Zerodha API Charges: What Kite Connect Costs in 2026

Zerodha’s trading API, Kite Connect, has two plans as of November 2026. Personal is free and covers orders, GTT, positions, holdings and margins, but no market data. Connect costs ₹500 a month per app and adds live WebSocket data and historical candles. From October 2026, paid users whose account generates ₹2,000 or more in brokerage in a calendar month get 500 developer credits, which pay the next month’s ₹500.

That’s the short answer. The more useful one is that the API fee is the smallest line on an algo trader’s monthly bill, and I’ve worked through a full month below to show where the money actually goes.

Last updated: November 2026.

Personal vs Connect: what each plan includes

	Personal	Connect
Price	₹0	₹500 a month per app (per API key)
Place, modify and cancel orders; GTT; alerts	Yes	Yes
Positions, holdings, funds, margin calculation	Yes	Yes
Live quotes and LTP through the API	No	Yes
WebSocket streaming	No	Yes
Historical candles	No	Yes
Static IP needed to place orders	Yes	Yes
Fresh login every trading day	Yes	Yes

Sources: Zerodha’s Kite API charges article and Kite Connect FAQ.

The fine print, in the order it’ll matter to you:

• “Per app” is literal. Zerodha bills ₹500 per API key, so two apps for two strategies is ₹1,000 a month. One app can run several strategies, so there’s rarely a reason for a second.
• On Personal, the ticker, quote, LTP and historical calls fail with an “Insufficient permission” error. Users reported this on the Kite forum thread announcing Personal, and Zerodha’s team confirmed everything else works.
• Neither the charges article nor Zerodha’s API product page mentions GST on the ₹500. Check the invoice in your developer console rather than assuming either way.
• For context, before Personal arrived in early 2025, Kite Connect cost ₹2,000 a month, and historical data was another ₹2,000.

Is Kite Connect free? Yes, if your signals come from somewhere else

Personal gives you everything needed to place and manage orders, but no prices. So the real question is where your strategy gets its data.

Personal is enough when the decision is made elsewhere: a TradingView alert, a Chartink scan, a platform that brings its own data, or a data vendor you already pay. Your code receives “buy 1 lot of this strike” and passes it to Zerodha.

You need Connect when your own code computes signals from Zerodha’s data: a Python script that builds 5-minute candles from the tick stream, an options strategy that reads live premiums to pick strikes, or anything that pulls history from Zerodha to warm up an indicator before the open.

One limit: the data is for you alone. Zerodha’s FAQ says displaying or redistributing Kite Connect data on external platforms isn’t allowed under exchange data-vending rules.

Setup itself (creating the app, the redirect URL, the daily token) is in our Kite Connect setup guide, and the Kite Connect API glossary entry is the two-minute version.

The October 2026 developer-credits rule

From October 2026, if you’re on the paid Connect plan and your account generates ₹2,000 or more in brokerage in a calendar month, Zerodha adds 500 developer credits (worth ₹500) that renew Connect for the following month. Eligibility is checked automatically at month end. Below ₹2,000, you pay the ₹500 as usual.

Translate that into orders. Options brokerage at Zerodha is a flat ₹20 per executed order, so ₹2,000 is 100 executed orders, or 50 round trips of a buy and a sell. Over a 21-trading-day month, that’s about 2.4 option round trips a day.

A trader doing 3 option round trips a day clears it (126 orders, ₹2,520). A trader doing 2 a day doesn’t (84 orders, ₹1,680). Someone who mostly buys delivery equity never will, because delivery brokerage at Zerodha is ₹0. And an intraday equity order below about ₹66,667 pays less than ₹20, because that brokerage is 0.03% or ₹20, whichever is lower.

The support page doesn’t say whether the ₹2,000 is counted before or after GST, or whether brokerage from manual trades counts alongside API trades. I read it as the account’s total brokerage before GST, but if you’re close to the line, ask Zerodha support.

My view: this is a rebate for people who already trade actively. Don’t trade more to earn it. Paying ₹2,000 in brokerage to save ₹500 is a bad trade.

The costs people forget

Here’s the full list for an F&O algo trader at Zerodha, using the rates behind our Zerodha brokerage calculator (checked against Zerodha’s charges page in September 2026):

• Brokerage: flat ₹20 per executed order on options; 0.03% or ₹20, whichever is lower, on intraday equity and futures; ₹0 on delivery.
• STT: 0.15% of premium on the sell side for options; 0.05% on the sell side for futures (Budget 2026 rates, from 1 April 2026).
• NSE transaction charges: 0.03553% of premium on options, 0.00183% on futures, on both sides.
• SEBI fee: ₹10 per crore of turnover.
• Stamp duty: 0.003% of premium on the buy side for options; 0.002% for futures.
• GST: 18% on brokerage, transaction charges and the SEBI fee.
• Static IP: required for API orders since April 2026, on both plans. A small AWS Lightsail server in Mumbai, which includes a static IP, is $5 a month (Lightsail pricing). Our static IP guide covers the other routes.
• Your platform, if you use one: some platforms have you create your own Kite Connect app, which puts Zerodha’s ₹500 on your bill; others are integrated with Zerodha directly. Ask before you sign up. We build INDfolio, so weigh this accordingly: our live plan is ₹999 a month for one broker, and any broker API fee is billed by the broker, not by us.

