A complete Zerodha Review 2023 (Brokerage, Trading Platform & More): Zerodha is the biggest discount broker in India and perfect for traders & investors looking for low brokerage, easy interface, and reliable trading platform. It offers a zero brokerage for delivery equity & direct mutual fund investments.
For all intraday, Futures & Options, currency, and commodity trades across NSE, BSE, MCX, it offers a brokerage of Flat ₹20 irrespective of the trading volume. It doesn’t matter whether you trade for Rs 1 lakh or 1 crore, you have to pay a flat low brokerage of Rs 20 per trade. Therefore, you can save a lot of brokerage charges on your trades using Zerodha as your broker.
In this Zerodha review, we will discuss the brokerage charges, account opening charges, maintenance charges, trading platforms, products, my personal experience of using Zerodha & more. By the end of this post, you’ll have a complete understanding of Zerodha trading services and whether this broker is right for you or not. Let’s get started.
Zerodha Review –Brokerage, Charges, Trading Platforms & More
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
There are two types of stockbrokers in India. Full-Service brokers and Discount brokers. The full-service brokers offer a trading platform along with advisory. However, their brokerage charges are high. A few major full-service brokers in India are HDFC Securities, ICICI Direct, Motilal Oswal, etc.
On the other hand, discount brokers offer trading platforms with minimum brokerage charges. Nonetheless, they do not provide advisory services. The biggest advantage of a discount broker is that it saves a lot of brokerages for the traders/investors. On all other prospects, like performance, computerized trading systems etc- both offer similar facilities.
An important point to know here is that all the brokers- Full service or discount brokers are licensed and regulated in India by regulating bodies like SEBI.
Zerodha is a leading discount broker in India in terms of daily trading volume, growth and customer base. It is one of the most technologically advanced and cheap stockbrokers. Zerodha has over +1 Crore clients and contributes to over 15% of daily retail trading volumes across NSE, BSE, MCX.
Ironically, the term ‘Zerodha’ is derived from the fusion of an English and Sanskrit word. ‘Zero’+’Rodha’ where ‘Rodha’ means barrier. Overall, Zerodha means ‘Zero Barrier’.
It was started by Nitin Kamath, an Engineer by qualification, in 2010. Nithin bootstrapped and founded Zerodha in 2010 to overcome the hurdles he faced during his decade long stint as a trader. He was named one of the “Top 10 Businessmen to Watch Out for in 2016 in India” by The Economic Times for pioneering and scaling discount broking in India. Here are a few of the famous awards won by Zerodha recently:
— ET Startup of the Year (2020)
— National Stock Exchange (NSE) “Retail brokerage of the year 2019” (& 2018)
— Outlook Money “Retail broker of the year 2017”
— Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the year (Startup) 2017”
2. Zerodha Brokerage Charges
Zerodha offers trading services to buy and sell stocks, futures & options in equities, commodities, and currency segment. Here are the Zerodha brokerage charges:
– Free equity delivery
All your equity delivery investments (NSE, BSE), absolutely free — ₹0 brokerage.
– ₹20 intraday equity and F&O trades
₹20 per executed order on intraday trades across equity, currency, and commodity trades across NSE, BSE, and MCX.
Type | Brokerage Charges |
---|---|
Equity Delivery | Rs. 0 (FREE) |
Equity Intraday | Lower of Rs. 20 per executed order or 0.03% |
Equity Futures | Lower of Rs. 20 per executed order or 0.03% |
Equity Options | Flat Rs. 20 per executed order |
Currency F&O | Lower of Rs. 20 per executed order or 0.03% |
Commodity | Lower of Rs. 20 per executed order or 0.03% |
Quick note:
1. You can use this Zerodha Brokerage Calculator to get more ideas.
(Zerodha Brokerage Calculator)
2. Apart from brokerages, there are also a few other charges that you have to mandatorily pay on your transactions like Exchange transaction charge, STT, SEBI turnover charges, GST, etc.
