The charge stack: what a trade costs after brokerage, and why the headline number misleads

The only flat number is the advertised one

Brokerage is charged per order. The calculator on this site defaults to ₹20 per order — a typical discount-broker flat fee, and editable, because it is the one figure on this list that a broker sets rather than a statute. Being flat is what makes it quotable: it is the same number in an advertisement whether the trade is ₹5,000 or ₹5 lakh.

That is also what makes it a poor guide to cost. Because the flat fee does not scale and almost everything else does, total cost expressed as a percentage of turnover starts high on a small ticket, falls as the ticket grows, and then flattens onto a floor set by the statutory items. Two people quoting the same brokerage plan can be paying very different effective rates.

The headline figure describes the part of the bill that stops mattering as the trade gets larger. The part that keeps mattering is never in the headline.

The stack, charge by charge

Here is the cash-equity delivery stack as this site stores it, resolved for 2026-09-04. Each row carries its own effective date and source document, which is why a rate change here is a data edit rather than a rewrite of this paragraph.

Notice the third column. Some charges are a percentage of a value and some are a rupee amount per crore of it, and the exchange quotes them that way. Converting a per-crore figure into a percentage in your head is where most spreadsheet versions of this table go wrong.

GST does not apply to everything

This is the most commonly mis-stated item in the stack. GST at 18% applies to a defined base: brokerage, Exchange transaction charge, Investor Protection Fund (IPFT), SEBI turnover fee. It does not apply to Securities Transaction Tax (STT) or Stamp duty.

So GST is not 18% of what a trade cost. It is 18% of a subset, and on a delivery trade that subset is usually far smaller than the tax items sitting outside it. Anyone who tells you to add 18% to your total charges is overstating the bill.

Intraday and delivery are not the same trade

The same stock, bought and sold on the same day, costs a different amount depending on the product selected in the order window. That selection is a decision made by the person placing the order, not something the market does to them.

Two things move at once here: the rate, and the base it is applied to. A charge on turnover touches both legs of the round trip; a charge on the sell value touches one. Comparing the percentages alone gives the wrong ranking.

Options are charged on the premium, never on the notional

An index option contract has two very different rupee values attached to it. The notional is the strike multiplied by the quantity. The premium turnover is the premium multiplied by the same quantity. They differ by the ratio of strike to premium, which for a normally priced option runs to well over a hundredfold.

Every charge below is levied on the premium. Applying any of them to the notional — which is what happens when a generic cash-equity calculator is pointed at an options trade — overstates the cost by that same enormous ratio.

What a rate table still cannot tell you

A table of rates does not answer the question people actually have, which is: how far does this have to move before the round trip is level? That is one number, in the unit already on the screen — a share price, or index points — and it is what the calculators produce from the same rate rows shown above.

• The trade cost calculator turns the cash-equity stack into a total and a level-money sell price for your own quantity and prices.
• The options breakeven calculator does the same for an index option, and reports the textbook breakeven and the breakeven once the whole stack is paid — the gap between the two is the part most tables never show.

Charges do not change what a market does. They change where the level-money line sits, and that line is a fact about your own trade that can be calculated before it is placed.

Limits, honestly stated

• Brokerage varies by broker and plan; the flat default here is an assumption to replace with your own.
• Depository participant charges on a delivery sale are levied by the depository participant, vary between them, and are not in this table.
• Statutory and exchange rates change by circular. Each row carries its effective date; if you are reading this long after the dates shown, re-check before relying on it.
• This is arithmetic on published rates, not tax advice. Your own tax position is not a charge on a contract note.