Before you trade, know exactly what it'll cost you. Select your broker, enter trade details — and see every charge broken down in seconds.
| Buy Value: | ₹0.00 |
| Sell Value: | ₹0.00 |
| Total Turnover: | ₹0.00 |
| Gross Profit: | ₹0.00 |
| Total Charges: | ₹0.00 |
| Net Profit: | ₹0.00 |
Brokerage is simply what your stockbroker charges for executing your buy or sell orders. Think of it as a service fee for getting the trade done. In India, this is either a flat ₹20 per order (discount brokers) or a percentage of your trade value — typically 0.03% to 0.5% depending on who you're with.
But brokerage is just one piece of the puzzle. Every trade also attracts STT (Securities Transaction Tax) from the government, exchange transaction charges from NSE/BSE, GST on your brokerage, SEBI regulatory charges, and stamp duty on the shares transferred. The exact amounts differ between intraday and delivery trades — which is why a calculator like this one actually matters.
Using this calculator is quick and straightforward — here's what to do:
The calculator automatically applies the right rates for your broker and transaction type — brokerage, STT, exchange charges, GST, SEBI charges, and stamp duty, all computed for you.
1. Brokerage: What your broker keeps. Discount brokers like Zerodha, Groww, and Upstox charge ₹20 per order or 0.03–0.05% (whichever is lower). Full-service brokers like ICICI and HDFC charge 0.25–0.55% per trade — a significant difference on large orders.
2. STT (Securities Transaction Tax): A government-mandated tax — can't be negotiated or avoided.
3. Exchange Transaction Charges: Levied by the exchange on your total turnover.
4. GST: 18% applied on brokerage plus exchange transaction charges
5. SEBI Charges: Tiny but present — ₹10 per crore of turnover (effectively 0.0001%)
6. Stamp Duty: 0.015% on the buy side for delivery trades, 0.003% for intraday
Discount Brokers — Low Cost, DIY:
Full-Service Brokers — Higher Cost, More Hand-Holding:
Which to choose? If you do your own research and trade actively, discount brokers are almost always the better call — ₹20 flat vs 0.5% on a ₹1 lakh trade is the difference between ₹20 and ₹500. If you genuinely need research support and advisory hand-holding, a full-service broker can be worth it.
Direct Plan vs Regular Plan — a difference that compounds over years:
Expense Ratio: The annual fee a fund charges for managing your money. It's not billed separately — it's quietly deducted from the NAV every day.
Here's what the difference looks like in rupees: ₹10 lakh invested over 10 years at 12% gross returns:
Other Charges: Most equity funds charge a 1% exit load if you redeem within a year. There's no STT, stamp duty, or GST on mutual fund transactions in general — though equity fund redemptions attract a tiny 0.001% STT.
Brokerage is what your stockbroker charges for placing a buy or sell order on your behalf. There are two models in India: flat fee brokers like Zerodha, Groww, and Upstox charge ₹20 per order regardless of trade size, while full-service brokers like ICICI Direct and HDFC Securities charge a percentage — typically 0.25–0.55% of the trade value. To put that in perspective: buying 100 shares at ₹1,000 (a ₹1 lakh trade) costs ₹20 with Zerodha and ₹550 with ICICI Direct. On top of brokerage, every trade also attracts STT (0.1% on delivery sells), exchange charges (0.00325%), 18% GST on brokerage, SEBI charges, and stamp duty. Total charges on a ₹1 lakh delivery trade: roughly ₹130–150 with discount brokers, ₹650–750 with full-service brokers. If you make your own investment decisions, go with a discount broker. If you need research and advisory support, a full-service broker might be worth the extra cost.
