Groww vs Zerodha vs Upstox: An Honest Fee Comparison for 2026
Groww, Zerodha, and Upstox all say brokerage is basically free — but “free” doesn’t mean the same thing at each one. Zerodha charges nothing to buy and hold shares, but bills you an annual account maintenance fee. Groww skips that yearly fee entirely, but charges a small amount on every single trade. Upstox charges both — a flat fee per trade and an annual charge. None of this is hidden; it’s just spread across different line items, so the only way to know what you’ll actually pay is to read each broker’s fee schedule side by side. That’s what this article does — using nothing but each broker’s own published pricing and SEBI’s public broker registry.
This article covers what each platform actually charges — not what the homepage says — how safe your money and shares are regardless of which one you pick, and a fee calculator at the end that runs your own trade numbers through all three fee schedules at once.
This article carries no affiliate or referral links to Groww, Zerodha, or Upstox. FirstBuzz365 earns nothing from your choice of broker. That’s a deliberate choice, not a limitation forced on us — it means this comparison has no reason to nudge you toward any one platform.
Quick Self-Check — Are You About to Pick the Wrong One for Your Use Case?
- 1️⃣
Do you plan to buy and hold, or trade frequently? The broker that’s cheapest for a buy-and-hold investor can be the more expensive one for someone placing several trades a week — the fee structures don’t rank the same way for both.
- 2️⃣
Have you checked what happens on the day you sell? All three charge a Depository Participant (DP) fee only when you sell shares from your demat account — it doesn’t show up when you’re comparing “brokerage” on the signup page.
- 3️⃣
Are you assuming “no brokerage” means “no cost”? Every trade on every platform still carries government taxes — Securities Transaction Tax (STT), stamp duty, and GST — regardless of which broker you use. These are identical across all three and are not a broker’s fee.
If you answered “not sure” to any of these, the fee tables below give you the exact numbers — not marketing language.
- What Each Platform Actually Is
- The Actual Brokerage — Delivery, Intraday, F&O
- Annual Maintenance Charge (AMC)
- Where Your Money and Shares Actually Live
- Three Worked Examples — Same Investor, Different Style
- Fee Calculator — Full Round-Trip Cost
- Which Platform Fits Which Reader
- What to Check Before You Open an Account
- The One Mistake That Costs Investors the Most
1What Each Platform Actually Is
All three are SEBI-registered stockbrokers and depository participants — meaning they’re legally allowed to execute your trades on the stock exchanges and hold your shares in electronic form on your behalf. None of them holds your shares directly; that job belongs to India’s two depositories, described in Section 4 below.
| Platform | Legal Entity | SEBI Registration | Exchange Memberships |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zerodha | Zerodha Broking Ltd. | INZ000031633 | NSE, BSE, MCX |
| Groww | Groww Invest Tech Pvt. Ltd. (formerly Nextbillion Technology) | INZ000301838 | NSE (ID 90187), BSE (ID 6699), MCX (ID 57420) |
| Upstox | Upstox Securities Pvt. Ltd. (formerly RKSV Securities India Pvt. Ltd.) | INZ000315837 | NSE, BSE, MCX, CDSL, NSDL |
You can independently verify any broker’s current registration status on SEBI’s own intermediary search tool at sebi.gov.in before opening an account — a two-minute check that confirms the broker is currently active and not under any regulatory action.
A SEBI-registered broker is legally required to keep your funds in a separate client account, segregated from the company’s own money. This is what makes your money recoverable even in a worst-case broker failure — a protection the app’s star rating tells you nothing about.
