Free Tool
Indian Trading Cost Calculator
The full Indian cost stack applied to a specific trade: brokerage, securities transaction tax, exchange transaction charges, the SEBI turnover fee, stamp duty and GST, itemised across both legs of the round trip with the corrected 2026 rates. It then does the two things retail cost tools skip: it runs the same turnover through all four segments so you can see the relative cost wall, and it projects how that cost compounds with trading frequency.
Frequency is a tax you pay the exchange, and retail volume is the tax base. Costs are the one edge you keep for free, by trading less.
Segment & input mode
For options, "value" is the premium transacted (price times quantity), not the notional.
Trade (quantity and price)
Quick pick
For F&O, total units = lot size × number of lots.
Round-trip cost
−
Cost as % of turnover
−
Breakeven move
−per unit, to cover costs
Net P&L after costs
−
Full round-trip breakdown
| Component | Buy leg | Sell leg | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total cost | − | − | − |
Where the cost goes
The round-trip cost split by component, drawn to the computed rupee figures. The widest band is the levy that dominates your segment.
Same turnover, every segment
Your buy and sell value run through all four segments, so the relative cost wall is visible directly. The row for your chosen segment is highlighted.
| Segment | Round-trip cost | % of turnover | vs delivery |
|---|
Same rupee turnover in every row. For options the exchange charge falls on the premium, which is why, rupee for rupee of transacted value, options carry the highest cost of the four.
Frequency drag: cost as % of capital
Hold this position size fixed and repeat it. The projection multiplies the round-trip cost by the number of round trips, against the capital deployed, at 250 trading days a year.
| Round trips | Per day | Per month (~21d) | Per year (~250d) |
|---|
Flags to review before placing the trade
Costs are the one input to your results that you control precisely and completely, before the market has any say. The edge is uncertain; the cost is arithmetic. Sizing the trade so it clears its own cost, and trading rarely enough that the cost stays small against the edge, is the unglamorous half of the discipline that the method we teach is built around.
The one principle
The real cost of an Indian trade is not a brokerage fee, it is a stack of up to seven levies charged on every round trip, and it is a fixed drag that scales with how often you trade. Most of the stack, securities transaction tax, exchange charges, the SEBI fee, stamp duty and the GST on top, is statutory and identical at every broker; only brokerage differs. Because the proportional part is paid again on each round trip, the dominant cost of an active strategy is set by frequency, not by the size of any single trade. The Budget-2026 STT hike raised the derivatives wall on purpose, to make high-frequency retail speculation more expensive.
A desk treats cost as a hard input it minimises before it thinks about edge. Retail treats it as an afterthought that surfaces only in the contract note. The SEBI FY25 finding that over 91 percent of individual derivatives traders were net loss-making, with aggregate net losses near 1,05,603 crore rupees, is partly an edge problem and partly a cost problem: on notional turnover running above 500 times India's GDP, the exchange and the exchequer collect on every one of those trades whether the trader is right or wrong, and frequency is what makes that collection large.
The seven components, and who levies each
Read a contract note from the top. Each line is a different party taking a different base at a different rate. Understanding which one dominates your segment is the whole game, because it tells you where the cost actually comes from and therefore what changes it.
| Component | Who levies it | Base | Bites hardest in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brokerage | Your broker | Per order (flat or capped) | Tiny tickets, where the flat fee dwarfs the trade |
| Securities transaction tax | Central government | Turnover or premium, by segment | Options and futures, on the sell side |
| Exchange transaction charge | NSE / BSE | Turnover, or premium for options | Options, at roughly ten times the cash rate |
| SEBI turnover fee | SEBI | ₹10 per crore of turnover | Large-notional futures positions |
| Stamp duty | State (harmonised) | Buy side only | Delivery, at 0.015 percent on the buy |
| GST | Central and state | Brokerage + exchange charge + SEBI fee | Segments with high brokerage or exchange charges |
| DP / demat charge | Depository / broker | Per scrip on delivery sell (not modelled here) | Frequent delivery selling of many scrips |
The GST subtlety most tools get wrong. GST at 18 percent is charged on brokerage plus exchange transaction charges plus the SEBI turnover fee. It is not charged on STT and it is not charged on stamp duty, because those are themselves taxes. A cost tool that applies 18 percent GST to the whole bill, STT included, overstates the cost, and one that omits GST on the exchange charge understates it. This calculator applies GST only to the correct base.
