2:1 re-prices the coin to ₹1.08
Every SBI Card change we've dated → 19 events since 1998, 13 of them nerfs — worst year 2025.
Verified against SBI Card's own documents on · the net-annual-value engine, at our house ₹/point
Every document behind this page — 11 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — 5,000 welcome TC on ₹1L/60 days, 6 TC per ₹200 travel and 2 per ₹200 otherwise, 20,000 bonus TC at ₹12L, fee reversal at ₹15L
- official MITC — ₹4,999 joining/renewal waived at ₹15L preceding-year spend; foreign-currency fee 1.99%, shared only with AURUM, SBI Card ELITE, Tata Neu Infinity SBI and PRIME NRI Secured
- official SBI product record behind that page — isOnline "yes" (open to new applications), productType MEOM, cardLaunchDate 2024-04-23
- official MILES rewards T&C — the partner grid of record: 17 airlines + 8 hotels, 1:1 except Air Arabia/Emirates/Ethiopian/JAL/Saudia/Turkish/United at 2:1
- official Card e-kit T&C PDF (15,000 TC/month cap; 2,000-TC transfer multiples; PP 24 months)
- official Airport Lounge Access — At ₹4,999 MILES ELITE sits outside it and keeps the full network domestic list — unlike MILES (Set A, 16 rooms) and MILES PRIME (Set B, 30 rooms)
- official MILES-range e-kit T&C (one document for all three MILES cards) — §28: the spend-earned visits
- community CardExpert review
- community CardInsider review (Mastercard + RuPay networks)
- community Magnify — approval reality: no published cutoff, docs list, SBI relationship helps
- official SBI Card's upgrade/downgrade FAQ — the only downgrade the issuer publishes: customer-initiated, inside 90 days of an upgrade, and no upgrade again for six months