FD Interest Rates Today

What is Fixed Deposit & How It Works

A fixed deposit, or FD, is one of the simplest ways to earn interest in India: you hand a bank a lump sum for a fixed period, the bank pays you a fixed interest rate for keeping it, and you get the full amount back plus interest when the term ends. If you put ₹1 lakh into a one-year FD at 7 percent, you get back ₹1,07,000 at maturity, a straightforward ₹7,000 in interest with no guesswork involved. The rate is locked in the day you open the FD, so it doesn't move with the market the way a stock or mutual fund would, which is exactly why FDs are so widely used by anyone who wants a predictable, no-surprises return. Deposits are also insured by DICGC, a government-backed insurer, up to ₹5 lakh per depositor per bank, covering both the principal and accrued interest.

FD Rates in India: Who Sets Them & Why They Change

No single body fixes FD rates the way, say, a government bond auction does; each bank sets its own rate, influenced heavily by the Reserve Bank of India's repo rate, the rate at which the RBI lends to banks. When the RBI raises the repo rate, banks typically raise FD rates to attract more deposits, and when it cuts the repo rate, FD rates tend to drift down over the following months. Because every bank sets its own number, the same tenure can carry noticeably different rates across banks, small finance banks in particular often pay more than large public or private banks to compete for deposits, which is the whole reason a comparison table is useful rather than just walking into whichever bank branch is nearest. Rates generally rise with tenure too, though not in a straight line, since banks balance today's rate against their own need for that money over one, three or five years. Senior citizens (60 and above) get an extra 0.25 to 0.75 percent over the general rate at most banks, on the same tenure, as a standard concession.

How to Choose Best FD: Tenure, Rate, Ladder

A "ladder" means splitting one lump sum across several FDs with staggered maturities instead of locking it all into one tenure, say ₹1 lakh each into a 1-year, a 2-year and a 3-year FD rather than ₹3 lakh into a single 3-year FD. It gives some money back to you every year for emergencies or reinvestment, rather than everything locked until one distant date, and if rates are rising, each maturing FD gets reinvested at whatever the new, hopefully higher, rate is at the time. The tradeoff is real, though: if rates fall instead, the reinvested portion earns less than it would have locking in a longer tenure today, so a ladder trades away some certainty for flexibility.

Best Time to Lock FD Rates

There's no way to perfectly time FD rates, same as there's no way to time the stock market, but the general logic is simple: if the RBI is signalling further rate hikes, waiting a little before locking in a long tenure can capture a higher rate later; if the RBI has been cutting or is expected to pause, locking in today's rate for a longer tenure protects you from a lower rate down the road. Whatever the current cycle, this page's comparison table shows today's actual rates across every tracked bank, updated regularly, which is a more reliable guide than trying to predict where rates are headed. For most savers, the practical approach is simpler than timing anything: lock a tenure that matches when you'll actually need the money, and compare a handful of banks before choosing rather than defaulting to the first one.

🏆 Best FD Rates by Tenure Today

1 Year - Below 2 Years

2 Years - Below 3 Years

3 Years - Below 5 Years

🪜 FD Ladder Example (₹300,000)

Splitting ₹100,000 into each of three tenures, at today's actual top rate for that tenure, compounded annually for the bucket's shorter edge in years (illustrative, not a guaranteed outcome, actual bank compounding conventions vary):