2The Actual Brokerage — Delivery, Intraday, and F&O
Delivery trading means buying shares and holding them beyond the trading session — the default mode for most salaried investors building a long-term portfolio. Intraday means buying and selling the same stock within the same trading day. This is where the three platforms genuinely diverge.
| Charge | Zerodha | Groww | Upstox |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equity delivery brokerage | ₹0 | Lower of ₹20 or 0.1% of trade value (min ₹5) | ₹20 per executed order (flat) |
| Equity intraday brokerage | ₹20 or 0.03% (lower) | Lower of ₹20 or 0.1% of trade value | ₹20 or 0.1% of turnover (lower) |
| Futures brokerage | ₹20 or 0.03% (lower) | ₹20 flat per order | ₹20 or 0.05% (lower) |
| Options brokerage | ₹20 flat per order | ₹20 flat per order | ₹20 flat per order |
| Direct mutual fund investing | ₹0 commission | ₹0 commission | ₹0 commission |
| Account opening | ₹0 | ₹0 | ₹0 |
Zerodha is the only one of the three that charges genuinely zero brokerage on equity delivery for every account — this has been its pricing model since 2015 and applies whether you buy ₹1,000 or ₹10 lakh worth of shares in a single order. Groww’s delivery brokerage is small on modest trade sizes (a ₹10,000 trade works out to roughly ₹10 at 0.1%) but is never actually zero. Upstox stopped offering free delivery brokerage for new accounts opened after 21 August 2021 — a change worth knowing if you’re comparing it against older reviews that still describe it as free.
For F&O (futures and options) trading, all three brokers land at essentially the same ₹20-per-order ceiling. If your plan is purely SIP-style equity delivery investing, the delivery brokerage row above is the one that actually decides your cost — not the F&O row most comparison articles lead with.
3Annual Maintenance Charge (AMC) — The Fee That Runs Even If You Don’t Trade
The AMC is charged for maintaining your demat account, independent of whether you place any trades that year. This is the fee most new investors forget to check before opening an account, since it doesn’t appear on the “per trade” pricing that dominates each broker’s homepage.
| Platform | Annual AMC (after any waiver) | First-Year Waiver |
|---|---|---|
| Zerodha | ₹300 + GST/year | Free for accounts opened on or after 1 June 2026 |
| Groww | ₹0 — lifetime | Not applicable — no AMC at any point |
| Upstox | ₹300 + GST/year | Free for the first year |
Groww’s zero-AMC-for-life structure is its clearest cost advantage over the other two — over a five-year holding period, that’s ₹1,416–₹1,770 saved purely on account maintenance compared to Zerodha or Upstox (the range depends on whether a first-year waiver applies when you sign up). Whether that gap matters more than Zerodha’s zero delivery brokerage depends entirely on how often you actually buy and sell — which is exactly what the calculator at the end of this article works out for your own numbers.
4Where Your Money and Shares Actually Live
None of these three platforms physically holds your shares. Every demat account in India sits with one of two depositories — the Central Depository Services Limited (CDSL) or the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) — and the broker acts only as a Depository Participant (DP), the intermediary through which you access that depository account.
What this means practically
Your shares are registered in your own name at the depository level. If a broker were to shut down, your shares would remain intact and transferable to another broker — they are not the broker’s asset to lose.
The DP charge, explained
Every time you sell delivery shares, a small DP charge applies — roughly ₹15–20 including GST per stock (ISIN) per day, charged by the depository and passed through by the broker. This applies regardless of which of the three you use.
What to verify yourself
Check your own holdings statement periodically on the CDSL or NSDL investor portal directly — not just inside the broker’s app — since that statement comes straight from the depository, independent of the broker.
“Depositories… perform record keeping functions like maintenance of accounts of holders of securities in electronic form and effecting transfer of ownership of dematerialised securities.”
— SEBI Investor Charter for Depository Participants (sebi.gov.in)5Three Worked Examples — Same Investor, Different Trading Style
The “cheapest broker” question doesn’t have one answer — it depends entirely on how you actually use the account. These three scenarios use the same investor profile with different trading behaviour, to show where each platform’s pricing actually bites.