The math, derived
The round-trip cost is the sum of each component computed on its own base, over both legs. Written out for the general case:
turnover = buy value + sell value
STT = rateseg × (the taxed side, buy and/or sell)
exchange charge = rateseg × turnover (premium turnover for options)
SEBI fee = turnover × 0.0001% (₹10 per crore)
stamp duty = rateseg × buy value (buy side only)
GST = 18% × (brokerage + exchange charge + SEBI fee)
−−−
round-trip cost = brokerage + STT + exchange charge + SEBI fee + stamp + GST
cost % of turnover = round-trip cost ÷ turnover
breakeven move = round-trip cost ÷ quantity (₹ per unit)
STT = rateseg × (the taxed side, buy and/or sell)
exchange charge = rateseg × turnover (premium turnover for options)
SEBI fee = turnover × 0.0001% (₹10 per crore)
stamp duty = rateseg × buy value (buy side only)
GST = 18% × (brokerage + exchange charge + SEBI fee)
−−−
round-trip cost = brokerage + STT + exchange charge + SEBI fee + stamp + GST
cost % of turnover = round-trip cost ÷ turnover
breakeven move = round-trip cost ÷ quantity (₹ per unit)
Worked on the default options trade above: 65 units at a 180 entry and a 210 exit is a buy premium of 11,700 and a sell premium of 13,650, a turnover of 25,350. STT is 0.15 percent of the 13,650 sell premium, about 20.48. The exchange charge is roughly 0.03553 percent of the 25,350 turnover, about 9.01. Brokerage is 20 per order, so 40 for the round trip. The SEBI fee is 25,350 at 10 per crore, about 0.03. Stamp duty is 0.003 percent of the 11,700 buy, about 0.35. GST is 18 percent of brokerage plus exchange charge plus SEBI fee, that is 18 percent of about 49.04, roughly 8.83. The round-trip cost is therefore near 78.7 rupees on a 25,350 turnover, about 0.31 percent, and the breakeven move is about 1.21 rupees per unit. The calculator reproduces these figures line by line.
Why brokerage is the least interesting line. On this trade brokerage is 40 and the statutory stack is nearly the same again. On a delivery trade brokerage is usually zero, yet the trade still costs money, because STT, stamp duty and the exchange charge do not care who your broker is. Chasing a slightly cheaper broker moves one line; trading less moves every line at once.
The cost stack, component by component
The STT timeline: two hikes in eighteen months
Securities transaction tax on derivatives has been raised twice in quick succession, and both moves were aimed squarely at retail F&O activity. The direction of travel is the point: the regulator and the exchequer have decided that frequent derivatives speculation should cost more, and STT is the instrument.
Reference: the per-segment rate stack (corrected 2026 rates)
This is the exact rate table the calculator applies. STT sides and rates are the post-1-April-2026 schedule; the exchange charges are the current NSE rates; GST is 18 percent on the correct base.
| Component | Equity delivery | Equity intraday | Options | Futures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brokerage | Zero (typical) | 0.03% or ₹20 / order, lower | ₹20 flat / order | 0.03% or ₹20 / order, lower |
| STT / CTT | 0.1% buy + sell | 0.025% sell | 0.15% sell (premium) | 0.05% sell |
| Exchange txn charge | 0.00307% | 0.00307% | 0.03553% (premium) | 0.00183% |
| SEBI turnover fee | ₹10 / crore | ₹10 / crore | ₹10 / crore | ₹10 / crore |
| Stamp duty | 0.015% buy | 0.003% buy | 0.003% buy | 0.002% buy |
| GST | 18% on brokerage + exchange txn charge + SEBI turnover fee (not on STT or stamp duty) | |||
The single most important number to read off this table is the STT column: it is the only levy that is both large and one-sided in derivatives, and it is the one the two Budgets moved. Everything else is second order by comparison, which is why a cost model that gets STT wrong is wrong by a lot, not a little.