SEBI’s September 2024 study shows how this stacks up: individual F&O traders spent about ₹26,000 each on transaction costs in FY24, and brokerage made up 51% of their costs over FY22 to FY24. The same study found 93% of individual F&O traders lost money over those three years. Costs aren’t the whole story, but they’re the part you can work out in advance.

A worked month: two Nifty option trades a day

A hypothetical trader, to make the arithmetic concrete. They buy Nifty options through a Python script on Kite Connect:

• 1 lot per trade. A Nifty lot is 65 units (as of 2026; NSE revises lot sizes periodically).
• 2 round trips a day for 21 trading days: 42 round trips, 84 executed orders.
• Every trade buys at ₹100 and sells at ₹100. Unrealistic on purpose: with zero gross profit, everything below is pure cost.

One round trip has a buy value of ₹100 × 65 = ₹6,500, the same sell value, and turnover of ₹13,000.

Charge	Working	₹
Brokerage	2 orders × ₹20	40.00
STT	0.15% × ₹6,500 (sell side)	9.75
NSE transaction charges	0.03553% × ₹13,000	4.62
SEBI fee	₹10 per crore × ₹13,000	0.01
Stamp duty	0.003% × ₹6,500 (buy side)	0.20
GST	18% × (40 + 4.62 + 0.01)	8.03
Per round trip		62.61

Divide ₹62.61 by 65 units: each round trip has to capture 0.96 points of premium just to break even, nearly 1% of a ₹100 option before you’ve made a rupee.

Now the month:

Line	₹
Trading costs: 42 round trips × ₹62.61	2,630
Kite Connect (brokerage of ₹1,680 is under ₹2,000, so no credits)	500
Cloud server with static IP ($5, plus GST and currency drift, rounded)	500
Total	3,630

Brokerage plus the GST on it comes to ₹1,982, more than half the bill. The API fee is under 14%.

Bump the same trader to 3 round trips a day and trading costs rise to 63 × ₹62.61, about ₹3,944. Brokerage reaches ₹2,520, so next month’s Connect fee is paid by credits. The API line drops to zero, but the total still goes up, because trading costs grew by about ₹1,315. The lever that matters is how often you trade and what each trade costs. Run your own sizes through the calculator before paying for anything.

Pay Zerodha for data, or use another broker’s free API?

What three other brokers charge for API access, from their own pages in November 2026:

• FYERS: no fee for the trading API, and FYERS says historical data, quotes and market data are free for its clients (FYERS support).
• Angel One: SmartAPI is described as “completely free of cost”, historical data included (Angel One). That page lists historical data for NSE equity and F&O futures, so check option-data coverage if you need it.
• Dhan: the trading APIs are free; the Data API is ₹499 plus taxes a month (Dhan support).

So Zerodha isn’t the only broker that charges for data. Here’s how I’d decide.

Pay for Connect if you already trade at Zerodha, you’re happy there, and your code needs Zerodha’s ticks or candles. If you clear ₹2,000 of brokerage a month, it’s effectively free from October 2026 anyway.

Stay on Personal if your signals come from TradingView, Chartink or a platform with its own data. A feed your code never reads is ₹6,000 a year for nothing.

Don’t switch brokers to save ₹500 a month. If you’re going to compare, compare brokerage first. A broker charging ₹5 per option order instead of ₹20 would cut the example trader’s brokerage from ₹1,680 to ₹420 for the same 84 orders. That ₹1,260 gap, before GST, is bigger than any API fee on this page. Our Zerodha broker page covers what else you’d be weighing.

If you’d like these costs inside a backtest before anything goes live, INDfolio’s backtesting applies brokerage, STT, exchange charges, GST, stamp duty and slippage to every simulated trade.

Frequently asked questions

Is Zerodha Kite Connect API free? The Personal plan is free and covers orders, GTT, positions and margins. Live market data and historical candles need the Connect plan, which is ₹500 a month per app as of November 2026.

How much does Kite Connect cost per month? ₹500 per app for Connect. From October 2026, if your account generates ₹2,000 or more in brokerage in a calendar month, Zerodha gives 500 developer credits that cover the next month’s fee.

Does the ₹500 Kite Connect fee include GST? Zerodha’s charges article and API product page don’t say. Check the invoice in your Kite developer console.

Can I get historical data on Kite Connect Personal? No. Personal has no live or historical market data; quote, LTP, ticker and historical calls return a permission error. You need Connect or a different data source.

Do I need a static IP on the free Personal plan? Yes, for placing, modifying or cancelling orders. Since 1 April 2026, the static IP rule applies to API order requests on both plans.

Do I pay Zerodha’s API fee if I use an algo platform? It depends on how the platform connects. Some have you create your own Kite Connect app, which Zerodha bills to you; others are integrated with Zerodha directly. Ask the platform before you subscribe.