Intraday brokerage charges

The plain answer

Intraday brokerage is the broker’s own fee for executing the two orders that open and close a position. At Upstox it is ₹20 per executed order or 0.1% of the order value, whichever is lower. At Zerodha it is 0.03% or ₹20, whichever is lower. At 5paisa it is a flat ₹20 with no percentage at all. Whatever the wording, it is one line on the contract note, and on a round trip it is charged twice: once when you buy, once when you square off.

The rest of the note carries charges the broker does not keep. STT is 0.025% on the sell side of an intraday trade. Stamp duty is 0.003% on the buy side. NSE transaction charges are 0.00307% per trade on both legs. The SEBI turnover fee is ₹10 per crore, IPFT ₹0.01 per crore, and GST is 18% on the brokerage, the exchange charges and the IPFT. Intraday charges on a demat account are therefore never just brokerage, and on a full round trip the statutory lines can be larger than the fee you thought you were comparing.

Turnover is the reason. A squared-off position is bought and sold inside a day, so the statutory lines are computed twice on the same money, while the brokerage is capped. On a round trip of about ₹92,500 a leg the two ₹20 brokerage charges are equal to the entire statutory stack; above that size the taxes are the bigger half of the bill, and below it the brokerage is. The section below works that arithmetic out in full, because it is the single most useful number on this page.

How brokers price intraday

Three models appear on Indian rate cards. The flat model charges a fixed fee per executed order with no percentage: 5paisa publishes ₹20 flat for intraday on its charges page. The percentage model charges a share of order value with no ceiling, which is how most plan-based schedules are built: ICICI Direct’s default MoneySaver plan prices intraday at 0.029%, and the fee rises with every rupee of order value. The hybrid, which most discount brokers publish, compares the two for each order and charges the lower.

The table below is the published intraday rate at eight brokers, read from their own rate cards on 16 September 2026. The crossover column is the order value at which the percentage and the cap produce the same amount, worked out in the next section.

Four of the eight price delivery and intraday identically on the same line: Groww, Angel One, Share.Market and 5paisa. Where that is the case, the brokerage cell on a contract note reads the same for both, and the difference between an intraday trade and a delivery trade sits entirely in the statutory lines and the DP charge. The other four separate the two, and Upstox prices delivery as a flat ₹20 with no percentage alternative published, which makes the intraday rate the only one with a percentage in it.

Two details in the table deserve a sentence each. Groww, Angel One and Share.Market publish a minimum brokerage, which is a floor under the fee rather than a cap over it: at 0.1%, the ₹5 minimum applies below ₹5,000 and the ₹2 minimum below ₹2,000, and above those sizes the percentage governs until the cap takes over. And Alice Blue publishes both a flat ₹20 headline for all segments and this intraday rate on its pricing page; the pricing-page figure is the one used here.

Where the cap takes over

The crossover is a single division: the cap divided by the rate. With a ₹20 cap and a 0.1% rate, ₹20 divided by 0.001 is ₹20,000. Below that order value the percentage produces less than ₹20 and is charged; above it the percentage produces more and the cap is charged instead. The same division runs on every rate on the page, all of them as published on 16 September 2026:

What the cap is worth is easier to see in rupees than in rates. At 0.1%, a ₹50,000 order computes ₹50 of brokerage, and the cap charges ₹20, so the cap saves ₹30 on that one order. A ₹5,00,000 order computes ₹500 against the same ₹20, a saving of ₹480. At 0.05% the same ₹5,00,000 order computes ₹250 and still pays ₹20. At 0.03% it computes ₹150 and still pays ₹20.

The consequence is worth stating plainly, because it is what a capped rate card actually promises: every intraday order above its crossover pays the same brokerage, whatever its size. A ₹10,00,000 round trip at Upstox pays the same ₹40 of brokerage as a ₹25,000 round trip, because both legs of both trades sit above ₹20,000 and the cap applies on each. Size stops mattering to the broker's fee the moment the cap takes over, and the only lines that keep growing with the order are the statutory ones.

All of this is checkable on your own contract note, and an intraday note makes the check straightforward because it has no DP line to reconcile. Multiply the order value by the published rate for the segment and compare it with the flat fee: the smaller of the two is the brokerage that should appear, and on anything above the crossover it should read the same amount on every order you place that day. On the sell leg, multiply the sell value by 0.025% and compare it with the STT line. If the two multiplications match their lines, the note is arithmetic you can trust, and a mismatch is a question for broker support with the note as the evidence.

The full stack on a round trip

Here is the sequence a squared-off intraday position actually follows, and the charge lines that attach to it at each step.

Every charge on that sequence applies to one leg or to both. The table sets out which, using the statutory rates published on Upstox’s own rate card and read on 16 September 2026.

Read down the last column and the shape of an intraday bill appears: one charge that applies to each order, two that apply to one leg each, four that apply to both counting GST, and one that never applies at all. The next section puts rupee amounts on every line.

Two round trips, line by line

Both examples use a ₹20 brokerage on each leg, which is what a capped rate card charges once the order is above its crossover, and both use the statutory rates in the table above, read on 16 September 2026. A buy and a sell of the same value are assumed, so the two legs are the same size; amounts are rounded to the nearest paisa, so a column may differ from unrounded arithmetic by one.