Scenario 1 — Pure SIP Investor, ₹5,000/month in Direct Mutual Funds Only
A salaried professional in Coimbatore investing ₹5,000/month exclusively in direct mutual funds through the broker’s platform, placing no individual stock trades.
| Charge type | Zerodha | Groww | Upstox |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mutual fund commission | ₹0 | ₹0 | ₹0 |
| Annual AMC (after Year 1) | ₹354 (incl. GST) | ₹0 | ₹354 (incl. GST) |
For this investor, mutual fund brokerage is identical and free across all three — the only real difference is Groww’s zero AMC, which makes it the marginally cheaper choice by roughly ₹354/year for someone who never trades individual stocks.
Scenario 2 — Occasional Delivery Investor, 10 Stock Purchases a Year
A software engineer in Pune buying shares directly ten times a year, ₹15,000 average trade value, and holding them long-term.
| Charge type | Zerodha | Groww | Upstox |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery brokerage (10 orders) | ₹0 | ~₹150 (₹15 avg × 10) | ₹200 (₹20 × 10) |
| Annual AMC | ₹354 | ₹0 | ₹354 |
| Approx. annual total | ₹354 | ₹150 | ₹554 |
At this trading volume, Groww’s per-trade brokerage stays low enough that its zero AMC still gives it the lowest combined annual cost — Zerodha’s zero delivery brokerage doesn’t fully offset its AMC at only ten trades a year. Upstox is the most expensive of the three in this exact scenario, carrying both a flat delivery fee and the standard AMC.
Scenario 3 — Active Delivery Investor, 60 Stock Purchases a Year
A product manager in Hyderabad who trades more actively — 60 delivery orders a year, ₹20,000 average trade value.
| Charge type | Zerodha | Groww | Upstox |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery brokerage (60 orders) | ₹0 | ~₹1,200 (₹20 × 60, capped) | ₹1,200 (₹20 × 60) |
| Annual AMC | ₹354 | ₹0 | ₹354 |
| Approx. annual total | ₹354 | ₹1,200 | ₹1,554 |
The moment trade frequency climbs, Zerodha’s zero delivery brokerage overtakes Groww’s zero-AMC advantage by a wide margin. This is the crossover point that matters more than any single broker’s overall reputation — the more you actually trade in delivery, the more Zerodha’s model wins; the less you trade, the more Groww’s zero-AMC model wins. Upstox doesn’t lead in either scenario at these volumes, since it charges the same flat brokerage as Groww while also carrying an AMC.
6Fee Calculator — The Full Cost, Not Just Brokerage
Most broker calculators show brokerage alone. A genuinely useful comparison has to include the government taxes and depository charge that apply on top of it — because those are what actually decide your real cost per trade, and they differ meaningfully between delivery and intraday trading. This calculator builds in Securities Transaction Tax (STT), stamp duty, exchange transaction charges, GST, and the DP charge you pay when you sell — all at current government/exchange-set rates, identical across all three brokers — alongside each broker’s own brokerage.
Full Cost Calculator
Delivery: enter a typical trade (buy, then later sell). This computes the complete cost — brokerage + STT + stamp duty + exchange charges + GST + DP charge — for each broker, then projects your annual cost.
| Per round-trip | Zerodha | Groww | Upstox |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brokerage (buy+sell) | |||
| STT (0.1% buy + 0.1% sell) | |||
| Stamp duty (0.015% buy) | |||
| Exchange charges (approx.) | |||
| GST (18% on broker + exchange fees) | |||
| DP charge (on sell, per ISIN) | |||
| Per round-trip total |
STT, stamp duty, exchange charges, GST, and SEBI turnover fee are government/exchange-set rates — identical across all three brokers, shown here for completeness rather than as a point of difference. DP charge figures use ₹15.34 (Zerodha, incl. GST) and ₹23.60 (Groww and Upstox, incl. GST) per the brokers’ published rate cards. Excludes AMC — see Section 3 for that comparison. Estimate only; verify exact figures on each broker’s pricing page.
Action Steps — What to Actually Do With These Numbers
Run the calculator above with your real trade size and frequency — not a guess. The crossover point in Section 5 shows the ranking flips depending on volume, so your own numbers matter more than any general “best broker” ranking.
