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Zerodha Brokerage Calculator

Zerodha made free equity delivery famous, and the headline holds: zero brokerage on every delivery order for resident retail investors. What a trade still costs is everything the government and exchanges levy — STT on both legs, stamp duty on buying, exchange fees, SEBI charges, their GST — plus fifteen rupees and change when shares leave your demat. Enter your turnover to see the complete Zerodha picture line by line.

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How to use this calculator

  1. Enter the buy-side turnover from your CNC purchase order.
  2. Add sell-side turnover once you exit, or model an exit price before selling.
  3. Read both leg totals — buying carries stamp duty, selling carries the DP charge.
  4. Open the full breakdown to see statutory items separated from anything Zerodha itself earns.
  5. Remember the annual maintenance charge sits outside per-trade maths: ₹300 plus GST yearly.

The formula behind it

With brokerage at zero, every remaining rupee comes from published levies: STT rounds up to the paisa at 0.1% on each leg; NSE transaction charges run ₹2.97 per lakh per side; IPFT adds one paisa per lakh; SEBI takes ten rupees per crore; stamp duty hits 0.015% of buys only; and eighteen percent GST lands on the exchange-plus-SEBI combination since there is no brokerage to tax. The depository charge — ₹13 split between CDSL and Zerodha plus GST, quoted as ₹15.34 — applies once per scrip per day when you sell, regardless of quantity.

Worked example

An investor buys ₹1,00,000 of an Nifty heavyweight through Kite as a CNC order, holds through a choppy quarter, then sells for ₹1,05,000. She has heard 'delivery is free' and wants the honest all-in figure rather than the slogan.

Inputs used in this worked example
Buy turnover₹1,00,000
Sell turnover₹1,05,000

Step by step

  1. Buy leg: STT ₹100 + txn ₹2.97 + IPFT ₹0.10 + SEBI ₹0.10 + stamp ₹15 + GST ₹0.55
  2. Buy total ≈ ₹118.72
  3. Sell leg: STT ₹105 + txn ₹3.12 + IPFT ₹0.11 + SEBI ₹0.11 + GST ₹0.58 + DP ₹15.34
  4. Sell total ≈ ₹124.26

All-in cost ≈ ₹243 on a two-lakh round trip — about 0.12% — none of it Zerodha's own earning except the single ₹9.50 buried inside the DP charge. 'Free' here means free of brokerage, not free of physics.

Frequently asked questions

Is Zerodha delivery really free for everyone?

For resident retail individuals, yes. Companies, partnerships, trusts and HUFs pay 0.1% or ₹20 whichever is lower on delivery, and NRIs have their own schedule. The free tier this page models covers the standard individual account most readers hold.

Why does selling cost more than buying?

Two reasons: STT scales with the larger exit value, and the DP charge fires only when shares leave demat. On matched turnovers the sell side runs roughly five to ten rupees heavier depending on size.

Does the ₹15.34 DP charge apply per share?

Per scrip per day, not per share — selling one share or ten thousand of the same stock in one day triggers it exactly once. Splitting a sale across days multiplies it, so consolidate exits where practical.

What does Zerodha actually earn from my delivery investing?

Almost nothing per trade: ₹9.50 inside each DP event and the margin-funding or F&O side of its business elsewhere. Its revenue model long ago shifted off delivery brokerage, which is why the zero held while rivals reintroduced charges.

What zero brokerage did — and did not — change

When delivery commissions vanished, the visible cost of investing collapsed but the invisible floor remained: roughly a quarter percent round-trip in statutory levies plus depository mechanics. That floor matters for strategy. Churning a position monthly surrenders close to three percent annually to unavoidable charges even at zero brokerage, while annual rebalancing spends barely a quarter of that. Running candidate holding periods through this page converts 'long-term investing saves costs' from advice into arithmetic.

The other lasting change was competitive. Zero delivery forced every rival to justify its fee explicitly, and this site's comparison exists because the justifications differ — minimums, caps, DP structures, subscription bundles. Zerodha's version of that story is simplicity itself: no per-trade revenue, one modest depository fee, an annual maintenance bill, and statutory pass-through at actuals under True-to-Label rules.

Small print worth reading once

Three clauses occasionally surprise people. First, delivery trades carry a minimum ₹0.01 per contract note — invisible until you audit ledgers, irrelevant at any realistic scale. Second, accounts running negative balances see F&O order fees double to forty rupees, a nudge toward cleaner ledgers rather than a delivery matter at all. Third, opting for physical contract notes costs twenty rupees each — stay digital and it never appears.

None of these alter the central planning fact this page exists to show: for buy-and-hold investors, Zerodha's cost curve is flat against trade size, dominated by statutory items no broker controls, and punctuated only by the per-scrip exit fee. Size positions freely; just give the calendar, not the commission sheet, your attention.

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Data sources & verification dates

stockcalculator.in Research Desk — Editorial team; verifies every figure against official sources before publishing

Reviewed by stockcalculator.in Research Desk — Schedule cross-checked against zerodha.com/charges

Last updated . Figures are re-verified against official sources on every revision — see our methodology.

Disclaimer

Brokerage schedules, statutory levies, and DP charges are set by each broker and the exchanges, and they are revised without notice. Figures shown are estimates for education and planning only. We are not SEBI-registered investment advisers and nothing on this site is investment advice. Always cross-check the broker's latest pricing page before relying on a cost estimate here.