Discount Brokers In India

Discount brokers in India is a recent concept comparatively in Indian investment space, especially if we see some of the stockbrokers launching in the 1980s.

With the advent of digitization, Discount brokers target the userspace that is tech-savvy and prefers communications or interactions in non-offline methods. With initiatives such as ‘Digital India’, coverage and prominence of Digitization is only going to increase year on year in India.

The best part of Discount brokers is that they charge very low commission as compared to the conventional full-service stockbrokers, simply because they have lower costs of maintaining their business.

Discount Brokers – What do they offer?

• Full-service stockbrokers traditionally charge commissions based on a specific percentage of the trading transaction value. This is where the biggest advantage of Discount brokers comes into the picture since they charge a flat fee per trade (irrespective of the trade value) or a periodic (monthly, quarterly or yearly) subscription fees for unlimited trading (irrespective of the number of trades or the value of trades).
• High tech advanced trading platforms with continuous innovation and adaption across devices.
• Discount brokers generally do not charge annual maintenance charges (AMCs) either, thus, making them pretty attractive as far as the overall cost bore by the client is concerned.
• Since there is no research or advisory service provided by Discount brokers, they do not push clients to buy or sell a particular stock to make a commission out of it for themselves.
• Since discount brokers target a relatively younger audience, they provide different trading related educational content and material for free.

Discount Brokers – What do they NOT offer?

• With no-frills, discount brokers provide no research reports, intra-day tips or market advisory to its clients, something that full-service brokers provides to its clients on a regular basis. So with discount brokers, you may not be able to fulfil any professional advice in case you need.
• Discount brokers are majorly online in nature, thus, they do not have any branches or franchises across the country. So in case, if you need offline help every now and then, discount brokers might not be ideal for you.
• Their customer service is major to handle administration related tasks and less of solving any trading related issue as most of the trading happens through online trading platforms (yes, they do have call and trade facility but it is used less as compared to online trading).
• Discount brokers generally have lesser number of trading or investment segments as compared to full-service brokers. This limits your trading options and probably impacts your overall returns in the long run.
• At times, discount brokers charge hidden fees and charges that are not explicitly told to you. So you have to be very careful when you ask for a specific service that you might have seen full-service stockbrokers providing for free.

All said and done, make sure you understand the specific requirements or expectations you have from your broker. If you have been able to narrow down that list, then it becomes much easier to choose the type of broker you like to go ahead with. At the same time, it will also help to decide which exact broker works the best for you within that particular broker type.

In the last 6-7 years, India has seen an array of discount brokers with different USPs (Unique Selling Points) around brokerage, plans, customer service, trading platforms and so on. We have compiled a list of all top discount brokers in India with the aspects that make them a good choice for you.

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Discount Brokers in India – Detailed List

Zerodha is one of the early pioneers of Discount broking in India with its inception in 2010. It boasts of 7 Lakh+ clients across the country and handles a daily turnover of ₹10,000-12,000 Crore. It offers free customer education through Zerodha Varsity, an online trading education platform and at the same time provides high tech trading platforms such as Kite Web, Kite Mobile app, Coin and Pi.

Zerodha Coin offers the best and convenient way to customers to invest in Zerodha SIP.

As far as the brokerage is concerned, Zerodha brokerage is ₹20 or 0.03% (whichever is lower) for equity Intraday and is Free for Delivery based transactions.

For more transparency, refer to Zerodha Brokerage Calculator.

At the same time, the discount broker provides high-performance trading platforms in form of Zerodha Pi, Zerodha Kite Web and Zerodha Kite Mobile

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SAS Online is one of the recent additions in the cohort of discount brokers in India. SAS Online although started in 2013 but already claims of having 10,000 clients across 700+ cities of the country. One of the differentiation of SAS Online is its brokerage and brokerage plans.

It charges ₹9 or 0.001% (whichever is lower) and at the same time offers monthly unlimited trading plans across trading segments (although charges relatively higher transaction charges).

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Upstox was a brainchild of three co-founders that was launched in 2012. RKSV (earlier name) offers Upstox, an ultra-edge trading platform for desktop and laptop along with Upstox Pro, a trading mobile app. These trading platforms are one of the finest platforms in terms of speed and performance.

As per the latest report, Upstox collaborates with Indusind to provide Upstox 3 in 1 account thus offering trading, Demat, and banking services in a single bundle.

The discount broker charges a fixed flat fee of ₹20 per transaction across trading segments.

Most of the strategy put in place by Upstox has a reference in one way or the other through Zerodha.

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TradeJini was launched in the year 2012 by a couple of stockbroking Industry veterans. TradeJini charges brokerage similar to Zerodha at ₹20 or 0.01% (whichever is lower). TradeJini is known for exceptional customer service across different aspects and at the same time offers the first 50 trades for free to all new registrations.

This hanging fruit is optimal for the users who are looking to test discount broking as a concept in itself before promising themselves to it.

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Fyers is probably the youngest of the discount brokers lot with its launch as recent as 2015. FYERS entered the market with its own trading platforms across devices namely FYERS One, FYERS Markets and FYERS Web Trader.

These platforms carry few unique and highly usable features such as Stock screeners that helps to analyze and find trading opportunities across indices and sectors within a single screen, Heatmaps that take away the effort of analyzing data to find what is working and what is not through its colour coding based designs.

Although the discount broker has been marketing itself as high-tech, but overall the performance of their trading platforms is just around average.

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Trade Smart Online is more of a hybrid stock broker because of the kind of plans it offers to its clients based on their preferences. With a customer base of 17,000 across 1000 cities of India and a daily turnover of ₹2500 Crore, Trade Smart Online charges 0.007% or ₹15 per executed order depending on the kind of plan the client has opted for.

