Which Broker is Best for Stock Trading in India?

Looking for a best stock broker to start your investment journey in Share Market?

There are more than 100 brokers in India which provides stock trading facilities. However, who meets your needs best??

In this article, we will try to find out this.

What are Stock Brokers in Share Market?

Before we do comparison and find a perfect broker for you, let’s quickly understand who are Brokers in share market.

On Exchanges, where buy and sell transactions related to stocks take place, small investors like us are not allowed to buy or sell any share of a company directly. If we want to invest in stock market and buy or sell a share, we can do so by the help of only an intermediary (middle men).

In stock market language, that middle men is called Broker. Stock Brokers are the ones who will help you to buy and sell shares. For this service, they will charge you something.

So, now we know about who are Stock brokers, let’s see who are the Top Brokers in India.

Top 5 Brokers in India for Share Trading

Let’s know the Top 5 Brokers and try to find which will suit you best as per your profile.

Top Brokers in Indian Stock Market are

• Zerodha

• Upstox

• Angel Broking

• ICICI Direct

• Groww

Here is a Quick Guide for you to decide which broker will be best for you. But if you have time, read on the article to its end for detailed comparison.

If You Are Starting with less than 15,000 rupees,

Groww is a suitable platform to start your journey. Upstox is a good option only when you are going to do mostly Intraday (Buy and sell on same day). Buying and holding up stocks for weeks or months will be expensive in Upstox if your Investment amount is low. Upstox charges too much when you sell shares which you bought some days ago. That is not a case with Groww.

For Investment between Rs 15,000 to Rs 50,000 investment,

Groww and Zerodha, both are great platforms to start investing money in stock market. Upstox condition applies here too. Intraday will be good to do. But investment in shares for several days can be expensive in Upstox.

For Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh investment,

Angel Broking, Zerodha, Groww and Upstox, all four will be good Brokers for you. If you lie in this category, you can pick any platform and open your account with them. All are trustable platforms.

If you are going to make many transactions where you will buy shares for several days of weeks, then you can avoid Upstox in this bracket too. If you are going to do a lot of Intraday Trading, then you can avoid Angel Broking here.

Zerodha is more suitable platform for you. Holding up shares for several days, weeks, years or Intraday, both will attract least charges in Zerodha. Their platform is user friendly.

For above 1 lakh Capital,

Zerodha, Angel Broking, Groww, Upstox and ICICI Direct, all are great platforms for you. You can start your stock market journey with any broker.

Let’s have a quick look at which broker has what number of users and some other details for better comparison.

In the table, complaint ratio indicates Percentage of Complaints against Total number of Active Clients. It gives us a clue about what percentage of customers faced problems or issues while trading on the respective Broker’s Platform. Higher the percentage, more the people faced problems.

Application Ratings of Stock Brokers

If we talk about the User Interface and customer feedback of the Mobile Apps issued by Brokers, Upstox and Groww has been rated as the best apps. That means, they are easy to use and most customers are happy with how these apps work.

Zerodha and Angel too have a good rating on Play Store. But in case of ICICI Direct, rating is 3.8. That is much below than its competitors.

Now, let’s know about the brokers briefly. Thereafter, we will compare these brokers on some parameters.

Zerodha

Incorporated in 2010, Zerodha has seen a wonderful journey since its inception. Within 11 years, company has turned as the Biggest Stock Broker company in India. This achievement itself speaks about what kind of service they are providing.

Zerodha is a discount broker which means they wouldn’t provide you any Advisory services. However, advisory services are just add-on or supplementary kind of services which really doesn’t requires. Company is purely focused on making buying and selling process of shares as simple as possible for the users.

Upstox

RKSV Ltd, the company who operates upstox, also started operations in 2010. However, this platform came into light when they received significant investment from Ratan Tata (Chairman of Tata Group) along with other Investors in 2016.

Since 2016, upstox has seen an amazing growth led by focus on making their platforms fully digital and heavy expenditure on marketing. Today, Upstox is 2nd Biggest Stock Broker after Zerodha, in terms of Total users connected with the Upstox platform.

Angel Broking

Incorporated in 1996, Angel Broking (now Angel One) has seen a lot of ups and downs in its journey. Traditionally, Angel broking has been a Full Service Broker offering Advisory Services + Stock Broking Services to its customers.

As Advisory services requires a lot of research and engagement of more employees, Angle Broking had comparatively higher charges in the Broking Industry in past. But today, they charge similar to what other Brokers charge to remain competitive in the market. Beside of competitive charges, you also get advisory services in Angel Broking.

