Ready-made mutual fund screens: four worked examples

What a ready-made screen is

A screener with dozens of filters is slow to start with. A ready-made screen is a set of filters someone has already written down and named, so you start from a list instead of a blank form. The Mutual Fund Screener page holds 36 of them in nine groups: Popular, Low cost, Risk-adjusted returns, By market cap, By category, Tax & goals, Momentum, Long-term wealth and Contrarian.

Each card in the gallery shows the screen's name, one line on what it looks for, how many funds match right now and the top three. "Show query" reveals the exact filter. The four Popular screens are open to everyone. The other 32 show their rules to anyone, and their results after signing in with a free account.

This post runs four screens on data as of the NAV of Wednesday 15 October 2026.

What a screen page shows

Open a card and the screen gets its own page. Three tiles head it: Funds matching, Best (the leading figure) and Ranked by, the metric the screen sorts on. The metric is picked from the screen's own conditions, so a 5-year screen sorts by 5-year CAGR.

"What this screen looks for" lists each condition in words, with the query beneath. "Top matches" then shows up to 20 funds, with stars, 1Y, 3Y, 5Y, expense ratio and AUM. Three rules apply to every screen: Direct plans only, one row per fund, and ETFs left out. At the bottom, "Open this screen in the builder" copies the query into the query builder for editing.

Example 1: Large & inflation-beating

The rule: AUM above ₹10,000 crore and a 5-year CAGR above 10%. 64 funds matched. The top three by 5-year CAGR:

The screen never says "equity", so two gold fund-of-funds lead it. That is the screen doing exactly what it says. Open it in the builder, add category = equity, and the list drops to 56 with Motilal Oswal Midcap first.

Example 2: Top 5-year equity

The rule: equity funds with a 5-year CAGR above 20%. 2 funds matched: LIC MF Infrastructure Fund at 20.19% and Aditya Birla Sun Life PSU Equity Fund at 20.10%. Both are sectoral or thematic funds. After a weak year for diversified equity, a fixed 20% bar leaves only two theme funds, both tied to infrastructure and public-sector companies, and says nothing about whether that run will repeat. Sectoral and thematic funds explains why that matters.

Example 3: Five-star & cheap

The rule: a 5-star rating and an expense ratio under 1%. 148 funds matched, ranked by rating. Since every one of them has five stars, the order says little. The first five rows include an overnight fund, a credit risk fund, a dynamic bond fund and a large & mid cap fund. A star is earned against a fund's own peers, so this screen spans every category. Adding category = equity in the builder narrows it to 37. The methodology page explains how the stars are built.

Example 4: Buy-and-hold index (free account)

The rule: index funds with AUM above ₹5,000 crore and an expense ratio under 0.3%. 10 funds matched. Ranked by 3-year CAGR, the first five were all target-maturity debt index funds, led by Kotak Nifty SDL Apr 2027 Top 12 Equal Weight Index Fund at 7.52%. Then came four Nifty 50 index funds, from UTI, SBI, ICICI Prudential and HDFC, at 6.14% to 6.20%, and HDFC BSE Sensex Index Fund at 4.82%.

"Index" here is the fund type, not the asset class. A reader looking for a cheap equity index fund needs to add that condition, or skip the first five rows. Target maturity funds explains what the first five are.

How to use a screen well

1. Read the rules before the results. Every surprise above was in the query.
2. Treat the count as information. Two funds tells you the bar is set for a different market; 148 tells you the screen needs a category.
3. Edit, then save. The builder takes AND conditions, and with a free account you can save the edited screen.
4. Open the funds. A screen gives a list; each fund's page gives rolling returns and worst falls.

Two older posts go deeper on single screens: Consistent compounders and Falls less than it rises. For a full worked shortlist from a filter, see shortlisting a fund with the screener.

What a screen does not do

Thresholds are fixed numbers, and markets move around them, so a screen that returned 30 funds last year can return 2 this year. Returns are computed from AMFI NAVs and are history. A fund appearing on a screen means it passed a filter, not that it suits you, and none of this is a recommendation.