Among mainstream brokers, Zerodha offers the lowest brokerage — ₹20 per order or 0.03%, whichever is lower. On most delivery trades, the effective brokerage is negligible. Other low-cost options include Groww (₹20 or 0.05%), Upstox (₹20 or 0.05%), Fyers (₹20 or 0.03%), and Angel One (₹20 or 0.25%). To see the real-world difference: on a ₹1 lakh trade, Zerodha charges ₹20 while ICICI Direct charges ₹550 — a saving of ₹530 per trade. If you make 50 trades a year, that's ₹26,500 saved annually. There's a compounding benefit too: lower brokerage means lower GST (18% on brokerage), so ₹20 brokerage attracts ₹3.60 GST vs ₹99 GST on ₹550 brokerage. For active, self-directed investors, Zerodha, Groww, or Upstox are the obvious choices.
STT stands for Securities Transaction Tax — a government-mandated tax on stock trades that cannot be negotiated or avoided. Current rates (from October 2024): for delivery trades, 0.1% is charged on the sell side only (the buy side was made exempt). For intraday, 0.025% applies on both buy and sell sides. For futures, it's 0.02% on the sell side. Options attract 0.1% on the premium for both buy and sell. Quick example: buy 100 shares at ₹1,000 and sell at ₹1,100. Delivery STT: only on the sell — ₹1,10,000 × 0.1% = ₹110. Intraday STT: ₹1,00,000 × 0.025% = ₹25 on buy, ₹1,10,000 × 0.025% = ₹27.50 on sell, total ₹52.50. One useful insight: delivery trades now have lower total STT than intraday since only the sell side is taxed. Always factor STT into your profit calculations — it's one of the bigger charges.
Go direct — every time. Here's the straightforward case: a direct mutual fund plan cuts out the distributor and passes that saving on to you as a lower expense ratio (typically 0.5–1% less than the regular version of the same fund). You can buy direct plans straight from the AMC or through platforms like Coin, Kuvera, or MFCentral. Regular plans have a distributor commission embedded in the expense ratio, making them more expensive for no tangible benefit to you. The numbers over time are hard to ignore: ₹10 lakh invested for 10 years at 12% gross returns — direct plan at 0.5% expense gives you ₹28.5 lakh, regular at 1.5% gives ₹25.7 lakh. That's ₹2.8 lakh lost to charges. Over 20 years, the gap widens to ₹10 lakh or more. Switching from regular to direct is free and takes about 5 minutes online. If you're still in regular plans, that's worth doing today.
Intraday means you buy and sell the same stock within the same trading day. Delivery means you buy today and hold the shares overnight (or longer). Here's how charges differ between the two: brokerage is usually the same (₹20 flat or percentage). STT is 0.025% on both buy and sell for intraday, but only 0.1% on the sell side for delivery. Stamp duty is 0.003% for intraday and 0.015% for delivery (5 times higher). On a ₹1 lakh buy and ₹1.1 lakh sell, total charges come to roughly ₹80–100 for intraday and ₹120–140 for delivery — about ₹40 more. But the tax treatment is where delivery really shines: intraday profits are taxed at your full income slab rate (up to 30%), while delivery gains held over a year are taxed as LTCG at just 12.5%. So yes, delivery costs a bit more upfront — but the tax savings on long-term gains more than compensate.
Let's work through an actual ₹1 lakh delivery trade — buy ₹1L, sell ₹1L, break-even, total turnover ₹2L. With Zerodha: brokerage ₹20 (buy) + ₹20 (sell) = ₹40. STT: ₹1L × 0.1% (sell only) = ₹100. Exchange charges: ₹2L × 0.00325% = ₹6.50. GST on brokerage + exchange charges: (₹40 + ₹6.50) × 18% = ₹8.37. SEBI charges: ₹0.20. Stamp duty: ₹1L × 0.015% = ₹15. Total: about ₹170. Now with ICICI Direct: brokerage alone is ₹1L × 0.55% × 2 = ₹1,100. STT, exchange charges, SEBI, and stamp duty are identical. GST jumps to ₹199 (18% on ₹1,100 + ₹6.50). Grand total: roughly ₹1,420. That's ₹1,250 more per trade for the same transaction. Multiply that by 50 trades a year and you've given away ₹62,500 extra. The broker choice genuinely matters.