Zerodha and Upstox doesn’t provide these services. So, if you are looking to start investing in shares with someone else tips, Angel Broking is a good option to start. However, we will see the detailed comparison of Top 5 Brokers soon.

ICICI Direct

ICICI Direct, subsidiary of ICICI securities (part of ICICI Group) was incorporated in 1995. The major benefit that this broking house provides is Safety and Trust. Today, ICICI Bank has a Big name in Financial Sector.

Banking Customers of ICICI Bank lovers their services. ICICI also has a significant presence in Insurance business. These things goes in favor of ICICI Direct as you would have a Big Name behind your Account who would be holding your shares securely.

Groww

Among Top 5 Brokers, Groww is the latest entrant in the market. Though they had already incorporated in 2016, they started providing stock broking services in 2020. Company has spent a lot on its technology to make their broking platform fully digital and marketing practices focused on onboarding new investors on their platform.

Groww charges are competitive in the Industry which makes them one of the best platforms for Share Market Investing. As of now, more than 15 lakh users are connected with company who are investing money in Stock Market using Groww’s platform.

Now before we start comparison, let’s have a clear idea about what are Trading and Demat Account so that we could justify the best broker for us easily.

Trading vs Demat Account

To do any transaction in Stock market, you would require a Trading Account and a Demat Account. Trading Account is simply the platform of Broker which helps you to make Buy and Sell transactions in Stock Market. Without Trading Account, you wouldn’t be able to communicate Exchanges and other sellers/buyers in a stock. When you wouldn’t be able to communicate anyone, how would you buy or sell Shares? Trading Account helps you in this Task.

Demat Account is simply a Digital Locker where all your shares are stored in Digital Form. Demat Accounts are handled by Depositories and not Brokers. In India, two main Depositories are CDSL and NSDL. Your Demat account will be managed by either CDSL or NSDL. Both are trustable and secure platforms.

Allowing Brokers to handle your shares can be risky and there wouldn’t be any centralised system. Therefore, Depositories handle this work.

While opening a Trading account with any broker, a seperate account is opened for solely storing yours shares digitally and that account is called Demat Account. Your Demat account would be connected to your Trading Account automatically by your Broker. So, you wouldn’t be required to handle Demat and Trading Account separately. You would required to handle just Trading Account.

Now, when we know about Trading and Demat Accounts, let’s start our comparison.

Account Charges in Different Stock Brokers

Account Opening Charges with Stock Broker

Account Opening Charges are what you will have to pay when you open an account with Broker. This charge is levied for only first time. When you would open the account, Broker will open both Trading and Demat Account for you.

As per above data, only Zerodha and ICICI Direct charges ₹200 and ₹300, respectively for Account Opening. Other Brokers doesn’t charges anything for this.

Account Maintenance Charges

Account Maintenance Charge or AMC are charges which will have to be paid regularly to keep your account active. In the table, AMC charges are in per year format. These charges will be deducted from your account every year.

Upstox and Groww are comparatively new platforms. To attract more investors to their platforms, both doesn’t charge anything for AMC.

Charges related to AMC of Zerodha and Angel are similar. Both charge you between 200-400. In case of ICICI Direct, if you are opting for Neo Plan, ICICI charges nearly ₹300+GST for every year as AMC. If you opt for other plans, you are likely to pay ₹700 for AMC.

ICICI Direct offers several different plans having different charges. We will shortly understand about their plans.

ICICI Direct and Angel Broking waive off AMC charges for first year. It means, you wouldn’t be charged AMC fees for the first year in them. Only from 2nd year or say 1st year onwards, AMC charges will be deducted from your account.

Now, let’s move forward to delivery charges of brokers.

Delivery vs Intraday in Stock Market

Delivery Charge is what you will have to pay if you buy shares today and doesn’t want to sell the shares on the same day.

If you buy shares of a particular company and sell all the bought quantity on the same day, then this kind of transaction is called Intraday. We will soon compare the charges for Intraday of these brokers. Note that Delivery and Intraday charges are different.

If you bought the shares today, doesn’t want to sell them today and have decided to hold them for 2 days, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year or Infinity period, you will be levied Delivery charge. That is one time charge.

It will be charged when you buy the shares. Then, your delivery shares would go to your Demat account. Shares that you don’t sell on the same day when you bought them are stored in Demat account. Until, you wouldn’t sell these shares, you wouldn’t charged Delivery charge anymore. When you will sell these shares, that time, you will be levied delivery charge again.