Search the broker’s name on SEBI’s intermediary registry at sebi.gov.in before opening an account — this takes under two minutes and confirms current registration status independent of the broker’s own claims.
Open the account, then immediately check your holdings on the CDSL or NSDL investor portal directly — not just inside the broker’s app — so you know what an independent, broker-agnostic record of your shares looks like from day one.
Set a calendar reminder for the AMC waiver expiry date (typically 12 months after account opening) so the annual charge doesn’t surprise you the first time it’s actually deducted.
Revisit this comparison if your trading pattern changes materially — a SIP-only investor who starts trading individual stocks regularly may find the cheaper broker for them has flipped, per the crossover chart in Section 5.
7Which Platform Fits Which Reader
Zerodha
Zero delivery brokerage means the more you invest in individual stocks and hold, the more this pulls ahead. The ₹300+GST AMC is a fixed cost that’s easily absorbed by anyone trading more than roughly 15–20 times a year.
Groww
Zero AMC for life makes this the cheapest option for someone doing mostly SIPs with occasional, small stock purchases. The per-trade delivery fee adds up only once trading frequency rises.
Upstox
Carries both a flat delivery brokerage and a standard AMC — in the scenarios above, it isn’t the cheapest choice at either low or high trading frequency. Its case rests more on platform preference and trading tools than on fees.
Groww or Zerodha — tied
Mutual fund commission is ₹0 on all three. Groww’s zero AMC gives it a small edge if you never plan to buy individual stocks.
Zerodha
Zero brokerage on every delivery trade, regardless of size, is the strongest cost advantage for anyone trading stocks regularly and holding them.
8What to Check Before You Actually Open an Account
- Confirm SEBI registration yourself — search the broker’s name on SEBI’s intermediary registry at sebi.gov.in rather than trusting the badge shown on the broker’s own homepage.
- Read the current AMC waiver terms — first-year waivers are promotional offers set by the broker, not a permanent SEBI rule, and can change without much notice.
- Check whether your city has DP charge parity — the ₹15–20 sell-side DP charge applies at all three, but exact figures vary slightly by broker and are worth checking directly.
- Decide your primary use case before comparing fees — as Section 5 shows, there’s no single “cheapest broker” answer independent of how you plan to actually use the account.
- Keep only trading capital in the trading account — since your shares live at the depository and not with the broker, there’s no benefit to keeping large idle cash balances in a trading account rather than your savings account.
This is a fee and structure comparison, not investment advice and not a recommendation to open any specific account. Fee schedules change; verify current numbers directly on each broker’s pricing page before opening an account, and consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser for guidance specific to your financial situation.
9The One Mistake That Costs Investors the Most
The single most expensive mistake in this comparison isn’t picking the “wrong” broker — it’s picking any broker based on which one a colleague uses or which one has the most downloads, without running your own numbers first. As Section 5 shows, the ranking flips entirely depending on trade frequency: a broker that’s ₹1,200/year cheaper for a low-frequency SIP investor can be the more expensive choice for someone trading 40+ times a year, and vice versa.
The fix is mechanical, not complicated: run the calculator in Section 6 with your own real numbers — not a rough guess — before opening any account. A five-minute exercise now avoids a multi-year cost mismatch that most investors never notice, because brokerage is deducted automatically on every trade and rarely shows up as a single visible number worth questioning.
The broker that’s cheapest for your colleague on their trading pattern is not automatically the cheapest for you on yours — the fee structures genuinely rank differently depending on how you actually use the account.
— The core finding of Section 5’s worked examplesAll three platforms are SEBI-registered, and your shares are equally safe at the depository level regardless of which one you pick — the real decision is a fee-structure question, not a safety question. Zerodha’s zero delivery brokerage rewards frequent, buy-and-hold stock investors. Groww’s zero AMC rewards low-frequency, mutual-fund-first investors. Upstox sits in the middle on cost but competes on platform tools rather than price.
