SBI Card PRIME
KeepEight lounge visits and ₹11,000 of vouchers, wrapped around a 0.5% engine.
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: ₹4,000 of its ₹6,300 gross is a voucher or a hotel night, not points — worth that only if you would have bought it anyway.
Welcome: e-Gift voucher worth ₹3,000 (Yatra, Bata/Hush Puppies, Pantaloons, Aditya Birla Fashion, Shoppers Stop)
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 ₹18,000 a month
At ₹18,000 a month — ₹2,16,000 a year — on the everyday mix this card returns ₹5,000 gross (earn ₹1,000 + bonuses ₹4,000) against its ₹2,999 fee = ₹2,000 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 #129
Why #129 The lounge count and the ₹7,000 Yatra voucher are the whole case; a fixed ₹0.25 currency with no transfer partners keeps it out of the ranking's upper half despite a genuinely low ₹3L waiver bar.
The take
PRIME is the card most Indian households mean when they say "my lounge card", and the maths behind it is blunter than the marketing: 2 RP per ₹100 is 0.5%, the points are locked at 4 RP to the rupee, and nothing transfers anywhere. The travel value is the furniture — eight domestic lounge visits, four Priority Pass entries abroad, a ₹3,000 welcome voucher, a ₹1,000 Pizza Hut voucher every quarter you spend ₹50,000, and a ₹7,000 Yatra/Pantaloons voucher at ₹5 lakh. Clear the ₹3 lakh waiver — genuinely low for a ₹2,999 card — and roughly ₹11,000 of paper lands in your inbox for free. That is a perfectly good deal and a perfectly bad points programme, and 3.5% forex means it should never leave the country with you.
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
₹2,999/yr at stake · 5 spend bands
The charge ₹2,999/yr
The waiver ₹3,00,000 of spend in the year before renewal — about ₹25,000 a month — and the renewal fee is not charged.
Break-even ₹18,000 a month — ₹2,16,000 a year — is where this card's value crosses its fee.
At your spend
₹2,400 a year, net of the fee, at ₹3,00,000 of annual spend
₹13,800 a year, net of the fee, at ₹6,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹16,600 a year, net of the fee, at ₹12,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹27,900 a year, net of the fee, at ₹36,00,000 of annual spend — this clears the waiver, so no fee is charged
₹39,200 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
SBI Card 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
- 3 Aug 2026 SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programme issuer-wide
- 31 Mar 2026 SBI kills both Etihad Guest co-brands and force-swaps holders into MILES issuer-wide
- 10 Jan 2026 SBI Card splits domestic lounges into tiers, adds entry fees issuer-wide
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
- 8 domestic lounge visits a year (max 2 per quarter) + 4 Priority Pass visits (max 2 per quarter) — the PP four are complimentary OUTSIDE India only
- ₹7,000 Yatra.com / Pantaloons e-gift voucher at ₹5L annual spend
- ₹1,000 Pizza Hut e-voucher every quarter you spend ₹50,000
- Renewal fee waived at just ₹3L annual spend — a low bar for a ₹2,999 card
- Complimentary 1-year Club ITC Silver tier; 20 RP per ₹100 on birthday spends (capped 2,000 RP/yr) and on utility bills paid by standing instruction (first 3,000 RP)
Watch out
- 3.5% foreign-currency markup — ELITE's 1.99% does not extend down to PRIME
- Reward Points are fixed at 4 RP = ₹1 with zero airline or hotel transfer partners
- 0.5% base earn; the 10X categories still only reach 2.5%
- Fuel spends earn nothing
- Since 10 Jan 2026 SBI has restricted PRIME to a named 30-lounge domestic list in 18 cities, not the full Mastercard/Visa network
- The 4 Priority Pass visits are complimentary outside India only — inside India that card is US$27 + tax a visit, and PRIME earns no extra visits on spend
- The Pizza Hut voucher is quarterly and lapses — it is not a fee offset you can bank
What these points actually fly
No live transfer route takes SBI Reward Points into a programme that publishes an award chart. These points buy catalogue and portal redemptions, not award seats — so this page has no flight to show you, and will not invent one.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
What earns, what doesn't
11 sourced rules · 5 pay zero
2 Reward Points per ₹100 base = 0.5%, 10 per ₹100 on departmental stores and groceries (MCC 5311, 5411), dining (5812, 5813, 5814) and movies (7832). The card's booklet excludes fuel and e-wallets and defers everything else to the Shop-and-Smile register, whose dated card lists name "SBI Card PRIME" by name. Accelerated points cap at 7,500 a calendar month, then revert to base.
- Fuel · excluded Zero points — MCC 5172, 5541, 5542 and 5983
- Rent & property management · excluded Zero points — MCC 6513, discontinued w.e.f. 1 Apr 2024, with "SBI Card PRIME" on SBI's list for that date; MITC adds ₹199 + taxes per rent transaction
- Wallet loads · excluded Zero points — MCC 6540 and 6541, w.e.f. 1 Jul 2020, named in the card's own booklet at §11.3(d)
- Utilities (electricity/water/gas) · capped This card's one utility perk — 20 points per ₹100 (5%) on utility bills paid by standing instruction, but only until 3,000 points have accrued, after which it falls to the 2-point base. SBI's MITC then charges 1% on the whole cycle's utility spend past ₹50,000
Does your spend count toward the fee waiver?
not published — and we say which
₹3,00,000 a year is the bar that waives the ₹2,999 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 PRIME earns and does not earn, but has not published which spend categories count toward the fee waiver and the milestones — the ₹3,00,000 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.
