Mid Cap Mutual Funds: Every Direct Plan, Ranked by Return

What SEBI counts as a mid cap, and why that list moves twice a year

The rule is arithmetic, not judgement. AMFI ranks every listed company by full market capitalisation, publishes the list in January and July on a six-month average, and the new classification takes effect from the start of the following month, with schemes given a window to move their portfolios onto it. No view about any business enters the calculation, which is exactly why the boundary can move under a fund without anybody deciding anything.

And it does move. In AMFI's July 2026 revision, effective from 1 August, the cut-off to enter the mid cap band stood at roughly 33,500 crore rupees of market capitalisation, and the line separating mid cap from large cap sat above one lakh crore - both far higher than they were three years earlier. In that same revision eight companies graduated out of the mid cap band into large cap and three came the other way. BSE and BHEL went up; Indian Hotels came down.

Sit with the consequence, because it is specific to this category and it shapes every number in the table. A mid cap fund does not own a fixed set of businesses. When a holding does well enough for long enough, it is promoted out of the band the fund is required to hold and usually has to be trimmed or sold, whatever the manager thinks of it. When a large cap falls hard, it arrives in the band as a fresh mid cap. The mandate structurally forces the category to hand off its winners and inherit other people's disappointments. That is one honest reason mid cap returns arrive in lumps rather than in a smooth line, and it is not a defect in any particular scheme.

The 35% the table cannot see

Sixty-five per cent is a floor, not a description. The remaining third of a mid cap fund's portfolio is genuinely unconstrained - it can sit in large caps, in smaller companies, in cash, or in a mix that changes every quarter. Two schemes can both be fully compliant with the same SEBI category and be running materially different risk.

Picture the two extremes as schemes rather than as people. One parks the free third in Nifty 50 names and treasury bills as ballast, on the view that the mid cap band is expensive. Another spends it on companies below the band - the territory small cap funds occupy by mandate, since they hold at least 65% in companies ranked 251st onwards. In a strong year for smaller companies the second scheme shows up near the top of the 5-year column and looks like superior stock picking. In a broad drawdown it behaves like something much closer to a small cap fund while still sitting on this page under a mid cap label. Neither is the same animal as flexi cap funds, whose mandate is at least 65% in equity, manager free across market caps, and which never has to defend a band at all.

So when you look at the spread between the fund at the top of the 5-year column and the fund at the bottom, do not read all of it as skill. A meaningful slice of that gap is a different asset mix wearing the same category name. The place to check is the scheme's monthly portfolio disclosure and the market-cap split in its factsheet. Find out what a fund did with its free third before crediting the manager with the number.

Why the 3-year and 5-year columns flatter midcaps right now

A trailing CAGR is a line drawn between two dates. Change either date and the number changes, sometimes a lot, while nothing about the fund has changed at all. For mid caps in 2026 the dates happen to be kind. A five-year column measured now opens in the middle of 2021; a three-year column opens in the middle of 2023. The five-year window contains the 2023-24 leg whole and the three-year window contains most of it. Neither contains a prolonged multi-year mid cap bear market - the drawdowns inside them, in 2022 and again from late 2024, were both recovered before the window closed.

Split the return into its two sources and the problem becomes concrete. Earnings growth is one source; a rising multiple on those earnings is the other. Through 2023 and into early 2025 a large share of the mid cap move came from the multiple rather than from earnings, and through 2025 that reversed - prices went sideways while earnings caught up and the multiple compressed. Both halves of that sequence are inside the columns below as past events.

The table cannot separate the two sources for you. A fund whose 5-year number came mostly from re-rating and a fund whose 5-year number came mostly from earnings compounding will sit next to each other with similar figures and very different compositions behind an identical-looking number.

There is a cheap test you can run right on this page. Sort by 5-year and note the top five. Now sort by 1-year. The order will break, often badly. That reshuffle is not evidence that some managers suddenly got worse - it is evidence of how much of any ranking here is a property of the window rather than a property of the fund. A ranking that only holds in the window that flatters it is telling you about the window.

