Zerodha vs Groww vs Angel One vs Upstox: ₹453 Separates Them

Four apps, one ₹20 fee, and a bill that is mostly not ₹20#

Groww finished August 2026 with 1.33 crore active clients on the NSE and a 29.04% share of them, which puts the whole active client base at roughly 4.6 crore. Zerodha had 67.97 lakh, Angel One 67.19 lakh and Upstox 18.65 lakh. The top five brokers between them hold over 67% of the market. Most of those people chose their app on a single number: ₹20 a trade.

That number is real. It is also, for a lot of traders, the smallest line on the bill.

Two things changed in 2026 that make the arithmetic worth redoing. From 1 April, securities transaction tax on futures went from 0.02% to 0.05% and on options premium from 0.10% to 0.15%. From 1 March, the NSE rearranged its transaction charges, rolling back an investor-protection-fund levy and folding the money back into the main charge. Neither of those is a brokerage. Both land in your contract note.

What you are actually paying when you press buy#

A contract note has two halves, and only one of them belongs to your broker.

The broker's half is brokerage: a fee per executed order. Depository participant charges, usually called DP charges, are the fee for taking shares out of your demat account when you sell, split between the depository (CDSL or NSDL) and the broker. Then there is the annual maintenance charge, or AMC, for keeping the demat account open.

The other half goes to the government and the exchange. Securities transaction tax, or STT, is a tax on the value of the trade. Exchange transaction charges are what the NSE bills your broker for using its order book. The SEBI turnover fee is a flat ₹10 per crore. Stamp duty has been uniform across states since 1 July 2020: 0.015% on delivery buys, 0.003% on intraday, 0.002% on futures, 0.003% on options, and only the buyer pays. GST of 18% sits on top of brokerage, transaction charges and the SEBI fee.

SEBI's "true to label" circular of 1 July 2024 told exchanges and depositories to drop slab-wise fee structures and required that whatever a broker recovers from you matches what the institution actually charged. The volume rebates that discount brokers used to bank quietly went with it. That is part of why the pricing pages below look the way they do.

The published rates, side by side#

Every figure here is from the broker's own charges page, read on 12 September 2026.

Three details in that table matter more than the ₹20 everyone quotes.

Zerodha's delivery brokerage is nil, but its AMC is not. Groww's AMC is nil, but its delivery brokerage is not. Upstox charges a flat ₹20 on delivery with no percentage cap running the other way, so a ₹3,000 purchase costs the same ₹20 as a ₹3 lakh one. And Angel One's AMC only bites in quarters when you actually trade, which is unusual and, for a dormant account, genuinely useful. Angel One also runs a joining offer of zero brokerage up to ₹500 for the first 30 days.

One more oddity worth knowing: Groww lists the depository's share of the DP charge as ₹3.50 for men and ₹3.25 for women. The concession is CDSL's, not the broker's.

Three trades, four bills#

Published rates are one thing. Here is what four identical trades cost, using the statutory rates in force on 12 September 2026.

Author's calculations. STT, stamp duty, SEBI fee, NSE transaction charges and 18% GST applied at current rates; DP charge as published by each broker, with GST added where the broker states it separately.

The ₹2 lakh intraday row is the one to sit with. Four different pricing pages, four different marketing claims, and an identical bill to the paisa, because every one of them caps intraday brokerage at ₹20 and the rest is statutory. On that trade the app you chose is worth nothing at all.

Move to small trades and the ranking flips hard. On a ₹5,000 delivery round trip, Upstox costs three times what Zerodha does, not because ₹20 is expensive but because a flat ₹20 on a ₹5,000 order is 0.4% before anything else is added. The same trade at Groww or Angel One triggers their ₹5 minimum, which works out cheaper than Upstox and dearer than nothing.

On the ₹50,000 delivery round trip, the spread between cheapest and dearest is ₹55.46. The government's share of that same trade, before any broker is paid, is ₹110.67.

Over a year, the gap gets smaller, not bigger#

One trade proves little. Take an ordinary investor instead: twelve purchases of ₹25,000 through the year, six holdings sold at ₹50,000 each, one demat account, no derivatives.

Totals include exchange transaction charges, stamp duty, the SEBI turnover fee and GST. AMC assumed payable in all four quarters.

Cheapest to dearest is ₹453 over twelve months, on ₹6 lakh of turnover. Zerodha's free delivery saves ₹360 in brokerage and then hands ₹354 of it back as AMC. Groww's zero AMC very nearly cancels Zerodha's zero brokerage, and the two finish ₹120 apart.

There is a caveat that swallows a chunk of this. Under the basic services demat account rules, an investor whose holdings stay under ₹4 lakh pays no AMC at any of these brokers, ₹100 a year between ₹4 lakh and ₹10 lakh, and the full rate above that. If your portfolio is small and you hold only one demat account, delete the AMC column and Zerodha's lead widens to about ₹474.

Where the money really goes if you trade options#

For derivatives, the ₹20 debate collapses entirely.

Buy one Nifty option lot at a premium of ₹7,500 and sell it the same day. Brokerage, at ₹20 each way, is ₹40. STT is ₹11.25, exchange charges ₹5.33, stamp duty 23 paise, SEBI fee a rounding error, GST ₹8.16. Total ₹64.98, of which the broker keeps ₹40. On a small option ticket the ₹20 flat fee is the dominant cost, which reverses the usual assumption that tax always dominates.

Scale the premium to ₹30,000 and it inverts. Brokerage stays ₹40, STT jumps to ₹45, exchange charges to ₹21.32, and the total reaches ₹118.33. The broker's share falls to 34%.

