No Indian bank publishes a CIBIL score you must reach to be approved for a credit card. We read the eligibility criteria on all 58 active cards in our catalogue. Not one states a hard cut-off. Five mention a score at all, and every one of those says the same thing — 750 or above, phrased as a preference rather than a rule. What issuers do publish is income and age.
| Question | The honest answer |
|---|---|
| Is there a published minimum CIBIL score? | No. Zero of 58 active cards in our catalogue state one. |
| How many cards mention a score at all? | Five, and all five say 750+, as a preference |
| What do issuers publish instead? | A minimum monthly or annual income, and an age band |
| What score do most approved applicants have? | Not published by any issuer, and anyone quoting a figure is estimating |
| Does a 750 score guarantee approval? | No. Approval is at the issuer's discretion, and income, existing debt and internal policy all count |
| Can you get a card with no score at all? | Yes — secured cards against a fixed deposit are built for exactly this |
What we actually found in the eligibility criteria
This is the part of the question every listicle answers with a confident number and no source. We took the opposite approach: we went through the eligibility block of every active card record on this site, each one traced to the issuer's own page, and counted.
| What the card records contain | Cards |
|---|---|
| A hard, issuer-stated minimum CIBIL score | 0 of 58 |
| Any mention of a credit score in the eligibility criteria | 5 of 58 |
| A published minimum income for salaried applicants | 38 of 58 |
| A published age band | 55 of 58 |
The five that mention a score are worth naming, because they show how soft even the strongest version of this is. OneCard is the clearest: its criteria describe a preferred score of 750 or above for the metal card, and offer a fixed-deposit-backed variant for applicants with a low score or none at all. Axis Atlas and the HDFC Bank IndianOil card carry a "750+ recommended" note in our record. Axis ACE is the most representative of the whole market: Axis asks for a "steady income and good credit score" and never defines either. The IndusInd figure in our data is flagged as third-party rather than issuer-published, and we do not treat it as a cut-off.
Read that list again. The strongest published statement in a catalogue of 58 cards is one fintech's word "preferred".
What issuers publish instead: income
Income is where the real, checkable eligibility bar sits. These are cards whose criteria we have read on the issuer's own page and where the unit — monthly or annual — is stated unambiguously.
| Card | Published minimum for salaried applicants | Annual fee | Criteria verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| HDFC Bank Freedom | ₹12,000 net monthly income | ₹500 | 31 August 2026 |
| ICICI Bank Coral | ₹20,000 monthly (₹2,40,000 a year if self-employed) | ₹500 | 1 September 2026 |
| IDFC FIRST Classic | ₹3,00,000 a year, which is ₹25,000 a month | Nil | 2 September 2026 |
| HDFC Millennia | ₹35,000 net monthly income | ₹1,000 | 31 August 2026 |
| Amex Platinum Travel | ₹6,00,000 a year, about ₹50,000 a month | ₹5,000 | 30 August 2026 |
| Tata Neu Infinity HDFC Bank | ₹1,00,000 net monthly income | ₹1,499 | 4 September 2026 |
The spread is the useful part. The gap between the entry rung and the mid rung is a factor of three in income, and the annual fee only doubles across it. Income, not score, is what moves you between those rows.
Twenty of the 58 active cards publish no income figure at all. On those, the issuer is telling you plainly that the decision is discretionary, and no number anyone quotes you — score or salary — is coming from the bank.
So what does the score actually do?
It does not gate the application. It shapes the decision.
Your CIBIL score is a compressed history of how you have repaid credit, on a 300 to 900 scale. A bank pulling your report sees the score and also everything under it: how many accounts you hold, how close to their limits you run them, how many times you have applied recently, and whether anything has ever gone past due. The score is a summary the bank reads alongside the detail, not a pass mark it checks you against. Our guide on how your CIBIL score works sets out the bands and the five factors that build them.
Three consequences follow, and they are more useful than a number would be.
A strong score widens the shelf, it does not unlock a specific card. The premium cards in the table above are gated by income at ₹1 lakh a month, and an 800 score does not substitute for that.
A weak score is usually a symptom. High utilisation and recent applications drag the score and independently worry an underwriter. Fixing the behaviour fixes both, and the score is the slower of the two to respond.
No score at all is a different problem from a bad one. A first-time applicant has no repayment history to read, which is why secured cards issued against a fixed deposit exist. The deposit is the bank's protection, and the card reports to the bureau like any other, so it builds the history that the unsecured cards want to see.
What we will not tell you, and why
We will not give you a number and call it the cut-off, because no issuer we cover has published one. The figures you see quoted elsewhere — 750, 700, "650 for entry-level" — are inferences from aggregated approval data or from nothing at all, and they are presented as bank policy. On a decision worth ₹5,000 to ₹50,000 a year, that is the wrong kind of confidence.
Two more honest exclusions. We cannot tell you the score at which a specific bank approves a specific card, because that sits inside internal underwriting policy no bank publishes. And we cannot tell you your approval odds, because they depend on your report rather than your score — the same 740 looks very different with one clean card behind it than with four maxed ones.
What we can do is match cards to the criteria that are published. Our card recommender runs off the income and fee data in the table above, and our methodology sets out where every figure on this site comes from.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum CIBIL score for a credit card in India?
There is no published minimum. We checked the eligibility criteria on all 58 active cards in our catalogue and none states a required score. Five mention a score at all, and every one of those describes 750 or above as preferred rather than required. Banks publish income and age criteria instead, and treat the score as one input to a discretionary decision.
Can I get a credit card with a CIBIL score of 650?
Possibly, but not from a rule you can look up, because no issuer publishes a floor at 650 or anywhere else. A 650 score usually reflects high card utilisation, a recent run of applications or a past delay, and each of those independently concerns an underwriter. A secured card against a fixed deposit is the reliable route, and it reports to the bureau like any other card.
Do credit card companies in India check CIBIL or other bureaus?
All four bureaus operate in India: TransUnion CIBIL, Experian, Equifax and CRIF High Mark. Issuers choose which to pull and many pull more than one, so your scores can differ between them. No issuer in our catalogue publishes which bureau it uses for a given card, and none publishes a threshold for any of them.
Does applying for a credit card lower my CIBIL score?
Each application creates a hard enquiry on your report, and several in a short window read as credit hunger and can pull the score down. One application is a small effect that fades. The larger risk is applying repeatedly after rejections, which compounds the damage while the underlying reason for the rejection stays unfixed.
What income do I need for a credit card in India?
It depends entirely on the card. Among the cards whose criteria we have verified on the issuer's own pages, published minimums run from ₹12,000 net monthly income at the entry rung to ₹1,00,000 a month for a mid-premium travel card. Twenty of the 58 active cards we track publish no income figure at all, which means the decision on those is fully discretionary.