One quiet distortion on top of that: the funds you see are the ones that are still classified as mid cap schemes. Schemes merged away or repositioned into another category after a bad run are not here. Nobody is hiding them; they simply stopped being mid cap funds. The effect is that any category-wide read of past returns is mildly generous by construction.

Size is a real constraint in this category, and it is actually measurable

At any moment there are exactly 150 companies in the mid cap band. That is the entire fishing pond, and it does not grow when money arrives. The largest mid cap schemes in India now run assets in the tens of thousands of crores, with SIP instalments landing every month whether or not the manager sees anything worth buying that week.

Work through one position. A fund running 40,000 crore rupees that wants a 3% weight in a single company is committing 1,200 crore to a business whose entire market capitalisation may be well under a lakh crore. Building that quietly takes days of patient accumulation. Unwinding it in a hurry, when everyone else wants out of the same 150 names on the same afternoon, takes longer and costs more.

This is not a hypothetical worry in India - it is why the regulator intervened. Since March 2024 every AMC has been required to publish a monthly stress test for its mid cap and small cap schemes, within 15 days of each month-end and based on that month-end's portfolio, stating how many days the fund would need to liquidate 25% and 50% of its holdings under stressed conditions. That liquidation-days figure says nothing about whether a fund will out-perform its peers. It says what the fund would face if a lot of unitholders wanted their money at once. Two schemes with nearly identical 5-year returns can sit at opposite ends of it, and it is not in the table below.

What to weigh when the columns disagree with each other

Prefer rolling returns to point-to-point returns, because a single mid cap window can be carried by one eighteen-month leg. Rolling five-year returns computed from many starting dates show whether a fund was consistently decent or whether one spectacular stretch is doing all the work in the figure you are looking at. Most factsheets publish rolling data; the table here cannot. Alongside that, look at behaviour in the fall rather than only the rise - how a scheme handled the correction from late 2024 through 2025 is more informative than a CAGR ending on today's NAV, because in a good year everything in this category rises together and divergence only shows up in drawdowns.

Check who actually earned the number, and check what the fund was holding while it earned it. A five-year return credited to a scheme whose manager took charge eighteen months ago is somebody else's record with a new name attached, and manager tenure takes two minutes to verify. Some mid cap managers hold heavy cash when they judge the band expensive, which helps in a fall and hurts badly in a rally; a 35-stock portfolio and a 90-stock portfolio carry the same category label and behave nothing alike. All of that lands in the return column with no explanation attached.

Finally, ask what a fund did against its own mid cap index rather than against a bank deposit. Every scheme here holds at least 65% of the same 150 companies, so the common factor is enormous and most of the category moves together. If a fund is not beating the mid cap index over long windows, you are paying active fees for index-like behaviour - the same question any low-cost index fund puts to any active equity scheme.

Costs, plans, and what this table quietly leaves out

Every scheme listed here is a direct plan, growth option. The regular plan of the same scheme has a different NAV and a lower return for identical holdings, because distributor commission is deducted inside the fund. If you are comparing what you see here against a number a distributor showed you, make sure it is the same plan - the difference between direct and regular plans compounds into a large gap over a decade.

Two costs worth checking on any scheme here are its expense ratio and exit load, which in this category usually run higher than on large cap or index funds, with a load applied on redemptions inside the first year. Cost is predictable in a way returns are not, but it is usually a smaller number than the spread you can see between the top and the bottom of the 5-year column. Treat it as a tiebreaker, not the decision.

If you invest through an SIP, none of these columns describe your experience. A point-to-point CAGR assumes one lump sum on day one; money arriving every month earns a different rate, and the correct measure for that is XIRR. Two investors in the same fund over the same five years can end up with meaningfully different returns purely because of when their instalments landed.

Tax treatment, asset allocation and how much of a portfolio belongs in mid caps at all are planning questions and sit outside what this page covers. What we take responsibility for here is the fund data - which schemes SEBI's category includes, how each return column is computed, and an honest account of what those numbers can and cannot tell you, one category at a time across every mutual fund category tracked on gale.in.

