How option trade charges work in India
Buy an option at ₹100 and sell it at ₹120, and the chart says you made ₹20 a unit. Your ledger disagrees. Between the two orders sit six separate charges levied by the broker, the exchange, the regulator and the tax code — each calculated on a different base, some charged on the way in, some only on the way out. On a single lot they look like rounding errors; measured against a small premium move, they routinely decide whether a winning trade was worth taking. Here is every line of the bill, in the order the calculator applies it. The rates below are the locked schedule this tool runs on — the same figures shown in the charge card above.
Brokerage
The broker's cut for executing your orders. The schedule uses the flat-fee model popularised by discount brokers such as Zerodha: ₹20 per executed order. A round trip crosses two orders — one to open, one to close — so brokerage contributes a fixed ₹40 to every completed trade regardless of size. Fixed charges punish small positions: ₹40 is a footnote on a ₹50,000 premium turnover and a serious tax on a ₹2,000 one. This is also the line that varies most between brokers; percentage-of-premium brokerage at a full-service firm will produce a noticeably larger bill than the discount-broker baseline modelled here.
STT — securities transaction tax
STT is a government tax on the transaction itself, and in options it is charged only on the sell side, at 0.15% of the premium you receive. Two consequences follow. First, there is no STT when you buy, so your entry bill is structurally smaller than your exit bill. Second, STT scales with the premium at exit — it grows precisely when your trade works. The dangerous version of STT appears at expiry: if a long option expires in the money and is never squared off, STT is levied at 0.15% of the option's intrinsic value rather than its premium, a figure that can dwarf the premium you paid and turn a profitable expiry into a net loss. The calculator models a sale before expiry; the result panel flags the expiry trap separately.
Exchange transaction charges
The exchange charges for matching your order, calculated as a percentage of premium turnover — of the premium, not of the underlying's notional value, which is what keeps option charges survivable on instruments controlling lakhs of rupees of stock. The rate depends on where the contract trades: 0.03553% per side on NSE, 0.005% per side on BSE equity options, and 0.0325% per side for BSE's Sensex and Bankex contracts. Both legs pay it, on buy and sell turnover respectively, and the calculator re-prices the sell leg at whichever exit — target or stop — is being evaluated.
SEBI turnover fee
The market regulator funds itself through a turnover fee of ₹10 per crore of turnover — one rupee for every ₹10 lakh traded — charged on both sides. Per trade it is the smallest line on the bill, usually paise. It still earns its line, because it forms part of the base on which GST is calculated, and because it is the clearest reminder that every participant in the chain is paid out of the same premium move you are trying to capture.
Stamp duty
Stamp duty is a state levy charged once, on the buy side only, at 0.003% of buy-side premium turnover. It is the mirror image of STT: a charge that exists when you enter and never reappears when you exit. Small, fixed in character, and easy to forget — which is precisely why it belongs in a calculator rather than in memory.
GST
Goods and services tax at 18% is charged not on your turnover but on the service charges within it — brokerage plus exchange charges plus the SEBI fee, computed separately for each side. STT and stamp duty, being taxes themselves, sit outside the GST base. GST is typically the second-largest line on a small trade's bill after brokerage, and it carries one uncomfortable property: it is charged in full on losing trades too. The tax code does not net off against your P&L. Winning or losing, the bill is the bill.
Breakeven — the number that quietly runs the trade
Your breakeven is not your buy premium. It is the sell premium at which the trade returns exactly zero after every charge — and because several charges are themselves calculated on the sell premium, breakeven is a moving target: sell higher, and STT, exchange charges and GST all grow with you. The result panel therefore shows two versions. The fee-recovery sell price spreads the entered trade's total charges over your quantity and adds them to the buy premium — a sound first approximation. The exact dynamic breakeven solves the real equation: the sell premium at which net P&L is precisely zero, with every charge recomputed at that premium. The exact figure is the honest one, and the small gap between the two is the cost of the approximation. Before any trade, compare your target with the exact breakeven. If the target sits below it, the trade cannot make money even when it "works" — the chart can be right and the ledger still red.