First, a ₹50,000 round trip. The buy leg carries no STT, ₹1.50 of stamp duty at 0.003%, ₹1.54 of NSE transaction charges at 0.00307%, ₹0.05 of SEBI fee, a negligible IPFT and ₹3.88 of GST. The sell leg swaps the stamp duty for ₹12.50 of STT at 0.025%, which is the second largest line on the trade after the brokerage itself.

Brokerage is ₹40 of the ₹64.94 total, about 62%. On this size of trade the capped fee is still the largest single item, and the sell leg costs ₹11 more than the buy leg, which is exactly the ₹12.50 of STT the sell leg carries less the ₹1.50 of stamp duty the buy leg carries instead.

Second, a ₹5,00,000 round trip. The same two ₹20 fees, the same rates, ten times the turnover. Stamp duty becomes ₹15, NSE transaction charges ₹15.35 a leg, the SEBI fee ₹0.50 a leg, and on the sell side STT becomes ₹125, which is more than six times the brokerage on that leg.

The brokerage stays at ₹40 while the total grows to ₹224.42, so the fee the broker keeps falls from about 62% of the bill to about 18%. Ten times the order size produced less than four times the cost, and the growth is almost entirely tax. That is the arithmetic behind the crossover figure: past a certain size, an intraday trade is a tax cost with a small brokerage attached rather than the other way round.

How the share of brokerage falls with size

Putting the two examples beside two smaller ones shows the pattern without any further working. Every row uses a ₹20 brokerage on each leg, which is what a capped rate card charges above the crossover, and the statutory rates used in the tables above.

The brokerage column never moves, which is the whole argument for a capped rate card, and every rupee of growth sits in the statutory column. A trader who trades the same number of round trips at a larger size does not pay more brokerage for it; the tax bill is what changes, and it changes in proportion to the turnover. That is the line to watch when a strategy’s costs are estimated at small size and then applied to larger positions.

What does not apply

Two things that belong on a delivery trade never appear on a squared-off intraday position.

• No DP charge. A DP charge is levied when shares are debited from your demat account, and an intraday position never reaches the depository. Upstox’s rate card lists ₹20 per scrip per day on delivery sells and no DP charge at all for intraday, futures and options. Groww’s pricing table shows the same ₹0 for all F&O and intraday segments, and Angel One states that no DP charge applies to equity intraday, equity futures or equity options. On a delivery sell the DP charge would be ₹20 plus GST per scrip per day; on intraday there is no scrip movement to charge for.
• No T+1 settlement. Indian equity settlement runs on T+1, the next working day, and it is the step that moves shares between demat accounts and triggers the DP charge. An intraday position is closed before the trading day ends, so it never enters settlement at all. Only the money moves, and only inside the trading account: the buy debits it, the square-off credits it, and the difference is what you keep or lose.

The absence of those two lines is worth remembering when intraday and delivery are compared on brokerage alone. The comparison that matters is the whole bill, and the account each trade touches is the reason the bills differ. The roles of the two accounts are set out on the demat versus trading account page.

The costs that catch intraday traders

Brokerage and statutory charges are the predictable part of an intraday bill. The lines that surprise people are the ones that follow a decision rather than an order.

Auto square-off fees. If a position is still open at the broker’s cut-off, the system closes it and charges for the service in addition to the ordinary brokerage. The published figures below were read on 16 September 2026.

The fee is small next to the loss that usually accompanies it, and that is the point: a square-off fee is charged when the position has already gone wrong or was forgotten. At Upstox, ₹75 plus GST works out to ₹88.50, more than four times the ₹20 brokerage on the square-off order itself. A trader who squares off manually pays none of it, and the published cut-off time in the broker’s app is the number that decides whether the fee applies.

Delayed payment charges. An intraday loss has to be funded, and if the trading account does not have the balance on the settlement day, interest starts. Groww publishes 0.05% per day, inclusive of GST, as simple interest compounded monthly, along with cash shortfall charges of 0.045% per day. Angel One publishes 1.5% per month, levied every 15 days. Groww’s rate is the easier one to size: 0.05% of ₹50,000 is ₹25 a day, so a week of funding that gap costs ₹175, nearly three times the ₹64.94 of charges on a ₹50,000 round trip. The wider list sits on the hidden charges page.

UPI-mandate brokerage. One published funding rule changes the brokerage itself. Groww states that orders funded from a UPI Mandate balance are charged 1% of the order value with no maximum cap. A ₹1,00,000 intraday order funded that way costs ₹1,000 in brokerage, against ₹20 when the same order is funded from the trading balance. The rule is published, which means the fund route belongs in the cost calculation, not after it.

What people usually get wrong

Questions people ask

Where to go next

Sources

• Upstox. “Brokerage charges,” including the statutory rate card. Accessed 16 September 2026.
• Zerodha. “Charges: equity, F&O, currency and commodity.” Accessed 16 September 2026.
• Groww. “Pricing.” Accessed 16 September 2026.
• Angel One. “Pricing & brokerage charges.” Accessed 16 September 2026.
• Share.Market (PhonePe Wealth Broking). “Charges.” Accessed 16 September 2026.
• 5paisa. “Brokerage charges.” Accessed 16 September 2026.
• FYERS. “Pricing.” Accessed 16 September 2026.
• Alice Blue. “Pricing.” Accessed 16 September 2026.
• ICICI Direct. “Brokerage.” Accessed 16 September 2026.
• Securities and Exchange Board of India. “Legal framework: circulars.” Accessed 16 September 2026.