Upstox and Groww were providing Free of Cost Accounts. They were not charging anything for Account Opening and Account Maintenance. However, they also have to earn money from somewhere. So, against free accounts, they will be recovering their money by Delivery charge.

Delivery Charges in Stock Brokers

In case of Upstox and ICICI Direct, Delivery charge is quite high. In Upstox, you would have to pay ₹20 or 2.5% whichever is lower.

Understand it by this example

If you buy shares worth ₹400, that will incur Delivery charge of ₹10 (400×2.5%). Because that is below ₹20, you would be charged ₹10 as Delivery fees.

If you buy shares worth ₹4000, then that will incur delivery charge of ₹100 (400×2.5%). Because that is higher than ₹20, you would be charged ₹20 as Delivery fees.

Comparatively, ICICI Direct charges lesser Delivery fees and Groww much lesser.

In case of ICICI Direct, they were charging for Account opening too. And Delivery charge is also there. This makes ICICI Direct little bit costlier for Beginners who are looking to invest small amount in stock market like below ₹50,000.

One negative thing about ICICI Direct delivery charges is that, they charge a fixed percentage and not a variable, unlike in case of Upstox. Whatever amount of shares you buy, you will have to pay fixed percentage of delivery charge that is likely to be 0.55%.

Groww Delivery charges are quite affordable as compared to Upstox and ICICI Direct for small investors who are looking to invest below ₹50,000.

Zerodha and Angel Broking doesn’t charges you anything for Delivery charge. That gives them edge here.

In case of Zerodha, you will have to pay ₹200 for only 1 time as the account opening fees and ₹300+GST every year to keep your account active. And then, you wouldn’t be required to pay any Delivery charge. Complete freedom from this fees.

In Angel Broking, they even charges you just ₹200+GST every year and that’s it. Complete freedom from Delivery charges.

Brokerage Plan Structure of ICICI Direct

ICICI Direct offers three category of Brokerage Plans for its users. If you don’t select any plan, then default one is i-secure where Delivery and Intraday Charges are quite high.

Then comes your other two categories. First one is Prime plans which are designed for those investors who will frequently do Delivery transactions. Under Prime plans, depending upon the plan you choose, their delivery brokerage ranges from 0.15% to 0.27%.

As compared to other brokers, this delivery charge is little high considering the fact that this is fixed charged and not change even if you buy shares for Delivery in Big Amount.

Then comes your neo plan, which is designed for investors who frequently do Intraday. Flat ₹20 would be charged for any size of Intraday Transaction. Compared to other brokers, Intraday brokerage in neo plans looks quite competitive and affordable. However in neo plan, Delivery brokerage is 0.55% which makes this plan favorable for only Intraday Transactions and not Delivery Transactions.

DP Charges

Beside of Delivery charge, DP Charges are also levied when you are doing delivery trade i.e buying and holding the shares for more than 1 day. However, DP charges will be deducted from your account only when you would sell those delivery shares. No DP charge when you buy that shares.

This charge will be levied by every Broker. So, you can’t avoid them. DP charges are quite similar of every player. Brokers may charge you between ₹15-30 for single sell transaction. Therefore, this criteria to select best broker for us can be avoided.

Now, to simplify the things around delivery charges and see how different brokers charge different delivery fees, Try try this Calculator.

Enter your Buy Quantity, Buy Price and sell price to see the Total Delivery charges of different brokers. Your Turnover is equal to Buy Value (i.e Quantity×Buy Price) + Sell Value (i.e Quantity×Sell Price).

Delivery Charge Calculator

Now, let’s compare their Intraday Charges to finalise our Stock Broker comparison and arrive at conclusion.

Intraday Charges in Different Indian Stock Brokers

As of now, Intraday Transaction in stocks is something where you can’t avoid brokerage charges. All Top 5 Brokers will charge you brokerage fees for Intraday.

One thing that is similar in most of the brokers here is that all have similar Intraday Brokerage Structure.

Brokers would charge you maximum ₹20 for the Intraday Transactions. This will be on per order. If you buy some shares of a company and sell them on the same day, you will incur total ₹40 brokerage. ₹20 for Buying and ₹20 for selling the shares.

However, if you are going to do Intraday with a very small amount, then some brokers will charge you a less brokerage.

Lets say, you buy 100 shares of ABC @25 in morning. That is equal to Rs 2,500 amount (100×25). You sold the same 100 shares @ 26 by afternoon. That is equal to Rs 2,600.