With discount brokers like Zerodha, Groww, and Upstox, there's nothing to negotiate — it's ₹20 per order for everyone, full stop. They're already the lowest in the market. Full-service brokers are a different story. ICICI, HDFC, and Kotak do have room to negotiate, and your leverage depends on your trading volume, portfolio size, existing banking relationship, and client classification. A regular retail investor might squeeze out 0.4–0.5% vs the listed 0.55%. A high-volume trader can potentially get to 0.2–0.3%. HNI clients with ₹1 crore+ portfolios have gotten rates as low as 0.1–0.15%. If you want to try, show your trading history, mention that Zerodha charges ₹20, ask for a relationship manager, and be prepared to actually switch if they don't budge. Honestly though — unless you're trading in crores, you'll come out ahead just switching to a discount broker. ₹20 flat beats any negotiated percentage for most retail investors.
The expense ratio is the annual fee a mutual fund charges for managing your money. It covers the fund manager's salary, research team, marketing, administration, and — in regular plans — the distributor's commission. You don't receive a separate bill for this; it's deducted from the fund's NAV every single day. Here's how it works: if NAV is ₹100 and the expense ratio is 1.5%, you effectively pay ₹1.50 per year per unit, which works out to about ₹0.004 per day per unit. Typical ranges: equity funds run 1–2.5% for regular plans and 0.5–1.5% for direct. Debt funds are 0.5–1.5% regular, 0.2–1% direct. Index funds are the cheapest at 0.1–0.5% since they're passively managed. SEBI caps these — equity funds are capped at 2.5% for the first ₹500 crore in AUM, declining in slabs above that. The impact compounds: 12% gross return with a 1.5% expense ratio means 10.5% net. On ₹10 lakh over 10 years, that gap translates to about ₹4 lakh less in your pocket. Always check the expense ratio before investing. Lower is genuinely better.
Most charges in stock trading are disclosed — but a few can catch you off guard if you're not paying attention. DP (Depository Participant) charges: ₹13–20 per company per sell transaction, not per share. Selling shares of 3 different companies in one day costs ₹40–60 in DP charges alone. Groww waives this; Zerodha charges ₹13. Call & Trade charges: if you place an order over the phone instead of the app, expect ₹20–50 extra per order. Always trade online. Annual Maintenance Charge (AMC): ₹300–500/year for your demat account, though many brokers waive it if you're an active trader. Physical contract notes cost ₹25–50 each — digital is free, so just go paperless. Pledge and unpledge charges for margin: ₹25–50 per stock. Cheque bounce: ₹500+ if a payment fails. Physical statements from CAMS/NSDL: ₹25–100. The good news is most of these are avoidable — trade digitally, stay active on your demat, maintain sufficient balance, and always check your broker's fee schedule upfront.
Your break-even isn't the price you bought at — it's the price you need to sell at to recover the purchase cost plus all charges on both sides of the trade. A quick approximation: break-even ≈ buy price × 1.004 (adding roughly 0.4% for all combined charges). More precisely, on 100 shares bought at ₹1,000: buy-side charges (brokerage ₹20, stamp duty ₹15, exchange charges ₹3.25, GST ₹4, SEBI ₹0.10) total about ₹42, making your true cost ₹1,00,042. At the sell side (at ₹1,000), you'd also pay brokerage ₹20, STT ₹100, exchange charges ₹3.25, GST ₹4, SEBI ₹0.10 — about ₹127. So you need sell proceeds of ₹1,00,042 + ₹127 = ₹1,00,169, which is ₹1,001.69 per share. You need a 0.17% gain just to break even. For intraday trades the break-even gap is 0.2–0.3% due to STT on both sides. For long-term holdings, the charges become negligible relative to the holding period gains. The key takeaway: don't set profit targets without first accounting for all charges. You need at least a 0.5–1% move in your favour before you actually make money.
