How to compare two mutual funds properly

Most comparisons stop at the return, and the return is the least reliable thing on the page. Two funds can show the same five-year CAGR and have been completely different to live with: one drifted down 12% at its worst, the other fell 45% and took three years to get back. A fair comparison puts four things side by side — what it returned, how much it moved to get there, how deep the worst fall was, and what it actually holds.

1. Compare like with like

A return only means something against a fund of the same SEBI category, the same plan and the same option. Putting a small-cap fund next to a liquid fund tells you nothing except that equity and cash are different. Start from the category the fund belongs to, and compare inside it.

2. Direct or Regular — the same fund at two prices

Every scheme exists as a Direct plan and a Regular plan. They hold an identical portfolio, run by the same manager, on the same day. The Regular plan pays a distributor commission out of the fund, inside its expense ratio — commonly 0.5% to 1.2% a year more. That is charged on your whole balance, every year, so it compounds: on ₹1,00,000 held for ten years a gap of 1.5 percentage points is roughly ₹1.4 lakh of ending value. If you invest without an intermediary, Direct is the same fund without the commission.

3. Growth or IDCW

A Growth option keeps everything inside the NAV. An IDCW option pays part of it out and the NAV drops by exactly what it paid — that is your own money returned, taxed at your slab rate, not extra return. It also means a return computed from NAV alone understates an IDCW scheme, which is why we show a dash rather than a wrong number for those.

4. Read the risk columns, not just the return

Volatility is how much the NAV moved, annualised. Sharpe is return above the risk-free rate per unit of that movement — quoted here against 6.5%, and a Sharpe without its risk-free rate is not checkable. Sortino is the same idea counting only the falls. Maximum drawdown is the deepest peak-to-trough fall, and it is the number that decides whether somebody actually stays invested. A fund whose worst year was −45% is a different proposition from one whose worst was −8%, even when the averages match.

5. A scheme code beats a scheme name

Fund names get renamed, merged and reused; the AMFI scheme code does not. Every fund in this tool carries its code, and you can search by it directly — paste the number from your statement or your broker app and you will land on exactly the plan and option you hold, not a similarly named one.

What this tool shows you

Pick up to six schemes and it puts them in one table on live AMFI NAV: NAV and its date, 1, 3, 5 and 10-year returns, volatility, Sharpe, Sortino, maximum drawdown, rolling returns, and a SIP projection. Nothing is estimated — every figure is arithmetic on the NAV history the fund actually published. You can compare a Direct plan against its own Regular twin to see the commission gap in rupees, or two different funds in the same category to see which was steadier rather than merely higher.

Where to go next

Comparing is one step. To see a single fund in full — its holdings, market-cap and sector allocation, drawdown curve and every one-year period it has lived through — open its own page from the fund search. To see everything in one category with returns, open a category page. To see one fund house's entire line-up, open its fund house page. To filter across the whole market, use the screener.