"What's the minimum salary for a personal loan" doesn't have one answer, because there isn't one policy. Each lender, and more specifically each category of lender, sets its own income floor based on its own risk appetite, and the gap between the most conservative and most flexible lenders is wide enough to change whether you're eligible at all, not just what rate you get.
The Range by Lender Category
Banks tend to set the highest floor. Public sector banks are often somewhat more accessible on this front than private banks, with minimum income requirements commonly cited in the ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 range, while several private banks set their threshold higher, frequently starting around ₹25,000 to ₹30,000 for a straightforward personal loan.
NBFCs generally sit lower than banks, with minimum income requirements commonly cited between ₹15,000 and ₹22,000 for salaried applicants. This isn't because NBFCs are less careful; it reflects a genuinely different underwriting model, often willing to compensate for a lower income floor with closer scrutiny of other factors, like bank statement patterns and existing obligations.
Digital-first and fintech lenders often go lower still, with several products aimed at applicants earning as little as ₹10,000 to ₹12,000 a month, and some small-ticket lenders serving even below that for modest loan amounts. This segment tends to rely more heavily on alternate data, UPI transaction history, bill payment patterns, digital footprint, rather than a traditional income document alone, which is part of how it can serve a lower income band responsibly.
Treat all three of these ranges as directional, not exact. Individual lender policy changes, and citing a single named lender's current minimum with confidence is a good way to be wrong within a few months. What's stable is the pattern: banks are the most conservative on this specific criterion, NBFCs are meaningfully more flexible, and fintech-style digital lenders are the most accessible at the lower end, generally in exchange for a higher interest rate.
Why the Threshold Also Shifts by City
Several lenders adjust their minimum income expectation by city tier, since the same salary carries different disposable income depending on local cost of living. A ₹20,000 salary in a smaller city can sometimes clear a threshold that the same lender sets higher for a metro applicant, on the reasoning that fixed living costs consume a larger share of that income in a more expensive city. This isn't universal across all lenders, but it's common enough that it's worth checking a specific lender's city-tier policy rather than assuming a single number applies to every applicant nationally.
Why Salary Alone Doesn't Decide the Outcome
Clearing a lender's minimum income threshold gets your application considered. It doesn't determine approval or the amount you're offered, both of which lean heavily on other, independently assessed factors. Your FOIR, how much of that income is already committed to existing obligations, can disqualify an application even where the income itself clears the floor comfortably. Your credit score and history carry substantial weight, particularly at NBFCs and fintech lenders that are more flexible on income but correspondingly more attentive to repayment behaviour. And your employer category matters too; a government or large listed-company employee often clears a given income threshold more easily than a self-employed or early-stage-company applicant at the identical salary, because the underlying risk read is different even when the number on the payslip is the same.
If Your Income Sits Below the Common Range
A few concrete options exist rather than simply being excluded. Adding a co-applicant with independent income raises the combined figure a lender evaluates, which can clear a threshold neither applicant would individually. Shifting from a bank to an NBFC, or from an NBFC to a fintech lender, moves you toward the segment of the market genuinely built to serve a lower income band, rather than repeatedly applying to lenders whose policy was never going to fit your profile. And where the amount needed is modest, a smaller-ticket loan product, rather than a standard personal loan, is sometimes available at a lower income floor specifically because the lender's risk exposure is smaller too.
Checking Before You Apply
Since the threshold genuinely varies this much between lender categories, and even between individual lenders within the same category, checking a shortlist of lenders' stated minimum income criteria before applying is a more efficient use of time than applying to the first option you find and discovering the mismatch through a rejection. This is also where comparing across multiple lenders' disclosed policy, rather than relying on a single lender's outcome, tells you more about your actual options than any single number does on its own.
Disclosed. Not inferred.