The cheapest active equity funds, category by category

The number

Across 529 active equity funds, the median direct plan charged 1.07% a year. The cheapest tenth charged 0.77% or less, and the cheapest of all, SBI Equity Minimum Variance Fund, 0.51%.

These are the direct-plan total expense ratios the fund houses filed with AMFI, most of them (430 of 529) on 5 or 6 October 2026 and the rest between 29 September and 1 October. The funds are open-ended, at least a year old and in SEBI's equity categories, including sectoral and thematic funds; index funds and ETFs are not included. Our post on the most expensive equity funds covered the other end of the list last week. This post counts open-ended funds only, since a closed-ended fund cannot be bought.

Category by category

Contra funds (3) are left out for size; they charged between 0.76% and 0.87%.

Three things stand out:

• Small cap funds are the cheapest group. Their median of 0.84% is the lowest of any category, and even the dearest small cap fund charges 1.50%, less than the dearest fund in any other large category.
• The gap inside a category is wider than the gap between them. Across the table, medians run from 0.84% to 1.20%. Within large cap funds, the cheapest direct plan costs 0.63% and the dearest 2.51%, a difference of 1.88 points a year between funds that must keep most of their money in the same hundred companies.
• Dividend yield and value funds are the dearest diversified categories, at medians of 1.20% and 1.18%. The cheapest value fund still charges 0.86%.

The ten cheapest

Five of the ten are small cap funds. One fund house turns up again and again. Of the 45 funds charging 0.76% or less, eight are Kotak's: its mid cap, small cap, flexi cap, large & mid cap, multi cap, focused and large cap funds, and its Pioneer thematic fund. Canara Robeco and Mirae Asset have five each.

SBI Equity Minimum Variance is unusual in another way. Its regular plan costs 0.85%, only 0.34 points more than its direct plan; for Tata Small Cap the gap is 1.17 points.

The order has shifted slightly since our end-September figures. Tata Small Cap, then the cheapest at 0.51%, filed 0.52%, and SBI Equity Minimum Variance moved from 0.53% to 0.51%. At the other end, Motilal Oswal Active Momentum, the dearest at 3.20% then, filed 3.05%. Expense ratios change often, which is why each figure here carries a date.

Bigger funds charge less

SEBI's limits on expense ratios fall in steps as a fund's assets grow, and the medians follow. Every one of the 49 funds above ₹20,000 crore charged 1.24% or less on its direct plan. Small cap funds are mostly large ones: 20 of the 31 have more than ₹5,000 crore, which is part of why they are cheap as a group. Seven funds without an average-asset figure are left out of this table.

What this does not tell you

It is one filing. Funds revise their expense ratios through the month, often as assets rise or fall.

It is more than the fund house's fee. Since SEBI's revised framework took effect on 1 April 2026, the figure filed with AMFI is the total: the fund house's base expense ratio plus brokerage, transaction costs and statutory levies such as GST and STT. A fund that trades a lot pays more of the last three, so part of a higher ratio is trading rather than fee. The guide to what a fund really costs breaks the three parts down.

Cheap is not the same as good. A 0.5-point fee difference is certain; a difference in returns is not, and can be larger in either direction. None of this is a recommendation to buy or sell any fund.

Where to go from here

The screener can filter any category by expense ratio, and the impact of 1% calculator shows what a fee gap adds up to over time. For what the regular plan of each category costs on top, see the direct vs regular expense gap; for index funds, which cost far less, see Nifty 50 index funds ranked by cost.