Lounge access
676 of 793 tracked doors
Gate: Set B list w.e.f. 10 Jan 2026 (30 lounges, 18 cities); no spend-earned extra visits on PRIME; inside India the Priority Pass card is US$27+tax a visit
Opens 676 of 793 tracked lounge doors across 269 airports , via Priority Pass Global — see the full map →
Can you get it?
the route in — no cutoffs published
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 white-labels PRIME through EIGHT partner banks — Bank of Maharashtra, Punjab & Sind, UCO, Karur Vysya, Karnataka, City Union, South Indian Bank and Central Bank of India — all branch-sold, with no online application. If your branch sold you a card called "PRIME", this page is your card: SBI's own product records give all eight the same ₹2,999 fee, ₹3 lakh waiver, 8 domestic and 4 Priority Pass visits, ₹3,000 welcome voucher, ₹1,000 Pizza Hut voucher per ₹50,000 quarter and ₹7,000 Yatra voucher at ₹5 lakh. SBI's own lounge page settles it — every partner edition is listed in the same "Set B" entitlement pool as plain PRIME, drawing on one shared 30-lounge list. Different logo, identical card.
SBI Card publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
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
6 of 7 MITC rows published
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Fee ₹2,999 joining and renewal, reversed on just ₹3L preceding-year spend — the lowest waiver bar of SBI's premium trio. Add-on cards free. Utility payments above ₹50,000 a cycle attract a 1% fee. Payment dishonour 2%, min ₹500.
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.
- 3 Aug 2026SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programmeSBI Card Travel Credits transferred 1:1 into Etihad Guest, one of eighteen airline partners in §3 of the MILES rewards T&C. At the ₹1/partner-mile anchor that was a full-value exit, and it was the only route left after the two Etihad Guest SBI co-brands were retired. → No Etihad route at all. The MILES rewards T&C now lists seventeen airline partners and Etihad is not one of them — the word does not appear anywhere in the seven-page document. Every other SBI partner survives at the same ratio.
SBI Card's own MILES rewards T&C, re-fetched on 22 August 2026 and carrying a 3 August 2026 ModDate inside the PDF, has one fewer airline in it than the edition this desk read on 2 August. The deletion is provable from the numbering rather than from absence alone: the table's first seven rows are unchanged (Air Canada 3, Air France-KLM 4, Air India 5, British Airways 6, Cathay 7), and every row from position eight onward has moved up exactly one — Thai from 14 to 13, Qantas from 17 to 16. Position eight was Etihad Airways / Etihad Guest / 1:1. All twenty-four other partners we carry, airline and hotel, are still there at the same ratios, so this is Etihad being dropped and not SBI narrowing transfers. The timing matters more than the ratio. SBI phased out the Etihad Guest SBI and Etihad Guest SBI Premier cards from December 2025 and reissued holders onto MILES products, and the transfer route was what made that migration survivable — a Premier holder who had spent six years earning Etihad miles could keep feeding the same account through Travel Credits. That is now closed, and India's remaining pipes into Etihad Guest run through BOBCARD's Etihad co-brands, not through SBI. If you hold SBI Travel Credits earmarked for an Abu Dhabi business seat, they are Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Avios or Maharaja points now. ON THE DATE: SBI publishes no notice and no cut-off. The date here is the day the desk read the change out of SBI's own document; the PDF's internal ModDate puts the edition at 3 August 2026, which is the earliest day we can prove, not an announcement.
- 1 Jul 2026PhonePe SBI SELECT BLACK stops paying on UPI outside PhonePe
- 1 Jul 2026PhonePe SBI PURPLE stops paying on UPI outside PhonePe
- 31 Mar 2026SBI kills both Etihad Guest co-brands and force-swaps holders into MILES
- 9 Mar 2026Paytm SBI Card stops earning on school and education spends
- 9 Mar 2026Paytm SBI Card SELECT stops earning on school and education spends
- 10 Jan 2026SBI Card splits domestic lounges into tiers, adds entry fees
- 1 Dec 2025SBI discontinues the OLA Money card and moves holders onto a house card
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 — 9 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Product page — ₹3,000 welcome e-gift voucher, 10 RP per ₹100 on dining/departmental stores/movies/grocery and 2 per ₹100 otherwise (fuel excluded)
- official SBI product record behind that page — isOnline "yes" (open to new applications), productType PRME, cardLaunchDate 2024-06-01
- official Bank of Maharashtra SBI Card PRIME — one of seven partner-bank editions carrying identical fee, lounge and earn
- official MITC — ₹2,999 joining/renewal, waived at ₹3L preceding-year spend; 3.5% foreign-currency fee
- official Key Fact Statement — fee and waiver table
- official Airport Lounge Access — "SBI Card PRIME" and "SBI Card PRIME Pro" are both listed under "Set B: Eligible Credit Cards" (the ₹2,999 tier)
- community CardInsider review
- official Allahabad Bank SBI Card PRIME product page (archived 19-Aug-2019) — ₹2,999 joining and renewal, the same ₹3,000 welcome voucher, Pizza Hut quarterly voucher and 8 + 4 lounge visits as this card
- official SBI Card PRIME American Express edition (archived 24-Nov-2020) — the same ₹2,999 fee, ₹3,000 welcome voucher and 8 + 4 lounge visits as the Visa and Mastercard issues