You have to pay these charges no matter which stockbroker you prefer to trade in stocks and that too on both sides of transactions i.e. while buying and selling. However, the brokerage cost can be controlled by choosing a discount broker. For example, in the case of Zerodha, you can notice the total brokerage of Rs 40 for both sides of Intraday equity trading, even though the total turnover is Rs 8.4 Lakhs.
You can have read this blog post to understand the different charges while trading in stocks.
3. Zerodha Account Opening Charges & AMC
Here are the account opening charges for Zerodha
- Equity Trading Account: ₹200
You can open demat and trading for equity account at Rs 200. The demat account annual maintenance (AMC) charge is Rs 300 per year.
4. Zerodha Products & Features
Zerodha has built its own trading applications for the customers. It offers different trading terminals, websites, and mobile apps (Android/iOS) which are free for the customers.
— Kite 3.0
Kite 3.0 is a modern technology-based trading platform with streaming market data, advanced charts, an elegant UI, and more. It is a minimalistic, intuitive, responsive, light, yet powerful web and mobile trading application offered by Zerodha. Kite provides Bandwidth consumption of fewer than 0.5 Kbps for a full market watch, extensive charting with over 100 indicators and 6 chart types, advanced order types like Brackets and cover, millisecond order placements, and more.
Overall, Kite provides an excellent experience to the users through its groundbreaking innovations presented with hassle-free usability.
— Kite mobile
This is a mobile version of KITE for a seamless experience for mobile-users and available in both Android and iOS devices.
— Coin
Zerodha Coin is a platform that lets you buy mutual funds online directly from asset management companies. This platform is absolutely free since August 24, 2018. Here, you can make your investments without any commissions.
With the help of Zerodha Coin, you can have Direct mutual funds in DEMAT form, with the convenience of one portfolio across equity, MF, currency, etc. Moreover, it also provides a Single capital gain statement, P&L visualizations, and more. This Coin by Zerodha has made investments through SIPs really simple and flexible.
Other Partner Products
Apart from the above products, Zerodha also offers a few other partner programs:
- Smallcase: This thematic investment platform is powered by Kite Connect APIs. Smallcase helps users to invest in different themes by intelligently providing weighted baskets of stocks in each theme.
- Sensibull: This is an options trading platform which offers simplified options trading for new investors by providing powerful trading tools. Sensibull aims to make options trading safe, accessible, and most importantly, profitable for all.
Besides, Zerodha has also started a few educational initiatives to improve financial literacy and increase the participation of the common people in the financial world. Here are a few other products offered by Zerodha
- Zerodha Varsity: An educational platform to educate people about investing and trading. Zerodha Varsity offers free modules on Technical analysis, fundamental analysis, futures, options, risk management, trading psychology & more. Recently, Zerodha Varsity also launched its Varsity mobile app.
- Trading Q&A: An online forum powered by Zerodha to answer people’s most troublesome investing and trading questions.
5. Pros and cons of Zerodha Discount broker
Here are a few advantages and disadvantages of using Zerodha trading platforms:
Pros of Opening Account with Zerodha
- Zero Brokerage Charges for Delivery
- Flat Charge for Intraday (Rs 20 or 0.03% whichever is lower per executed order for everything else)
- Same pricing for across all exchanges
- No upfront fee or turnover commitment
- Z-Connect, interactive blog, and portal for all your queries
- Trading, charting, and analysis, all rolled into one next-generation desktop platform Pi.
- Minimalistic, intuitive, responsive web-based trading platform Kite
- No minimum balance required to open Zerodha trading account
- Invest in direct mutual funds with same demat account through coin
Cons of Opening Account with Zerodha
- No advisory services or research report.
- 3-in-1 account (Saving+Demat+Trading) not available.
- Online IPO investment not available. (Now, Zerodha customers can invest in IPO’s through UPI payment. Read more about Zerodha IPO applying process here)
Note: Zerodha has recently started offering Zerodha IDFC FIRST Bank 3-in-1 account. However, to open a 3in1 account at Zerodha, you need to have an existing account with IDFC FIRST Bank. Accounts can only be opened online. Read more here.
