Screening mutual funds through an API query

A screener you can call from code

The screener answers questions like "which large flexi cap funds have the best five-year record?" in a browser. The WealthTicker API answers the same question from a script, a dashboard or a scheduled job, with the same engine behind it. Write a query, get back fund objects.

This post covers the query language and runs one screen on data to 2 November 2026.

The query in one line

/funds takes a q parameter: comparisons joined by AND.

sub category = Flexi Cap Fund AND aum > 10000 AND expense ratio < 1

• Numeric fields: aum (in ₹ crore), 1m, 3m, 6m, ytd, 1y cagr, 3y cagr, 5y cagr, 10y cagr, since inception, volatility, sharpe, sortino, max drawdown, alpha, beta, r squared, treynor, info ratio, tracking error, up/down capture, expense ratio, pe ratio, pb ratio, avg market cap, rating and nav.
• Text fields (= or != only): category, sub category, amc, plan, option, name.
• Operators: >, <, >=, <=, =, !=.

There is no OR and no brackets yet. If the parser can't read a clause, the response is a 400 invalid_query that names it, so a typo fails loudly instead of quietly matching nothing. It is the same language as the site's query builder, so you can draft a screen there, check its results by eye, and paste the expression into code.

A worked screen: big, reasonably cheap flexi cap funds

Say you want flexi cap funds with more than ₹10,000 crore of assets and an expense ratio under 1%, Direct Growth plans only, ranked by five-year CAGR:

curl -G -H "X-Api-Key: $WT_KEY" "https://wealthticker.in/api/v1/funds" \
  --data-urlencode "q=sub category = Flexi Cap Fund AND aum > 10000 AND expense ratio < 1" \
  -d plan=Direct -d option=Growth -d sort=ret5y -d dir=desc -d limit=5

On 2 November 2026 data, meta.total was 9. The first five:

The flexi cap sub-category's five-year average, from /categories, was 9.95%, so even the fifth fund on this list sat just under it.

Two things in the table are worth a second look.

Maximum drawdown is measured over each fund's own history. ICICI Prudential's −19.71% looks far milder than HDFC's −41.84%. But the ICICI plan launched in 2021, after the 2020 crash, while HDFC's figure includes it. The response also carries risk.maxDrawdown3y, which compares the funds over the same three years: −13.32% for HDFC and −19.71% for ICICI.

Volatility and beta tell different stories. Parag Parikh's beta against the Nifty 500 TRI was 0.60 and its volatility 9.87%, the lowest of the five. Its five-year CAGR was mid-table. The full fund object carries those risk figures, so a second ranking needs no extra call.

Paging, sorting and the conventions that trip people up

• limit goes up to 500 and page steps through the rest. meta.total tells you how many matched.
• sort takes any of about 30 column ids (ret1y, ret3y, ret5y, sharpe, expenseRatio, aum, maxDrawdown and so on), with dir=asc or desc.
• aum inside q is in crore, but aum in the response is in rupees: HDFC Flexi Cap's 1109250750000 is ₹1,10,925 crore.
• Returns under a year (1m, 3m, 6m, ytd) are absolute; one year and longer are CAGR.
• ETFs and side-pocketed schemes are left out unless you ask for category=ETF or pass codes. ETFs trade at a market price, not at NAV.

Turning a screen into a habit

A query is most useful when it runs on a schedule. A cron job that runs the screen above once a month and diffs the result against last month's shows when a fund enters or drops out: it shrank under ₹10,000 crore, raised its fee, or slipped in the ranking. The best flexi cap fund ranking is that kind of comparison done by hand, and how the best-of-category lists are ranked explains a fuller method than one sort column.

A screen is a shortlist, not a recommendation; past returns say nothing certain about future ones. /funds is on every plan, free included (100 requests a day). The developers page lists every parameter and the full response shape.