An optical alignment-free and highly accurate method is employed to measure the magnetic field-dependent refractive index of magnetic fluid (MF) in bulk. The measured refractive index decreases significantly with the increasing magnetic strength and then tends to saturate in the high intensity range. By applying a tunable magnetic field ranging between 0 and 1661 Oe, the maximum shift of the refractive index of MF in bulk is found to be 0.0231.