Frequently asked questions

Which is the best mid cap mutual fund, and is the one at the top of this table it?

No. The fund at the top of this table is simply the fund with the highest 5-year return as computed from AMFI's NAV file - a sort order, not a verdict. Switch the sort to 1-year and a different fund goes to the top without anything about either scheme having changed. gale.in is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser and does not recommend funds. What the table gives you is a clean, comparable view of what happened. What produced it, and whether it suits you, are separate questions the return column does not answer.

What does SEBI count as a mid cap company?

The mandate is fixed: a Mid Cap Fund must hold at least 65% in companies ranked 101st to 250th. AMFI maintains that ranking, publishes it in January and July on a six-month average market capitalisation, and the new list takes effect from the start of the following month, with schemes given a window to rebalance. Because the cadence is fixed and the market is not, companies move between bands on a schedule that has nothing to do with how any fund is performing.

Do midcap funds hold only mid cap stocks?

No - the rule is a minimum of 65% in the mid cap band, not a ceiling of 100%. The remaining 35% is unconstrained and can sit in large caps, in smaller companies or in cash. This is the single largest source of hidden difference between two funds on this page. One scheme may use its free third for large-cap ballast while another spends it below the band, and the two will behave like different asset classes in a sharp move despite carrying the same SEBI category label. The monthly portfolio disclosure shows which is which.

Why do the 1-year, 3-year and 5-year columns rank the funds so differently?

Because each column is a straight line drawn between two dates, and mid caps have been anything but a straight line. A 5-year column measured in 2026 opens in 2021 and contains the 2023-24 run whole; a 1-year column opens in 2025, which was a flat and difficult year for the category. Funds that leaned hard into the run look brilliant in the long column and ordinary in the short one. The reshuffle between columns tells you how sensitive these rankings are to the measurement window, not that managers suddenly gained or lost ability.

Are midcap funds riskier than large cap funds?

They behave differently in ways that are documented rather than theoretical. Mid caps fall further in broad corrections, they re-rate and de-rate faster, and the underlying stocks are harder to sell in size. SEBI took the liquidity part seriously enough to mandate a monthly stress test for every mid cap and small cap scheme from March 2024, published within 15 days of each month-end, disclosing how many days the fund would need to liquidate 25% and 50% of its portfolio. Those figures vary widely across the schemes in this table and are worth reading alongside any return number.

Does a large fund size hurt a mid cap fund?

It is a genuine constraint here, more than in large caps, because only 150 companies sit in the band at any time. A very large scheme taking a meaningful position in one mid cap company can be committing more than a thousand crore to a business worth a fraction of the fund itself, which is slow to build and slower to exit. Whether it has actually hurt a given fund is an empirical question, not an automatic one - several of the largest schemes have long records. The measurable proxies are the monthly stress-test liquidation days, portfolio turnover and the number of holdings.

Do these return columns tell me what an SIP in a midcap fund would have earned?

No. Every column here assumes a single lump sum invested on one date and held to the latest NAV date. An SIP puts money in every month, so each instalment has its own holding period and its own return, and in a category that moves in lumps the difference is not small. The measure built for that pattern is XIRR. Two people in the same scheme over the same five years can end up with visibly different returns purely because of when their instalments landed.

What does this table not tell me about a mid cap fund?

Quite a lot, deliberately. It does not show what a fund does with the 35% outside its minimum, how concentrated the portfolio is, how much cash is being held, how long the current manager has been in the seat, how the fund behaved in the 2024-25 drawdown, its rolling returns from many starting dates, or its disclosed stress-test liquidity. It also cannot split the return between earnings growth and a one-time expansion in valuation multiples - for this category, in these windows, that split matters as much as the headline figure. Treat the table as the starting screen, then go to the scheme's own monthly disclosures.

Related research

• small cap funds
• flexi cap funds
• the difference between direct and regular plans
• expense ratio and exit load
• XIRR
• every mutual fund category tracked on gale.in
• ELSS funds ranked by return