6. Is Zerodha a Reliable Stockbroker? And is Free investing legit?
Is Zerodha safe for long-term investments? This is one of the biggest questions that come in the mind of first-time investors. Obviously, HDFC Securities, ICICI Direct, SBI cap, Kotak securities, etc are big brands in the name of the broking industry and been in the market for decades. Hence, they have built greater trust compared to Zerodha, especially for the ones who have never heard its name before.
Anyways, Zerodha, the discount broker, originated only in 2010. Therefore, if you’re not involved in the share market investments/tradings in the last decade, it’s no surprise to say that you might have not known this broker. However, in the short span of around 10 years, this broker has been able to beat all the big traditional brokers. Currently, Zerodha is the biggest stockbroker in India, based on the number of clients (over 15 lakh users), followed by ICICI Direct and HDFC securities ranking second and third.
Now, answering your question, Yes, Zerodha is safe and reliable. In fact, since origin, Zerodha has never faced any case of major violations from SEBI or any of the other exchanges. It is a profitable private company with no debts or liabilities. Here are a few points why Zerodha is safe and reliable for investors and traders.
- Zerodha is a zero-debt financial services company. There is no borrowing of any kind.
- There is no credit risk, less than 5% of Zerodha’s own capital is lent to customers in any form.
- Zerodha own funds in the business are greater than 25% of all client funds put together.
- Their ratio of ‘complaints to active clients’ is among the least on the exchange.
- Zerodha is profitable as a business and has enough reserves to sustain, even if there was an extended downturn in the economy.
Moreover, Zerodha is partnered with Central Depository Services Limited. CDSL’s main function is the holding securities either in certificated or uncertificated form, to enable the book-entry transfer of securities. Therefore, when it comes to the security of the shares in your demat account with Zerodha, you do not need to worry at all. The stockbrokers are just the agents of depositories.
Your stocks are actually held by central depositories and not by the depository participants (brokers). Therefore, even if something didn’t work out well with Zerodha, your stocks in the demat account are safely intact with CDSL. In short, Zerodha is completely legit and reliable for your trading or long-term investments in the Share market.
7. My experience of using Zerodha
It’s been over three years since I’m using Zerodha and I’m satisfied with the trading services provided by Zerodha.
Initially, I started with ICICI direct as my broker, but later I switched to Zerodha when I realized that I was paying way too much brokerages for my trading transactions.
Most beginners do not consider the brokerage charges while calculating the profits. I use to make the same mistake. And that’s why many times the final profits in my bank account (after deducting the brokerage and other charges) disappointed me as it was considerably lower than what I calculated in my head. I wish I had switched to a discount broker earlier as it could have saved me a lot of ‘unnecessary’ brokerages and moreover trading experience is even better on Zerodah. Nonetheless, I use Zerodha for making all my stock investments now.
Besides, there was one ‘cons’ of using Zerodha as a broker which bugged me in the past. And it was not having the facility for the customers to directly invest in Initial public offerings (IPOs) through the Zerodha dashboard. But this issue is also solved by Zerodha. Investors can now apply for IPOs directly within the Zerodha console. And the best part is that the process is really simple.
Finally, a lot of people complain that Zerodha doesn’t provide advisory services or buy/sell calls. I believe that one should never invest or trade based on the broker’s recommendation. There’s a conflict of interest here as the brokers will always make money when you trade and doesn’t matter whether you win or lose. Therefore, they might always motivate investors to trade frequently. Overall, Zerodha not giving advisory services doesn’t bother me. Moreover, they make us for these cons by providing educational initiates like Varsity.
8. How to open your trading & demat account with Zerodha?
Opening a demat and trading account with Zerodha is really fast and hassle-free. In fact, if you’ve all the documents, you can open your account and start trading within an hour.
Here are the documents required to open a demat and trading account at Zerodha: PAN CARD, Aadhar Card, 2 Passport size photos, Canceled cheque/ Saving bank account passbook. I will recommend keeping photocopies of all these documents ready before you apply for opening the accounts.