That same ₹7,500 round trip attracted ₹7.50 of STT before April 2026 and attracts ₹11.25 now. It is a small number per trade and a very large one in aggregate. SEBI's study of derivatives profitability published on 20 August 2026 found that individual traders paid roughly ₹25,000 crore in transaction costs in FY26 and about ₹1 lakh crore over five years. Net losses came to ₹91,685 crore for the year, with 87.7% of individual traders in the red and the number of participants down from 98.1 lakh to 78.6 lakh. Divide it out and the average derivatives trader paid around ₹31,800 in costs against an average net loss of about ₹1.17 lakh. Costs were roughly 27% of what the segment lost.

Whether ₹20 or ₹15 makes any difference against that is a question each trader can answer for themselves.

One last thing worth watching. In October 2025 Zerodha's founder Nithin Kamath said that if regulators scrapped weekly options, Zerodha would "be forced to start charging brokerage for equity delivery trades to make the business tenable", noting the firm had taken a 40% hit to brokerage revenue in the June quarter. Free delivery is a pricing decision, not a law of nature.

Key takeaways#

1. On a ₹2 lakh intraday round trip, all four apps cost exactly ₹118.16. The cap at ₹20 makes the brand irrelevant.
2. Over a full year of ordinary investing, cheapest to dearest is ₹453 on ₹6 lakh of turnover, and STT alone is ₹600.
3. Zerodha's zero delivery brokerage is largely repaid through its ₹300 AMC. Groww charges brokerage and no AMC. They end up ₹120 apart.
4. Small trades are where the pricing pages actually differ. A ₹5,000 delivery round trip costs ₹26.46 at Zerodha and ₹78.32 at Upstox, whose delivery fee is a flat ₹20 with no percentage cap.
5. On a small options ticket the broker's ₹20 is the biggest single cost. On a larger one, STT is. The April 2026 hike raised options premium STT by half and futures STT by 150%.

Frequently asked questions#

Which of the four is cheapest? It depends on ticket size. For delivery investing with a portfolio above ₹4 lakh, Zerodha came out lowest in the annual example here, with Groww close behind. For someone holding under ₹4 lakh, where AMC is waived anyway, Zerodha's lead grows. For pure intraday and options trading at meaningful size, the four are close to identical.

Is equity delivery really free at Zerodha? Brokerage on delivery is nil. DP charges of ₹15.34 per scrip on every sell, AMC and the statutory charges still apply.

Why did my option trade cost more from April 2026? STT on options premium rose from 0.10% to 0.15% and on futures from 0.02% to 0.05%, effective 1 April 2026.

What is a BSDA and do I have one? A basic services demat account carries reduced or nil AMC for small holdings. Eligibility requires a single demat account across all depositories with you as sole or first holder, within the value limits.

Can I hold shares at one broker and trade at another? Shares sit in a demat account with a depository, not with the broker. You can move them between demat accounts, though most brokers charge for an off-market transfer.

Do these charges apply to mutual fund investments too? Direct mutual fund plans on these platforms carry no commission. STT applies on equity fund redemptions at 0.001%, and DP charges do not apply to units held in the statement-of-account mode.

Does switching brokers save enough to be worth it? On the annual figures above, the full spread is ₹453. Reliability during a market opening, order rejection rates and the quality of the app during volatility are worth more than that to most people.

Glossary#

Brokerage. The fee your broker charges per executed order, separate from taxes and exchange charges.

STT. Securities transaction tax, levied on the value of a trade. Charged on both sides for delivery and on the sell side for intraday, futures and options.

DP charges. A per-scrip fee when shares leave your demat account on a sell, shared between the depository and the broker. Intraday trades do not attract it.

AMC. Annual maintenance charge for keeping a demat account open, billed whether or not you trade.

BSDA. Basic services demat account, a reduced-fee category for investors holding a single demat account with small holdings.

True to label. SEBI's requirement that charges recovered from clients match what market infrastructure institutions actually levy, in force since October 2024.

IPFT. Investor protection fund trust, a corpus funded partly by exchange levies on trading members.

Executed order. A single order that has been filled. Partial fills of one order are billed as one order.

References#

1. NSE, Revision in transaction charges, circular dated 27 February 2026, effective 1 March 2026
2. SEBI, Charges levied by market infrastructure institutions, true to label, circular SEBI/HO/MRD/TPD-1/P/CIR/2024/92, 1 July 2024
3. SEBI, Study, profitability of individual traders in the equity derivatives segment, FY25 to FY26, 20 August 2026
4. SEBI, FAQs on the Indian Stamp Act amendments, stamp duty rates on securities
5. Zerodha, brokerage and statutory charges, retrieved 12 September 2026
6. Groww, pricing, retrieved 12 September 2026
7. Angel One, brokerage, transaction and government charges, and brokerage charges support page, retrieved 12 September 2026
8. Upstox, brokerage charges, retrieved 12 September 2026
9. HDFC Securities, Union Budget 2026 hikes securities transaction tax on F&O, February 2026
10. Entrackr, Groww adds 2.23 lakh active clients in August, September 2026, on NSE active client data
11. CorpLawUpdates, SEBI equity derivatives retail trader study FY26, August 2026
12. Business Standard, Nithin Kamath on charging brokerage for equity delivery, 1 October 2025
13. Google Ads search volumes for India, retrieved via DataForSEO, 12 September 2026

This article is journalism, not investment advice. Charges change without notice, so check the broker's own page before acting. Nothing here is a recommendation to open, close or switch any account. Consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making financial decisions.