Fees, charges and API access for a selection of brokers commonly used by algo and systematic traders in India. Search and sort the table to compare fields side by side.
| Broker ↕ | Delivery ↕ | Intraday ↕ | Futures ↕ | Options ↕ | AMC ↕ | A/c Opening ↕ | Algo API ↕ | API Resp. P90 ↕ | Notes |
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Algo and F&O traders rarely keep large idle cash. Instead they pledge the shares, ETFs or mutual funds already in their demat account to get collateral margin for trading futures and options — freeing up capital. Two rules shape this: a haircut is applied to the pledged value (you receive less margin than the holding's market value), and SEBI's 50:50 cash-collateral rule means at least half of your F&O margin must be actual cash or cash-equivalents, so pledged securities can fund at most about half of the requirement.
Most brokers let you pledge approved equity shares, ETFs and mutual funds; some also accept bonds, G-Secs and Sovereign Gold Bonds. The eligible list and the haircut (typically ~10% for liquid stocks and ETFs, rising to 50%+ for volatile scrips) are set by the clearing corporation, not the broker, and are revised periodically — so the pledgeable universe and haircuts are broadly similar across brokers.
Pledging is charged each time you pledge — and again to unpledge. Known figures among these brokers: Dhan ₹15, Upstox ₹20 and Zerodha ₹30, all plus 18% GST per ISIN per request. Most other brokers fall in the ₹20–₹35 + GST range. These are revised often, so confirm on the broker's own site.
For overnight F&O positions the exchanges require at least 50% of the total margin to be in cash or cash-equivalents; the other half can come from pledged non-cash collateral. Cash-equivalents include cash, liquid funds / liquid ETFs and G-Secs — ordinary equity shares and equity mutual funds count as non-cash. If a position is funded mostly with pledged shares and falls short on the cash half, the broker funds that gap with its own capital at the clearing corporation and recovers the cost from the client.
How brokers charge for a cash shortfall varies, and most do not disclose it prominently. Among those that publish it: Dhan charges about 0.044% per day (~16% p.a.) on the shortfall with no free buffer; Upstox applies about 0.05% per day (~18% p.a.) on the resulting debit balance; Zerodha instead allows a free buffer up to ₹5 lakh of cash shortfall and then adds ₹20 per order, with no interest on the shortfall. Most other brokers in this list do not publicly state a specific cash-collateral charge — so confirm the current terms directly with the broker before relying on it.
This is a separate shortfall from the cash-collateral one above: here your total available margin falls short of the requirement (not merely the cash portion). The penalty is largely regulatory — SEBI/exchange-mandated, not broker-specific: typically 0.5% of the shortfall per day when the shortfall is below ₹1 lakh and under 10% of the applicable margin, and 1% per day otherwise. Every broker passes this through, so it barely differs between them — though some add their own flat auto-square-off fee (around ₹50 + GST per order) when they liquidate a shortfall position. Always check your broker's specific schedule.
For latency-sensitive strategies, how quickly a broker's API accepts an order can matter. The API Resp. P90 column shows the 90th-percentile place-order API response time in milliseconds (lower is faster) — i.e. 9 out of 10 order requests are acknowledged within that time. Figures are a snapshot taken on 19 June 2026 from openbroker.in's Broker Speedtest, an independent tool by AlgoTest that measures live broker API latencies and refreshes every 15 minutes during market hours.
What this number measures. Per the source's own published methodology, it is the round-trip time from AlgoTest's servers firing an order request to receiving the broker's acknowledgment — essentially how fast the broker's order gateway responds. In the source's words, it captures only “when we fire an order … and when we receive the acknowledgment from the broker.” Values shown are the 90th percentile of those response times (9 in 10 requests are at least this fast).
What it does NOT cover. It is not end-to-end execution time. It deliberately excludes everything that happens after the broker acknowledges the request — the broker's risk-management (RMS) checks, the hop to the exchange, and the exchange's own order matching and fill — which the source itself calls “much more important.” Because the test runs from AlgoTest's own infrastructure, it also excludes your internet/network latency, your distance from the broker's servers and any co-location, and it says nothing about fill quality or slippage. So a lower API response time does not mean your orders will execute first or fill at a better price, and the fastest API is not necessarily the best broker — treat it as one rough input among many, not a ranking.
This is a live metric that varies through the day, so the values here are a point-in-time snapshot and a third-party measurement — not a claim by the brokers or by Quantimental Capital Research. For current figures and the full methodology, see openbroker.in.
Choosing a broker for systematic or algorithmic trading comes down to more than headline brokerage. The total cost of trading in India is brokerage plus statutory charges (STT/CTT, exchange transaction charges, the SEBI turnover fee, stamp duty and 18% GST) — and those statutory charges are identical across every broker. So the real differentiators are the broker's brokerage, account/AMC charges, the cost and quality of its trading API, and execution quality (which drives slippage). The table above compares 12 brokers commonly used by algo and systematic traders on exactly these points.
In the table, Flattrade shows ₹0 headline brokerage across all segments, and Shoonya (Finvasia) shows ₹5 per order on intraday and F&O with ₹0 delivery. Discount brokers such as Zerodha and Dhan show free equity delivery and a ₹20-or-0.03% cap on intraday and futures, while Kotak Neo shows ₹10 flat F&O in the plan captured. These are headline brokerage figures only, not a ranking — your effective cost also depends on AMC, slippage and API fees.
Dhan (DhanHQ), Angel One (SmartAPI), Upstox, Shoonya, Flattrade, ICICI Direct (Breeze), 5paisa, Kotak Neo and Fyers provide free trading APIs. Zerodha's Kite Connect costs around ₹500/month and Groww's API around ₹499/month. A free, well-documented API and good execution often matter more to an algo trader than saving a few rupees of brokerage.
Headline brokerage is only part of the cost. At larger sizes, slippage — the gap between your expected and actual fill price — frequently outweighs brokerage. It depends mainly on the instrument's liquidity, market conditions and your order size; as a rough tendency, faster, lower-latency execution helps reduce slippage too, though latency is only one factor and a lower number never guarantees a better fill. Slippage is not a published figure and is not captured by any brokerage calculator.
For the part of the cost that is calculable — brokerage plus statutory charges — our brokerage calculator gives an itemised, indicative breakdown (brokerage, STT, GST, stamp duty and the rest) for a specific trade across any of these brokers. It excludes DP charges from the headline total and does not include slippage.