Mutual fund category returns by API, for newsletters

One call, every category

Most market newsletters carry a regular table: how did large caps, mid caps, small caps and the rest do this month? Building it by hand means opening dozens of fund pages or keeping a spreadsheet of funds per category up to date.

The WealthTicker API has an endpoint for exactly this. /categories returns every SEBI sub-category in one response, with its fund count, average returns over six periods and average expense ratio. This post builds a newsletter table from it, using data to 2 November 2026.

The request

curl -s -H "X-Api-Key: $WT_KEY" https://wealthticker.in/api/v1/categories

The response has 57 rows plus meta.navDate, the NAV date the figures run to. Each row looks like this:

{ "category": "Equity", "subCategory": "Small Cap Fund", "fundCount": 36,
  "avgRet1m": …, "avgRet3m": …, "avgRet6m": …, "avgRet1y": 4.46,
  "avgRet3y": 13.91, "avgRet5y": 14.21, "avgExpenseRatio": 0.96,
  "n1y": 31, "n3y": …, "n5y": …, "nTer": … }

The n fields are the part people skip and shouldn't. n1y is how many of the sub-category's funds have a one-year figure. A sub-category of mostly new funds can have a large fundCount and a small n5y. When too few funds carry a period, its average is null, never a figure based on two funds.

The equity table, with jq

To rank the equity sub-categories by one-year return:

curl -s -H "X-Api-Key: $WT_KEY" https://wealthticker.in/api/v1/categories | jq -r '
  .data | map(select(.category == "Equity" and .avgRet1y != null))
  | sort_by(-.avgRet1y) | .[]
  | [.subCategory, .avgRet1y, .avgRet3y, .avgRet5y, .avgExpenseRatio] | @tsv'

On 2 November 2026 that produced:

Sub-category	1Y	3Y CAGR	5Y CAGR	Avg expense
Small Cap Fund	4.46%	13.91%	14.21%	0.96%
Multi Cap Fund	0.50%	14.08%	12.36%	1.14%
Sectoral/ Thematic	0.43%	14.07%	11.71%	1.27%
Mid Cap Fund	0.04%	15.41%	13.42%	1.10%
Focused Fund	−1.20%	12.58%	10.14%	1.15%
Flexi Cap Fund	−1.83%	12.72%	9.95%	1.18%
Large & Mid Cap Fund	−2.20%	13.55%	11.22%	1.18%
Value Fund	−3.32%	12.33%	11.14%	1.27%
Dividend Yield Fund	−4.07%	12.33%	11.93%	1.30%
ELSS	−4.15%	11.15%	10.24%	1.14%
Large Cap Fund	−4.61%	10.63%	8.17%	1.15%

Contra funds dropped out: five schemes, only three with a full year, so no average.

What the table says

A newsletter needs a sentence or two, not just the grid. This one supports a few:

The year ran backwards by size. Small cap funds averaged 4.46% and large cap funds −4.61%, a gap of about nine points. Mid caps sat in between at roughly zero.
Three years tells a different story from one. Every equity sub-category averaged between 10.63% and 15.41% a year over three years. The weak year is a dent in a decent run, not the whole picture.
Large caps trailed on every horizon shown. They were last over one, three and five years (8.17% a year over five). In large caps, an active fund also has to beat a cheap index fund tracking the same stocks.

Sector and thematic funds are averaged together: 232 funds with a one-year figure, from defence to banking to consumption. That average says little about any one theme. For a theme-by-theme view, sectoral and thematic funds over the year to October goes further.

Make it a monthly job

The figures recompute after every evening's NAV refresh, so a script that runs on the first working day of each month and saves the response as a dated JSON file builds a history of category returns on its own. Diff this month against last month to see which sub-categories moved most. The site's own category pages show the same averages, so a reader who clicks through sees the numbers your newsletter printed.

/categories is on every plan, free included. That is 100 requests a day, more than a monthly table needs. Use in your own publication is allowed with attribution. The averages are the site's own computation over AMFI NAVs, and the methodology page explains how. The developers page has the full field list.

Frequently asked questions

Is there an API for mutual fund category average returns in India?

The WealthTicker API's /categories endpoint returns every SEBI sub-category with its fund count and average 1-month to 5-year returns and expense ratio, computed over Direct Growth plans. It is on every plan, including the free one, and one call covers all 57 sub-categories.

How are category average returns calculated?

Each sub-category's figure is a simple average over its Direct Growth plans with a current NAV, one fund per scheme, with side-pocketed portfolios excluded. Each period's average is shown only when enough funds have a figure for that period, so a sub-category of new funds can show a 1-year average and no 5-year one.

Which equity fund category did best over the year to November 2026?

Small cap funds, with an average 1-year return of 4.46% to 2 November 2026 across 31 funds with a full year. Large cap funds were last among the diversified categories at −4.61%. Over three years, mid cap funds led at 15.41% a year.

This is commentary on published data, not investment advice. WealthTicker is not a SEBI-registered adviser or distributor. Figures are WealthTicker’s own calculations from public data — AMFI’s fund NAVs and disclosures, NSE’s index and FII/DII files, and the fund houses’ monthly portfolios (how we calculate). They are as of the dates stated and can be revised by their source.

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