How We Rank: The Kredit Market Position

It is a public benchmarking dataset and relative ranking of eligible UAE credit cards under one disclosed comparison model. It helps readers inspect how cards sit against the current market across seven pillars. It is not a star rating, review score, personal recommendation, or claim that the first-ranked card is best for everyone.

The machine-readable dataset contains the current eligible-card count, inclusion and exclusion totals, last-updated date, methodology notes, each card's market rank and overall percentile, and all seven pillar percentiles with their calculation reasons. It is the same snapshot used by the public ranking table, not a separate marketing list.

Use the name “Kredit Market Position,” link to the JSON dataset, include its last-updated or access date, and indicate if you made changes. Kredit's compilation and generated ranking fields are reusable under CC BY 4.0, subject to the stated third-party rights boundary. Freshness is identified by dateModified (2026-08-18).

No. Every eligible card is processed through the same public issuer inputs and disclosed Kredit assumptions. A bank's commercial relationship with Kredit has no effect on the inputs, pillar math, or rank.

Seven pillars — net value, rewards value, cost & fees, perks & benefits, flexibility, accessibility, and welcome bonus — are each converted to a mid-rank percentile, rounded to one decimal, among eligible cards. Lower-is-better metrics are inverted so higher is always stronger. Kredit then combines those percentiles using the weights published above; that weighted index determines rank, overall percentile, and the conservative population-tail band shown as Top N% or Bottom N%, whichever tail is closer. Rewards value weighs most, with net value next; accessibility and the one-time welcome bonus weigh least.

No. It reports where a card sits in the published dataset under Kredit's disclosed comparison model. It does not say a card is excellent, poor, or close to perfect, and it is not based on customer reviews. Position can change when another eligible card or its data changes even if this card does not.

No. The ranking applies the same disclosed formula to every eligible card, while scaling assumed spend to each card's salary tier. It does not know your actual spending, preferred airlines or hotels, existing cards, eligibility, or how much you value a perk. Use it as market context; use Kredit's personalised tools or your own calculations for a card choice.

Every card is evaluated at a spend level scaled to its own minimum salary requirement — 60% of it, floored at AED 5,000/month (the site's standard baseline) so entry-level cards are unaffected. A flat spend assumption would undervalue premium-card tiers, caps, and fee waivers. Within that total, spend follows Kredit's realistic calculator proportions, with double weight for categories where that card pays above its own base rate. Each category is capped at 3x its typical monthly amount; excess flows into general spending rather than inflating niche categories unrealistically.

The total annual cost of owning and spending on it — not just the sticker fee. The cost pillar uses the annual fee actually due at the tier-scaled assumed spend, crediting disclosed spend waivers or a standard opt-in. It then applies the card's FX fee to AED 8,000 of assumed annual non-AED spend. When an otherwise-eligible card has no issuer FX row, it uses the disclosed neutral 2.5% proxy; 23 currently use that proxy.

No. Percentiles depend on relative order and exact ties rather than distance across a min-max range. An extreme fee places that card at the bottom of the cost percentile, but the size of the gap does not compress everyone else's position.

No. A perk gated behind a minimum monthly spend counts at 75% of its value once unlocked, while a perk with no spend requirement — included with the card regardless of usage — counts in full. A gated perk's value still depends on the cardholder actually sustaining that spend every month, which the assumed-spend tier estimates but doesn't guarantee, so it's disclosed as a smaller, more conditional number rather than treated identically to a guaranteed perk.

Usage frequency scales with this card's own assumed spend, the same way rewards value and cost & fees do. A catalogue-wide flat baseline (a few lounge visits a year, say) undervalues an ultra-premium travel card whose entire proposition is unlimited lounge access for a frequent-traveller cardholder — so usage scales up with the card's tier, capped at a realistic "engaged cardholder" ceiling per perk so it never assumes unrealistic use no matter how high the tier goes.

No, when the perk is tied to a specific hotel chain (e.g. a free Marriott night). Kredit Market Position doesn't know any individual's hotel preference, so a chain-tagged free night is valued at a conservative ~30% of its rack rate — the same default the site's personalised card-match tool uses for a guest who hasn't stated a hotel preference — rather than assuming everyone is a loyalist of that specific chain.

Points and miles are converted to their AED-equivalent value using each card's default redemption method and AED-per-unit conversion rate — never treated as face value. A big-sounding points balance therefore cannot inflate market position if it converts to little real value.

Market position combines all seven relative pillars. A strong reward rate can be offset by higher ownership cost, weaker recurring perks, narrower coverage, or a higher salary requirement.

Yes, intentionally. Net value is the integrated annual outcome: rewards plus recurring perks minus the annual fee and estimated FX cost. Rewards value, perks, and cost are also retained as separate pillars so readers can distinguish how a card produces that outcome. The published weights are therefore model weights, not a claim that the seven concepts are statistically independent.

No. They are disclosed editorial modelling assumptions for a consistent target-tier scenario: monthly spend is 60% of the card's minimum salary with an AED 5,000 floor, bonus categories receive extra allocation subject to caps, and perk use scales within realistic ceilings. They make unlike products comparable, but they are not a prediction of any individual cardholder's behaviour.

Flexibility counts every everyday spend category a card earns a meaningful reward in, including through specific merchant deals — a card that only rewards three named merchants still covers however many categories those merchants fall under (e.g. a fashion retailer and a laundry service both count under "retail"), rather than reading as covering nothing just because it has no rule naming a category directly.

No. Flexibility measures breadth of coverage, and a category only counts if the card earns a meaningful rate there — at least 1.5% effective, or at least the card's own headline everyday rate if the whole card is a lower flat rate. So a bank's deliberately reduced rate on categories like utilities, government, or real estate doesn't count, and neither does a specialty card's token flat rate everywhere outside its real bonus categories. An honest "earn X% on everything" card is unaffected — it keeps full breadth, and its rate quality is judged separately under Rewards value — and any monthly-selectable bonus categories count up to the number you can pick.

No. Market position compares published card economics and accessibility. It has no connection to a bank's underwriting and does not predict approval, credit limits, or offered terms.

The Rewards Rate Index and Fee Index publish one metric at a time. Kredit Market Position combines seven catalogue percentiles into one relative ordering, while retaining every pillar so readers can inspect why cards differ.

The full market position recomputes whenever eligible catalogue data changes. Because it is relative, one card's update can move other cards' ranks even if their own terms did not change. The current snapshot reflects catalogue data last modified 2026-08-18.

Debit, stored-value, prepaid, and BNPL products (5 currently) are excluded because this is a credit-card ranking. Cards with no reward-calculation rules (12), undisclosed/invitation-only pricing (0), an invitation-only salary requirement (1), or an "Infinite Privilege"-tier tag (1) are also excluded rather than partially ranked. The one explicit imputation is a 2.5% FX proxy when an otherwise-eligible card has no issuer FX row; the dataset publishes the affected count.