To open your trading & demat account at Zerodha, go to Zerodha website and click on ‘OPEN AN ACCOUNT’. Here is the direct link.
Note: You can find the detailed explanation on how to open your demat and trading account at Zerodha here.
9. Closing Thoughts
In the last decade, Zerodha has earned trust and respect among the trading population by providing reliable and technologically advanced trading services. It is definitely the largest discount broker in India. If you are looking to open your brokerage account with a reputable brand that offers low brokerages, and have a fast trading platform, Zerodha is definitely one of the best options.
That’s all for this post. I hope this Zerodha review is useful to you. If you have any additional queries regarding Zerodha or if you want to share your review of Zerodha, you can post it in our forum. I’ll be happy to answer your questions. Have a great day!
Kritesh (Tweet here) is the Founder & CEO of Trade Brains & FinGrad. He is an NSE Certified Equity Fundamental Analyst with +7 Years of Experience in Share Market Investing. Kritesh frequently writes about Share Market Investing and IPOs and publishes his personal insights on the market.
Hey Kritesh. Thank you for the review. I’ve worst experience with Motilal oswal and going to open account with Zerodha now.
Thank you for the comment, Sowmya. Can you also add what troubles you faced with Motilal Oswal so that our readers can know more?
Had a bad experience regarding investing my funds, wasn’t easy for me as I was scam severally. I lost almost all of my money until I came across a recovery expert named Jeff. He help and assisted me and helped in terms of recovery my funds . I got my funds recovered in just 4days with just little effort. I will highly recommend Jeff , he is sincere and honest in all way round he helped me got everything i lost.
visit jef on
WhatsApp. +84 94 767 1524
Email; jeffsilbert39 [at] gmai l.c om.
Purchasing mf is safe??
Hello
I want to buy stocks as investments and not for intraday trading. Which of the above services is suitable for me? I mean it has to be delivery, right?
Hi Shashwat. You can open your equity trading account with Zerodha and ignore the commodity account.
Great! Thanks
I want to open trading with you, since I am facing big brokerage charges with motilal in spite of their good services.
Whether anyone will attend over phone when I need?
Can we trade from nepal
Zerodha broker is now offering absolutely brokerage free since 3 years
They are not entirely free. Zerodha offers free equity investments but for intraday and all other trades, they charge ₹20 per trade.
Iam sorry to say all brokarages charging as my experience. They charging entry as well as exit even market price not matching.
Thanks for the post. Lots of confusion cleared. One thing I would like to know is, when you sell stocks in delivery,which were held in delivery for some time, demat charges are deducted Everytime ,why this is so…and what is the criteria for the amount for deduction? Please let me know.
Hi Bose. Zerodha takes zero brokerage while trading in delivery. However, you might have to pay some charges as there are other mandatory charges which the trader has to pay like STT, Exchange txn charge, SEBI charges, GST, etc. You can read about all the brokerage charges by Zerodha here: https://zerodha.com/brokerage-calculator#tab-equities I hope it helps. Cheers!
hey i love the site and posts
Thanks for the great review. Basically I have started trading with zerodha recently. Zerodha is one of the best discount broker in India. I’ll regularly follow these type of blogs to learn some new things. Keep posting. Please let me know for the upcoming posts.
Hi Ravi. Glad that you liked my review on Zerodha. Cheers!
Once the bank a/c is linked with demat ac how transaction takes place on trading and how safe it is?
You need to link your bank account to transfer funds. First, when you buy stocks, you’ll need funds from your bank. Second, when you book profit this amount is credited to the same bank. Further, it is totally safe to link your bank and with all stockbrokers, you will need to do the same. I hope it helps and this review on Zerodha is useful to you.
Hi Kritesh,
Firstly, please accept my wishes for your providing such a detailed research and approach towards a discount broker. However, recently I read about Algo Trading online and found to be very interesting. Can you suggest if it is feasible for a layman like me to get into it? If yes, how. Thanks
Hi Gaurav. Thank you for your kind comment. I’m not much involved with Algo-Trading. Therefore, I’ll try to find a guest author who can explain it for novice traders.