This broker also offers a fixed price monthly plan with unlimited trades across different segments.

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Samco is one of the leading discount brokers in India with a membership of BSE, NSE, MCX-SX, MCX and NCDEX. It is known to be a suitable stock broker for beginners since it provides an exhaustive repository of basic and intermediate tutorials on trading and investing.

At the same time, with low brokerage charges at ₹20 or 0.02, Samco leaves a low chance of risk for beginners as compared to other stock brokers.

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F6 Online is also a recently launched discount broker backed by F6 Finserve Private Limited and F6 Commodities Private Limited. It is known for its Free demat and trading accounts with no annual maintenance charges either. At the same time, its brokerage plan is fixed at ₹666 per month or ₹6666 per year across any trading segments.

There are no brokerage plans at trade level which could be concerning for fresh entrants into the trading space, although it makes complete sense who is a heavy trader and is looking to transfer to a discount broker.

The broker has recently been terminated off the rolls.

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Composite Edge is a prominent discount stock broker with its establishment going as back as 1994 as part of Composite Investments Pvt. Ltd.(CIPL). It allows instant fund transfers from ICICI, Kotak, HDFC and Axis banks with transaction charges of ₹15, thus, making the funds’ transfer process a knot easier as compared to other non-banking stock brokers that might take a day or so to transfer funds.

Comparatively, it charges lower brokerage charges at 18 or 0.06% – giving clients another low brokerage option.

Read Composite Edge complete review here.

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Trading Bells is an Indore based discount broking firm that has the backing of the prominent full-service stockbroker – Swastika Investmart Ltd. It recently was funded by Swastika in a ₹2 Crore seed round in December 2016. Founded as recent as 2016 by a duo of an IIT Engineer, Parth Nyati and a chartered accountant turned Investment banker, Amit Gupta – Trading Bells already has a presence in 16 states and 80 cities of the country.

Like Zerodha, Trading Bells also provides Free Delivery and charges ₹20 or 0.01% whichever is lower as a brokerage for rest of the segments.

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Trade Plus Online comes from the house of stockbrokers that has seen broking as an industry growing in front of them. Trade Plus Online boosts of more than 20,000 clients in the country and offers unlimited trading for as low as ₹99 for trading in Currency, Options and Commodity segments.

They are also known for unique Twitter-based customer service and Paytm integration for fund transfers bringing convenience and ease of use to its clients for multiple tedious looking operations.

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5Paisa comes from the house of the prominent financial services provider India Infoline or IIFL. It was launched recently in 2015 and offers unique and highly secure trading platforms across devices to its clients. All the applications including desktop, web and the mobile app are known for its high usability and seamless user experience. It charges a fixed brokerage of ₹10 per executed order but charges relatively high account opening and maintenance charges.

The best part of 5Paisa is that it provides free research to its clients along with some of the top performance based trading platforms including 5Paisa Mobile App, 5Paisa Trader Terminal, 5Paisa Trade Station to go along with its algo-based application 5Paisa Auto Investor.

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My Value trade comes from a history of stockbrokers as early as 1985 but the discount broking arm was launched in recent years. With its fixed brokerage plan placed at ₹10 per executed order and fixed monthly plan at ₹1000 for unlimited trades across segments,  My Value trade is known to be one of the most economical discount brokers in India.

It runs a daily turnover of ₹4500 Crore and has a client base of more than 7,25,000.

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Zeroshulk has gone through different swings in the stockbroking space before finally moving to discount broking. It has different fixed price brokerage plans depending on the client’s trading frequency. Starting from ₹15 per executed order to ₹999 per month per trading segment to ₹2499 per month across all trading segments, Zeroshulk has got it all figured out when it comes to pricing models.

At the same time, it still is looking forward to the much-needed trust factor when it comes to its trading platforms.

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Prostocks in one of the most recent entrants in the stockbroking ecosystem. Founded in February 2016, Prostocks has its corporate office in Mumbai. Prostocks is an online broker in the literal sense as it opens the account of its clients in a completely way without any physical meet or courier of forms involved.

It charges ₹15 per executed order as brokerage charges across financial segments offered.

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Achiievers Equities is one of its own kind of a discount broker providing different brokerage plans at discount level and at the same time offering research and advisory services to its clients. Launched in 2012, Achiievers Equities even provides a 3-in-1 trading account to its clients along with the provision of NRI trading. In this high-tech age, Achiievers Equities still does not provide a mobile app to its clients though.

Same as prostocks, Achiievers Equities also charges ₹15 per executed order as brokerage charges across financial segments offered.

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Finvasia is a recent kid on the discount broking block. Their proposition is simple – Zero brokerage across segments, pay for the trading platforms on a fixed basis (more on that later in the detailed review). Launched in 2013, Finvasia is based out of Chandigarh (Punjab) and allows its clients to trade in Equities, Derivatives and Commodities.

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Incorporated recently in the year 2013, Wisdom Capital is a discount stock broking company in India. A subsidiary of Ashlar Group of Companies, Wisdom Capital has memberships with NSE, BSE, MCX – SX, MCX and USE and has an offline franchise coverage in 250 locations across the country.

One of the cheaper discount brokers, Wisdom Capital charges ₹9 or 0.01% per executed order as brokerage charges across financial segments offered.

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DPL Online is a discount broker and is the trading arm of Divya Portfolio private limited. Based out of Faridabad, Haryana – DPL Online was launched in 2005 by three co-founders. It is known for its various charting tools that can help clients to perform technical analysis vastly. It also allows integrating trading platforms with 3rd party platforms such as – Ami Broker, Ninja Trader and Meta Trader.

Read the detailed review of DPL Online here.

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