Reference: the frequency drag on capital
The proportional cost of a round trip is fixed. What is not fixed is how many times you pay it. This table holds a single round-trip cost at a representative 0.3 percent of turnover and shows the annual drag on the capital deployed, purely as a function of trades per day. It is an illustrative projection, not a forecast of any account, and it assumes the position size and cost rate stay constant.
| Round trips per day | Round trips per month (~21d) | Round trips per year (~250d) | Annual cost as % of capital |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (swing style) | 21 | 250 | ~0.75% per year, times turns of capital |
| 2 | 42 | 500 | roughly double the above |
| 5 (active intraday) | 105 | 1,250 | a large multiple, cost becomes the main line |
| 10 | 210 | 2,500 | cost drag dominates any plausible edge |
| 20 (scalping) | 420 | 5,000 | the edge must be enormous merely to stand still |
How to read the last column. Each round trip re-deploys the capital, so the true annual drag depends on how much of the account each trip commits. The live projection above computes this against the specific turnover you entered, on the same 0.3-percent-style stack your inputs produce. The shape is what matters and it is not in dispute: hold size fixed and the cost line is linear in frequency, which is why scalping is the single hardest place to keep an edge after costs.
Failure modes: where the clean cost number still breaks
The calculator returns an exact figure for one round trip. Five things detach the real, lived cost from that figure, and every one of them has quietly turned a profitable-looking method into a losing account.
1. Cost drag crushing small and frequent positions. The proportional stack is a percentage, but brokerage and the per-order pieces are fixed, so on a very small ticket the fixed cost is a large fraction of the trade. Combine that with high frequency and the breakeven move becomes a wide hurdle the edge must clear on every single trade. A scalper on a 0.3 percent round-trip cost doing twenty trades a day is handing the exchange a double-digit annual percentage of turned-over capital before the strategy earns a rupee. Under-sizing to feel safe makes this worse, not better: a position too small to clear its own cost is a slow leak, not caution.
2. Ignoring costs in a backtest. This is the most expensive mistake in the list. A system tested on gross prices, with no cost model, will show an equity curve that the live account never sees, because every simulated trade skips the seven-levy stack that the real trade pays. The gap widens with frequency: a high-turnover system can look strongly profitable gross and be firmly negative net. Any backtest that does not subtract a realistic round-trip cost on every trade, using the current post-2026 STT rates, is not a test of a strategy, it is a test of a strategy that does not exist.
3. Options premium versus notional confusion. STT and the exchange charge on options fall on the premium, not the notional. A trader who computes cost, or worse sizes a stop, off the strike times the lot size will get a cost figure orders of magnitude too high and a risk picture that is simply wrong. The premium is the correct base for cost; the notional matters only for margin and for the size of an adverse move. Mixing the two is common precisely because the notional is the number the platform shows most prominently.
4. The per-order brokerage cap on partial fills and split orders. Brokerage is charged per executed order, and the 20-rupee cap is per order, not per trade. An order that fills in several pieces across the day, or a position built and unwound in multiple clips, can incur the flat fee several times over, so a plan that assumed one round trip pays for two or three. Frequent modification and re-entry multiplies the fixed cost in a way the single-round-trip figure does not show.
5. Costs the calculator does not model. The demat or DP charge on a delivery sell is a flat per-scrip fee levied by the depository, not modelled here because it depends on your specific arrangement. Bid-ask spread is a real, often larger, cost that never appears on a contract note at all: crossing a wide spread on an illiquid option can cost more than the entire statutory stack. Slippage on market orders in fast conditions is another. Treat this tool's figure as the floor of your cost, the part that is fixed and knowable, and assume the spread and slippage add to it.
The risk-manager's view: frequency is the tax base
Put the pieces together and the conclusion is uncomfortable for the way most retail accounts trade. The exchange and the exchequer are indifferent to whether any single trade wins or loses; they collect on the turnover either way. Aggregate retail turnover is the tax base, and frequency is what enlarges it. The Budget-2026 STT hike is a policy statement that this base should be taxed more heavily, precisely because the SEBI FY25 study showed the activity it comes from is, in aggregate, a wealth transfer away from retail.