Hi Kritesh,
I’m an Overseas Citizen of India living in USA. I would like to invest in Indian
Markets primarily Stocks and Options. In the first place, am I allowed?
If so, please suggest a good, reliable Full Service Broker.
Thanking you Sir
Auro
Hi Auro. An NRI can invest in Indian stock market as per the rules set by the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). Many of Trade Brains’ NRI readers are using Zerodha as their broker and it works well for them. Here’s a link on how to open an account with Zerodha for NRI. I hope it helps.
Hi Kritesh ,
I have a stock & mutual fund portfolio which is not performing well and in RED for a long maintained in ICICI Direct( Saving – Demat & Trading ) but with little support to rationalize it.
Need your advise to prune it based on current market situation.
Thanks in advance for your quick revert.
Can we connect throuhg your Whatsapp: (+91)-9834938257 / Email: info@tradebrains.in ?
Sure, you can reach me out over email/phone!
Thanks, Kritesh Abhishek For Genuine review of Zerodha….
You’re welcome
If you are considering opening an account with zerodah for option trading… Please clarify with them on the following issues. My personal experience with zerodah has been horrific..
1 They do not allow you to buy OTM options
2 Today 22 June 2020 I (client code RD4340) bought few ATM puts in the morning and i wanted to add more puts when the market went up, on the same put level so as to average my buying cost .Zerodah says order rejected inspite of having full money in my account..Zerodah system message says strike price is outside the allowed range… I enquired later with zerodah and came to know from zerodah as when Bank nifty moves 500 pints the zerodah system Suspends trading in options which are Plus Minus 500 points…I lost big money because of this .As the market reversed from the support where i had tried to place the purchase order ..
3 One cannot use any viable option strategy as you can trade only one leg of your strategy for the other legs zerodah will say the strike price is above the allowed range
I opened my account 1 week back… realized it late after losing money… better understand how their system operates for your strategy then start trading on zerodah… Else as the name suggest your capital will become zero da…they promise something on account opening and they finally do exactly the opposite… Zerodah platform is not for option traders… they maybe good for investment etc, but i do not have any personal experience so cannot comment on the same..
lastly i transferred my money out of zerodah and shifted to another broker… not naming the new broker here as
1) not sure what mess up these new jokers will create ,maybe only comment after 3 months
2) do not want you guys to join the broker and make this broker another shit hole like zerodah
3) You may think i am bad mouthing zerdodah market another broker
Sorry to hear about that. And thank you for your honest review of Zerodha platform. I hope things work out well with your new broker.
Thanks for giving very useful information
Hii I’m Krishna I have zerodha account I can’t add money equity. segments showing only commodity I will take support create ticket they said I have do rekyc. Rekyc I’m done 48h after I will open the problem still same segments commodity only
As you mentioned in your blog, Zerodha now provides a 3-in-1 account, provided that one should open an account with IDFC First bank. My question is What type of bank account one should open with IDFC? Because IDFC provides many types of account opening in their site(https://www.idfcfirstbank.com/banking-products.html). What’s the price do I have to if my account is not 3-in-1??
How to transfer your Demat account from ICICI or any other Trading company to Zerodha ?
Hi Tushar. You can open a demat account at Zerodha, transfer all the shares to the new account, and close the older one at ICICI. If you want an online transfer of shares, it can be simply done using CDSL. I hope it helps!
Hi Kritesh! Very nice article about Zerodha. You have included each and everything that is required. Appreciated.
I am Indian citizen temporarily living abroad can I open a trading account from abroad and how
Hi Kritesh, I am very impressed with your crisp, clear opinions and advice. For the first time in my life, I plan to wet my hands in on-line stock trading (both intra-day and otherwise). Can I start off with a corpus of Rs.10000? What is the minimum investment mandated? Can I link it with my regular SB account or should I start a dedicated account? Thx for your response.
I like very much for this blog.