Here, it is your Intraday Transaction as you are buying a stock and selling it on the same day. To calculate Intraday brokerage, we will require to know the Turnover.

Turnover is equal to Buy Value + Sell Value. In our example, Turnover will be equal to ₹2,500 + ₹2,600 = ₹5,100.

Use this Intraday Charge Calculator to check how different brokers will charge you for this turnover. Try with different turnovers.

Intraday Charge Calculator

As your turnover increases, disparity of charges will reduce among the Brokers.

Conclusion

So, we have done all our comparison and we now have a conclusion about who will suit you best.

Plans to Invest upto ₹15,000 in Stock Market?

If you have initially planned to invest upto Rs 15000 in stock market, then Groww and Upstox are preferable platforms to start your journey.

As your amount is low, no opening and maintenance charges of Groww and Upstox will help you to save from much of the regular charges. With these two, you would be able to use much of your money in the purpose of stock market trading and not for paying charges.

Upstox charges for Delivery trades are significant. Therefore, if you budget is under Rs 15,000 and plans to mostly do Intraday Trading, then only, Upstox will be a good option. Otherwise, if you plan to do both Intraday and Delivery based transactions frequently, then Groww is a more suitable platform for you.

If you are not going to do a lot of Intraday (hardly 3-4 trades in a month), then you can also choose Angel Broking platform if your budget is atleast Rs 15,000.

Zerodha will charge you Rs 200 for Account Opening and Rs 300+GST for annual Account Maintenance charge. Account opening is a one time charge. But maintenance charge will incur every year. So, this makes them unfavorable for those who have plans to invest less than Rs 15,000.

Plans to invest 15,000 to 50,000 in Stock Market?

If you will initially start with Rs 15,000 to Rs 50,000, then Zerodha is a great platform for you. Their Trading charges are lowest in the Industry when you are investing small amount.

From Rs 15,000-50,000 bracket, Groww is also a good platform to start. However, they have recently started their operations. There is a possibility that you may incur higher bugs and less facilities in their application.

So, if you are starting with Rs 15,000-50,000 rupees, then you can go with better established platforms who have been in the Industry for more than 5 years and have lowest charges. Zerodha is one of them.

Upto 50000, Upstox is also a good option only for those who will frequently do Intraday and will be doing few number of Delivery trades. If you are starting with less than 50,000 and open an account with Upstox for primarily Delivery transactions, then you may feel the pain of delivery trades many times. That wouldn’t happen if you start with Groww or Zerodha.

If you try to use Angle Broking Platform by investing less than Rs 50,000, you might feel the pain of high charges in them. So, they may not be as favorable in this bracket.

Plan to start Stock Investment with 50,000 or more?

Now, if you plan to start stock market investing with atleast Rs 50,000 or more, then Angel Broking is a good platform to start. Special feature of Angel broking is that, you will get a lot of Stock suggestions and recommendations there. Above 50000, you are unlikely to feel the pain of high charges.

Above 50000 budget, Upstox is also a good platform for both Intraday and Delivery Transactions. Though Delivery charges are high in Upstox, you are unlikely to feel the pain of that if you start with atleast Rs 50,000.

Zerodha and Groww are already a good option if you are starting with above 50,000 rupees in stock market.

Planning to invest atleast 1 lakh or more in Stock Market?

If you are investing above Rs 1,00,000, then ICICI Direct is also a good platform. Considering their charges, if you open an account in ICICI Direct when you are investing just Rs 10,000 or 20000, you may incur a lot of charges as compared to your potential earnings.

Angel Broking, Zerodha, Groww and Upstox are already a suitable platforms if you lies in 1 lakh+ bracket.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if Brokers like Zerodha, Upstox, Groww run away, shuts down or goes bankrupt?

We are investing our money through their platforms and don’t even know where they are located or where are the physical branches of them. So, this kind of question coming to our mind is quite normal and reasonable.

There were events in past where Investors had to suffer a lot because their brokers did some frauds with the holdings of their clients or run away.

However, day by day, Stock Market Investment regulations are getting stronger in our country. In past, it could be easy to execute some wrong doing in the stock broking business. But today, that is not the case.

You can safely invest with Zerodha, Upstox, Groww and other similar platforms.

Zerodha is a profitable company. Upstox has been supported by renowned investors like Ratan Tata. Groww too has been backed by some well-known investors.

If we talk about Angel Broking, then as we already discussed earlier, they are in the stock broking industry for more than 20 years. They are a profitable firm. Situations like Bankruptcy or Shut down are no where possible for them.

