Best NIFTY 50 Index Fund? Historical Returns Compared

There are more than 25 NIFTY 50 index funds as of January 2026. You will often hear one shortcut: choose the fund with the lowest expense ratio or tracking error.

But does that shortcut identify the fund that actually led?

We will test it with the same rolling-return backtest for every comparable fund. The result can show a historical leader in this group. It cannot name one fund that will always be best.

Step 1: Get the NIFTY 50 index funds

Below are the NIFTY 50 index funds listed in the original January 2026 study. These are Direct Growth plans, except for the HDFC Growth Plan series shown. The three-year return is what one investment held for the previous three years would have earned each year, on average.

Even though these funds track the same index, their three-year returns ranged from 12.82% to 13.78%. That's a difference of almost one percentage point a year.

For this analysis, let's consider only the funds in the study with history going back to 2013. That leaves us with nine funds.

Before looking at their returns, here are two things you will often see on a fund's page:

• Expense ratio: the annual cost of running the fund, taken from the fund's assets.
• Tracking error: how much the gap between the fund's return and the index's return varies over time.

These are the figures recorded in the original January study. They are historical notes, not current quotes.

Nippon India had the lowest expense ratio. Aditya Birla had the lowest tracking error.

Would either one also have given us the highest return? Let's find out.

Which plans are in this comparison?

The saved HDFC series is labelled Growth Plan. The other eight are Direct plans. That means the plan types are not completely uniform. Short fund names in the following tables refer to these exact series.

The first list excludes an unrelated NIFTY 500 entry, an ETF fund of funds and an ELSS tax-saving fund that appeared in the original list. It is a historical list, not a current directory of every available fund. Its history dates are the first dates recorded in the study, not necessarily fund launch dates.

The fee and tracking-error notes do not include a dated primary disclosure for each fund. They help explain the original question; the return comparison below comes from the saved NAV calculations. Current fees and tracking figures need to be checked in the fund's own disclosures.

Step 2: Calculate the rolling returns

Looking at the past three years gives us one result. But what if we had started a month earlier? Or a year earlier?

Rolling returns let us check many starting dates while keeping the investment period the same. For example, a five-year test looks like this:

• Period 1: invest on January 3, 2013, and measure the return five years later.
• Period 2: move the start forward by one available trading day, then measure another five years.
• Period 3: move forward one more trading day and repeat.

Combining all these periods gives us the rolling-return results. Here we invest a single amount at the start, rather than adding money every month through a SIP.

Here's the three-year comparison

The average combines all the returns. The median is the middle result when we line them up from lowest to highest. The lowest and highest show the two extremes.

All four are annualised returns, also called CAGR.

Bandhan had the highest average and median return among these nine funds. Tata had the least negative worst result.

So the fund with the highest average was not the one with the mildest worst outcome.

How often did the three-year investment lose money?

There's another way to look at those results. Instead of just finding the worst return, count how many periods ended below zero.

Bandhan had 20 negative periods, while Tata had 24. Their loss frequencies were 0.81% and 0.97% respectively. These are overlapping historical tests, not separate investors or a prediction of future losses.

Bandhan's average return also came out above Nippon India and Aditya Birla. In this comparison, the lowest fee or tracking-error figure alone did not identify the highest-returning fund.

See the full three-year return distribution

The same results can be grouped by return range. Each number below is the percentage of tested periods that landed in that range.

Fund	Below 0.00%	0.00% to <8.00%	8.00% to <12.00%	12.00% to <20.00%	20.00% and above
HDFC	1.01%	9.76%	28.56%	54.01%	6.66%
Franklin India	1.29%	10.77%	28.68%	52.80%	6.45%
Bandhan	0.81%	9.80%	26.54%	55.91%	6.94%
Nippon India	0.97%	10.57%	27.75%	53.93%	6.78%
Aditya Birla	1.25%	12.75%	28.21%	51.17%	6.62%

5 of 9 rowsShow all 9 rows

Let's continue with five years

Bandhan again had the highest average and median. Tata still had the least negative worst result. UTI had the highest single result.

Notice how close the averages were: 13.60% for Bandhan and 13.52% for UTI. The difference was 0.08 percentage points a year.

What about ten years?

Bandhan led all four return measures in the ten-year comparison. Its average was 13.18%, compared with 13.11% for UTI.

By now, Bandhan looks like the historical leader in this group. But there's one more thing to check: how often did it actually finish ahead of the other funds?

Step 3: Compare the funds head to head

For each starting date shared by all nine funds, let's invest for the same length of time and see which fund ends with the highest return.

Do that again for every shared date. Then count how many times each fund finished first. That's the win rate in this comparison.

Choose a holding period

3 years5 years7 years10 years

Bandhan58.55%

UTI24.51%

Taurus15.72%

HDFC0.81%

Tata0.41%

Franklin India0.00%

Nippon India0.00%

Aditya Birla0.00%

LIC0.00%

First among this group on shared dates. This is not the probability of a future win, or a pairwise win rate against each fund.

Explore all the numbers

Investment	First-place periods	Compared periods	Share finishing first
Bandhan	1,445	2,468	58.55%
UTI	605	2,468	24.51%
Taurus	388	2,468	15.72%
HDFC	20	2,468	0.81%
Tata	10	2,468	0.41%
Franklin India	0	2,468	0.00%
Nippon India	0	2,468	0.00%
Aditya Birla	0	2,468	0.00%
LIC	0	2,468	0.00%

Values retain the original calculation precision until display. Download the evidence (JSON)

Showing 3 years.

Over three years, Bandhan finished first 1,445 times out of 2,468 periods, or 58.55%. UTI came next at 24.51%, followed by Taurus at 15.72%.

When we extend the holding period, Bandhan's share of first-place finishes increases:

At ten years, it finished first in all 744 shared periods. You can change the period above to see the other funds too.

This tells us how often Bandhan led the group. The earlier tables tell us how big the return difference was. A fund can win very often by a small margin.

What did we learn?

Does this mean you should go and start a SIP in Bandhan today? This comparison alone doesn't tell you that.

It tells us which fund led this group in the past. It doesn't tell us which will lead next, or whether a NIFTY 50 investment fits the time you have available.

Data sources and how to read this study

This is the saved January 2026 study, not a new market-data run. The analysis uses fund NAVs via MFAPI, rolling lump-sum summaries and head-to-head results. Download the data used by these tables and charts.

The return tables use each fund's available dates. The head-to-head test uses only dates shared by all nine, which is why the counts differ. Daily rolling periods overlap heavily. They are not independent experiments.

NAV returns already reflect ongoing fund expenses. Investor taxes and exit loads are not included. The selected group omits newer funds and has the HDFC plan-label limitation described above.

The September revision preserves the original three-step explanation, improves the table layout and corrects the old three-year chart to match its source: Bandhan's win rate was 58.55%, not 68.80%.

For more detail, read rolling returns, CAGR and XIRR explained. AMFI publishes definitions of tracking error and tracking difference.