It’s a bit like choosing between two mobile plans — one with a lower monthly fee and higher per-call rate, one with a higher monthly fee and free calls. The right answer isn’t which plan is “better.” It’s which one matches how much you actually call.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Yes — equity delivery brokerage is ₹0 on Zerodha regardless of trade size, and has been Zerodha’s pricing model since 2015. You still pay government charges (STT, stamp duty, GST on other fees) and a small DP charge when you sell, but Zerodha’s own brokerage component on delivery trades is genuinely zero. The AMC of ₹300+GST/year is a separate, unrelated charge for maintaining the demat account itself.
Yes. Unlike Zerodha, Groww charges the lower of ₹20 or 0.1% of trade value on equity delivery orders, with a minimum charge of ₹5, per Groww’s own pricing page. This is a common misconception, since Groww is often assumed to be entirely fee-free because it doesn’t charge an AMC.
No, not for new accounts. Upstox removed free delivery brokerage in August 2021. Accounts opened since then are charged a flat ₹20 per executed order on delivery trades, the same as its intraday and F&O pricing structure. Only accounts opened before that date retained the earlier free-delivery terms.
Groww, with ₹0 annual maintenance charge for the life of the account. Zerodha and Upstox both charge ₹300 + GST per year after any promotional first-year waiver. Over a multi-year holding period, this is a meaningful and predictable saving for investors who trade infrequently.
Yes. Shares bought through any SEBI-registered broker are held in your own demat account at CDSL or NSDL — India’s two depositories — not by the broker itself. If a broker were to cease operations, your holdings remain intact and can be transferred to another broker. This protection applies equally at Zerodha, Groww, and Upstox.
Yes. Securities Transaction Tax (STT), stamp duty, GST on brokerage and other fees, and exchange transaction charges are set by the government and stock exchanges, not by the broker. These charges are identical in rate across Zerodha, Groww, and Upstox — the only variable between brokers is the brokerage and AMC components.
Yes — all three offer direct mutual fund plans with ₹0 brokerage or platform commission, since direct plans don’t pay distributor commission to the platform by design. This makes the choice between the three, for a pure SIP investor, come down almost entirely to the AMC comparison in Section 3.
Yes, multiple demat and trading accounts are permitted. The practical downside is fragmented portfolio tracking and multiple capital gains statements at tax-filing time. For most salaried investors, choosing one platform based on your primary use case — as covered in Section 7 — is the simpler starting point, with a second account added only if a specific need arises.
📖 Read These Next
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Build this before opening a broker account — money earmarked for emergencies has no business sitting in equity.
How to Get a Home Loan in India 2026: The Number Banks Check First
Part of the same “Your Money, Decoded” series — worth reading before a large fixed obligation competes with your investing budget.
Old Tax Regime vs New Tax Regime: Which One Saves You More in 2026?
Exact breakeven deduction numbers at every salary level — useful before you decide how much to actually invest.
Why Your ₹75,000 CTC Pays You Only Around ₹65,000 Take-Home
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EPF Contribution: Why ₹4,800 Leaves Your Salary Before You Even See It
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HRA Exemption: How Much of Your Rent Is Actually Tax-Free in 2026?
Part of the same “Your Money, Decoded” series — the tax-side counterpart to this investing comparison.
Sources
- Zerodha — Brokerage Charges, Fees & Taxes. Official pricing page: zerodha.com/charges
- Groww — Brokerage Charges & Pricing. Official pricing page: groww.in/pricing; intraday/delivery brokerage rate confirmed via Groww’s own help center at groww.in/help
- Upstox — Brokerage Charges, Transparent Pricing. Official pricing page: upstox.com/brokerage-charges
- SEBI — Investor Charter for Depository Participants. Explains what a Depository Participant is and what protection it offers investors: sebi.gov.in
- SEBI — Registered Intermediaries Search. Used to independently verify current stockbroker registration status: sebi.gov.in
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💬 Quick Question for You
Looking at Scenario 2 and Scenario 3 above — roughly how many delivery trades do you place in a typical year, and does that change which of the three actually comes out cheaper for you?