The practical takeaway is not to fear costs but to treat them as the one lever you fully control. You cannot dictate whether a trade works. You can dictate how often you trade, which instrument you use, and therefore how large a guaranteed cost you hand over before the edge is even in play. Trading a cheaper segment, sizing so each trade clears its own cost, and above all trading less often are the three moves that reduce the cost line, and the cost line is the only line on the statement you can move with certainty. For the behavioural reasons this is so hard to hold in practice, see why Indian traders lose money; for the full walk-through of the stack, the companion explainer on the real cost of an Indian trade covers the same ground in prose.
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the real cost of a trade in India?
+The cost of an Indian trade is a stack of up to seven separate levies, not a single brokerage fee. In order: brokerage (zero on delivery at most discount brokers, otherwise the lower of about 0.03 percent or 20 rupees per order), securities transaction tax, exchange transaction charges, the SEBI turnover fee of 10 rupees per crore, stamp duty on the buy side, and 18 percent GST charged on the sum of brokerage plus exchange charges plus the SEBI fee. Only brokerage varies between brokers; the rest are statutory and identical everywhere. On a round trip the components combine into a fixed part (the flat brokerage and per-order pieces) and a proportional part that scales with turnover, so the total cost as a percentage of turnover is high on small tickets and on the most heavily taxed segments, options and futures.
What are the current STT rates on options and futures in 2026?
+From 1 April 2026, securities transaction tax on options is 0.15 percent of the sell-side premium and on futures is 0.05 percent of the sell-side turnover, both charged only when you sell. This is the second hike in about eighteen months: the October 2024 change had already taken options from 0.0625 to 0.1 percent and futures from 0.0125 to 0.02 percent, and Budget 2026 raised them again to the current levels. On the cash side, equity delivery STT is 0.1 percent on both the buy and the sell, and equity intraday is 0.025 percent on the sell only. Any cost tool still applying the pre-2024 or the 2024-to-2026 rates understates the derivatives cost wall, because the sell-side STT on options has more than doubled from the old base.
Why did the government raise STT on F&O twice?
+The stated intent is to make high-frequency retail speculation in derivatives more expensive. SEBI found that over 91 percent of individual traders in the equity derivatives segment were net loss-making in FY25, with aggregate net losses of about 1,05,603 crore rupees, while the notional turnover of Indian options and futures ran at more than 500 times the country's GDP. Securities transaction tax is a friction that scales with how often you trade, so raising it falls hardest on the exact behaviour the regulator wants to slow: many small, low-conviction round trips. The October 2024 hike and the 1 April 2026 hike are both explicit attempts to price that behaviour out, alongside larger lot sizes, fewer weekly expiries and tighter margins. The policy treats frequency itself as the problem, and the tax is the lever.
How do I calculate brokerage and charges on a trade?
+Compute each of the seven components on the correct base, then add them. Brokerage: for delivery it is typically zero at discount brokers, and for intraday and futures it is the lower of about 0.03 percent of the order value or 20 rupees per executed order, while options are a flat 20 rupees per order. STT is applied on the side and rate for the segment. Exchange transaction charges are a percentage of turnover for cash and futures and of premium for options. The SEBI turnover fee is 10 rupees per crore of turnover. Stamp duty applies to the buy side only. GST is 18 percent of brokerage plus exchange charges plus the SEBI fee, and importantly it is not charged on STT or stamp duty. Do this for both legs of the round trip and sum. The calculator on this page does exactly this and shows every line, so you can see which levy dominates for your segment.
Which trading segment has the highest costs in India?
+As a percentage of the turnover you transact, options are the most expensive to trade, followed by futures, then intraday equity, with delivery the cheapest on brokerage but carrying full STT on both sides. Options are dear because exchange transaction charges on options are levied on the premium at roughly 0.035 percent, more than ten times the cash equity rate, and STT is now 0.15 percent of the sell premium. Futures carry the new 0.05 percent sell-side STT but a much lower exchange charge. The comparison built into this tool runs the same turnover through all four segments so the relative cost wall is visible directly: for typical inputs the options round trip costs several times the delivery round trip on the same rupee turnover, which is why frequent options trading is the hardest place to keep an edge after costs.
What is the breakeven move on a trade after costs?