Really very good information.
impressive! Informative post, Thanks for posting
I sold 8 shares @632.5 by placing GTT. I should have received Rs.5060 but received almost Rs.1000 less. What are these charges. Even in my next sale I saw there was around 800 less. What are these hidden charges.
zerodha is a safe to use and for really we trust him for use and trading itself, and also for share a our details to open a account on zerodha . Becoz I see reviews of zerodha is a bad reviews on it so it is really safe or not .so where I have to intrady or not in zerodha.
zerodha platform blocks some of the penny shares in-spite customer is willing to purchase. I want to open a demat account, who allows all penny shares.
If any demat account allows all kinds of penny share , please let me know.
Hi Kritesh,
Thanks for the review. One query : Does Zerodha have the facility of linking more than one bank account to the trading account ?
Thanks,
Zerodha making life difficult for their users, potential customers should be aware of their trickery, after my first withdrawal i put more money to my account, just over 19k usd, I made good profit and when I try withdraw they keep asking for several documents, which I provided but no approval, woke up one day and I noticed the closed my account with no refund, I had to reach out to a recovery expert on apexchargeback, c0m to help me get my money, in less than a week apexchargeback get back my deposit and profit and I am very grateful. Victims are advices to file a case before it’s too late
i lost to a scam company online and i lost $17,900 but i was lucky to recover my lost funds with the help of Mr Jeff Silbert on mail and whatsapp {jeffsilbert39(@)gmail. co m with little effort from my end he was able to help me +84 94 767 1524.
Nowadays people want more money by working from home or doing less work. And that’s why people are moving towards trading, although it is very important to have enough information in it. Dear Kritesh Abhishek, I hope this article of yours will help people. Thank you!
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I wonder if there is any form of humanity to these unregulated broker platform. They made me deposit more and more just to get a withdrawal, but it was all a lie. I lost almost my savings to them until I sought help elsewhere and I was able to recover my funds through the help of Gavin ray and I’m glad they did, his w h a t s a a p +1 3 52 3 22 2 096
Had a bad experience regarding investing my funds, wasn’t easy for me as I was scam severally. I lost almost all of my money until I came across a recovery expert named Jeff. He help and assisted me and helped in terms of recovery my funds . I got my funds recovered in just 4days with just little effort. I will highly recommend Jeff , he is sincere and honest in all way round he helped me got everything i lost.
visit jef on
WhatsApp. +84 94 767 1524
Email; jeffsilbert39 @ gmai l.c om.
I want to invest in good IPOs,and invest for long term in becoming companies like infosys, bajaj,hdfc,,will you recommend me about indian stocks
i was deceived by an online scammer and i lost all my funds but i was lucky to come across a recovery expert by the mail zattrecoverypro1 @ gmail com and i was able to recover all my lost funds all thanks to him and his team. if you have similar issues you can contact him and thank me later stay blessed
Thank you for providing detailed information about Zerodha. Your articles are very useful for beginners like me. Keep writing. Wish you great success!
This company is not honest. It’s all deceitful and fake. I noticed many figures on my account weren’t adding up, so a little investigation revealed they were helping themselves to my investment. I found this disturbing and wanted out, but they made it difficult. However, Mrs. Olivia and her company did a tremendous job and helped get my money out successfully; you can visit Olivia’s company email oliviatrader44@”gmail ,com or WhatsApp her directly at +1 (931) 219-9184 for a quick conversation.
can we open zerodha through turtle.one of my friend sent link for openingdemat countat zerodha.iwa trading with HDFC sec but for 3 yrs found they earn more than me. delivery charges very high
As far as I’m concerned, Zerodha’s technical base is wack
Zerodha has made it mandatory for every customer to open a Deamt account. For investments in mutual funds, no demat account should be necessary. By making it mandatory they are forcing customers to open demat account and charge. I have exhausted all options to speak to their senior management with no avail, hence this review. All potential customers need to watch out. My best decision was moving my investment back to benarmstrong trades, where I have recover my losses with no restrictions. Zerodha should learn.