So, there should be no worry if you invest money in stock market using their platforms.

While you open an account with any broker, you are given option to use OTP kind of Verification process to sell the shares or simply go with Power of Attorney.

If you don’t go with Power of Attorney and choose OTP format, then you are automatically avoiding most of the fraud risks.

So, should we avoid Power of Attorney?

What is Power of Attorney in Stock Market and its Uses?

Power of Attorney (POA) is a legal agreement between you (Investor) and the Stock Broker. When you sign the POA document and send it to your broker, the broker will have RIGHT to automatically take the shares out of your Demat Account.

As we have discussed earlier in this article, Demat account is opened with seperate company, either CDSL or NSDL. Only these two firms operate the Demat Accounts in India.

If you buy some shares, then that shares will be credited and stored in the Demat account without extra verification process. But when you want to sell that shares, these shares will obviously required to be taken out from the Demat Account. However this time, CDSL or NSDL will allow exit of shares with complete verification process only.

TPIN Verification & POA

If you choose OTP format, then you will have to generate a TPIN (kind of OTP) whenever you want to allow your broker to take the shares out from the Demat Account and execute your sell Order.

But when POA is signed, you just need to submit your Sell Order with Broker. As you have already authorised your broker to take the shares out from the Demat Account (through POA), you wouldn’t be required to generate TPIN whenever you want to sell some shares.

This happens in case of only Delivery Trades and not Intraday Trades. In delivery trades, your shares are stored in Demat Account. As Intraday simply means for single day, shares bought are stored for that short period with the Broker and not in Demat. If you want to keep and hold the shares for 1+ days, then only the bought shares are transferred to your Demat Account.

POA is primarily for Delivery Trades!

When you are doing Delivery Trades frequently, then POA is considered a good choice because it saves time from generating TPIN everytime and sell transactions of shares can be done immediately.

But if you are doing or will do delivery trades rarely and would sell delivery shares hardly 1-3 times in a month, then POA can be avoided. Without POA, even if your broker run away, your shares are likely to be in a safe position with CDSL or NSDL. You would be able to receive your shares and transfer them to a new Broker.

What are the Top 15 Brokers in India?

In India, we can find many brokers providing stock trading facilities. We looked at only Top 5 names. Here the names of Top 15 stock brokers.

1. Zerodha
2. Upstox
3. Angel One
4. ICICI Direct
5. Groww
6. 5Paisa
7. HDFC Securities
8. Kotak Securities
9. Motital Oswal
10. Axis Direct
11. IIFL
12. Paytm Money
13. Edelweiss
14. Alice Blue
15. Bajaj Finserv

These brokers have been mentioned on the bases of Active Clients/Users with each broker.

What kind of charges are imposed in Stock Market Trading?

During trading of stocks (whether Intraday or Delivery), you will have to pay some charges which will be automatically deducted from your Fund Balance visible in Trading Account (Broker’s Platform).

In article, we have already discussed in detail about how Brokerage charges (fees of Broker for making stock transactions) are charged during Delivery Trades and Intraday Trades. We have also discussed about DP charges. However, along with Brokerage and DP fees, some other charges too are levied.

STT or State Transaction Tax in Stock Market

STT is a type of Tax charged on every purchase and sale transaction of shares. It is in percentage terms and likely to be below 0.1% of Transaction/turnover value.

If you are buying 10 shares of a company at ₹500 per share, then your transaction or turnover value would be ₹5,000 (500×10).

Exchange Transaction Charge

Then, we are charged for Exchange Transaction charges. It is charged by the exchanges for providing you a universal platform where you can buy and sell the shares. In other words, it is the fees of Exchanges like BSE and NSE. Like STT, Exchanges Transaction charge is also charged in a very small percentage.

SEBI Turnover Fees

Then, while we are making transaction in shares through exchanges, we are also charged for SEBI turnover fees.

This is basically to fund the operations of SEBI (Securities Exchange Board of India). They are the Regulator of Capital Markets. So, this charge helps SEBI to keep performing its duties.

GST or Goods and Service Tax

At last, we are charged for GST (Goods and Service Tax) at the rate of 18%. GST is imposed on the charges that we recently discussed above like SEBI turnover fees, Exchange Transaction charges, Brokerage.

In our Intraday Brokerage Calculator and Delivery Brokerage Calculator that have been added above in the article, A to Z charges have been included in them while calculating the final cost that will be charged by every broker. You can use that Free calculator to find and see which broker will charge you what?