+The breakeven move is the distance the price must travel just to cover the round-trip cost before the trade earns anything. It is the total cost divided by the quantity, expressed in rupees per unit, and as a percentage it is the round-trip cost divided by the turnover. On a large, infrequent delivery position the breakeven move is a small fraction of a percent and barely matters. On a small or heavily taxed position it can be a meaningful fraction of the intended profit: if a trade risks a few rupees per unit and the costs are a large share of that, the setup has to clear the cost hurdle before the edge even begins. This is why cost drag matters most for the smallest and the most frequent trades, and why a backtest that ignores costs can show a profit that the live account never sees.
How much do trading costs eat into returns over a year?
+It depends almost entirely on frequency, because the proportional cost per round trip is fixed but it is paid again on every round trip. A trader doing one options round trip a day on a given turnover pays that round-trip cost roughly 250 times over a trading year; ten a day pays it 2,500 times. Expressed as a percentage of the capital deployed, the annual cost drag is the per-trip cost percentage multiplied by the number of trips, so a cost of even a fraction of a percent per round trip compounds into a double-digit annual drag for an active intraday or options trader. The frequency-drag projection on this page shows this directly: hold the position size fixed and the annual cost rises in a straight line with trades per day. Frequency is the variable that turns a small per-trade friction into the dominant cost of the strategy.
Is STT charged on the premium or the notional value of an option?
+On the premium, not the notional, and confusing the two is one of the most common and expensive errors in retail cost estimation. When you sell an option, STT of 0.15 percent and the exchange transaction charge of about 0.035 percent are both applied to the premium you transact, which is the price of the option times the quantity, not to the strike times the lot size. A single index option might have a notional of lakhs but a premium of only a few thousand rupees, so a cost figure computed on the notional would overstate the true cost by orders of magnitude. This calculator computes options costs on the premium value you enter, which is the correct base. The one place the notional does bite is margin and the size of an adverse move, which is a risk question, not a cost question.
Do trading costs matter more for high-frequency traders?
+Yes, decisively, and it is the single clearest reason most high-frequency retail strategies fail after costs. The proportional cost of a round trip is the same whether you trade once a month or thirty times a day, but the high-frequency trader pays it far more often, so the total drag scales with frequency while the per-trade edge usually does not. A strategy that clears its costs comfortably at one trade a week can be underwater at ten trades a day on the same instrument, purely because the cost line grew and the edge did not. This is the mechanism behind the SEBI FY25 finding that over 91 percent of individual derivatives traders lost money: the more frequently retail trades the derivatives segment, the larger the guaranteed cost it hands to the exchange and the exchequer, against an edge that has to overcome that cost every single time. Costs are the one part of the outcome you control directly, and you control them mainly by trading less.
Where the facts come from
Sources
- STT schedule and the 2026 hike. NSE Clearing publishes the securities transaction tax schedule for the equity derivatives segment. Union Budget 2026 raised STT on options to 0.15 percent of sell-side premium and on futures to 0.05 percent of sell-side turnover, effective 1 April 2026, following the October 2024 rise to 0.1 and 0.02 percent respectively. nseclearing.in
- Exchange charges, SEBI fee, stamp duty and GST. NSE first-time-investor reference on SEBI turnover fees, securities transaction tax and other levies, together with exchange transaction charge circulars: equity 0.00307 percent, options 0.03553 percent on premium, futures 0.00183 percent; SEBI turnover fee 10 rupees per crore; stamp duty on the buy side; GST 18 percent on brokerage plus exchange charges plus the SEBI fee. Cost figures modelled on representative published broker rates as of July 2026. nseindia.com
- The FY25 loss base rate and the policy intent. SEBI study on the profit and loss of individual traders in the equity derivatives segment: over 91 percent net loss-making in FY25, with aggregate net losses of about 1,05,603 crore rupees, on notional derivatives turnover running above 500 times GDP, cited as the rationale for the STT hikes and the accompanying lot-size and expiry changes. sebi.gov.in
Educational note. This tool computes figures from your own inputs; every output is illustrative and depends entirely on the numbers you enter. Statutory rates are as of July 2026 and can change; verify current rates with your broker before relying on them. The frequency-drag projection is a mathematical model, not a prediction of any account's results. Nothing here is a recommendation to trade or to buy or sell any security, and it is not investment advice. Bharath Shiksha is an educational publisher, not a SEBI-registered investment adviser or research analyst.