A worked example
The calculator's own check case: buy 50 options at ₹100, exit at the ₹120 target, charged at NSE rates.
Buy turnover (50 × ₹100)₹5,000.00
Sell turnover at target (50 × ₹120)₹6,000.00
Gross P&L₹1,000.00
Brokerage · buy + sell₹40.00
STT · sell side only₹9.00
Exchange charges · buy + sell₹3.91
SEBI turnover fee · buy + sell₹0.02
Stamp duty · buy side only₹0.15
GST · buy + sell₹7.90
Total charges₹60.98
Net P&L at target₹939.02
Net P&L at the ₹90 stop-loss−₹558.10
Exact breakeven sell premium₹101.18
The trade "made twenty points". The ledger kept ₹939.02 of the ₹1,000 — charges consumed 6.1% of the gross. And notice the asymmetry the R:R exposes: at the ₹90 stop, the same charge structure deepens a ₹500 gross loss into ₹558.10 net, so the realised reward-to-risk is 1.68:1, thinner than the 2:1 the premium chart suggests. Charges compress winners and deepen losers in equal measure. Measuring that compression before entry — not discovering it in the contract note — is the entire purpose of this calculator.
Frequently asked questions
Why is STT charged only when I sell?
That is how the tax is designed for options: STT is collected on the sale of an option (and, in a different and more expensive form, on exercised options at expiry), while the purchase leg is exempt. Practically, it means your exit bill is always heavier than your entry bill, and the tax rises with the premium you sell at — one more reason the calculator re-prices every charge at the actual exit being evaluated rather than assuming the two legs cost the same.
Why are there two breakeven numbers?
Because charges move with the sell premium. The fee-recovery price takes the charges from the trade as entered and spreads them over your quantity — quick, and close. The exact dynamic breakeven re-solves the whole charge statement at each candidate sell premium until net P&L is exactly zero. In the worked example the two differ by four paise (₹101.22 against ₹101.18); on larger turnovers the gap widens. Use the exact figure when you set targets.
Do intraday and positional option trades pay different charges?
Not in this model — brokerage, STT, exchange charges, SEBI fee, stamp duty and GST are identical for both, which is why the product-type selector does not change the result. One real-world exception: an intraday position left open can be auto squared-off by the broker, and some brokers levy a penalty for that (₹50 plus GST in Zerodha's case). That penalty is deliberately excluded here; squaring off yourself is always the cheaper exit.
My broker charges more than ₹20 an order. Can I change the rate?
The schedules on this page are locked deliberately: the same arithmetic for every trader, re-verified by the Monks Of Market team against official sources (last verified 30 September 2026) instead of drifting with whatever a user types in. If your broker charges a percentage of premium or a higher flat fee, your real charges will be higher than the discount-broker baseline shown here — treat the output as the floor, and weigh the difference when choosing where to trade.
What happens if I let the option expire instead of selling it?
The calculator deliberately does not model expiry. A long option expiring in the money without square-off attracts STT at 0.15% of intrinsic value, and exercise or physical settlement can create obligations far larger than the premium paid. Out-of-the-money options simply lapse worthless, losing the premium and the entry charges. In nearly every scenario a trader actually wants, selling before expiry is the cleaner and cheaper exit — the disclaimer explains the settlement risks in full.
Why do charges bite harder on small trades?
Because the largest single charge — ₹40 of round-trip brokerage — is fixed, while everything you earn scales with size. On a ₹5,000 premium turnover the brokerage alone is 0.8% of turnover before any other charge is added; on ₹50,000 it is 0.08%. Small, frequent option trades therefore need disproportionately large premium moves just to break even, which is why the breakeven line in the result panel deserves as much attention as the target.
How much does it cost to trade one NIFTY options lot in India?
On the fee schedule locked into this page, one NIFTY lot (65 units) bought at a ₹100 premium and sold at ₹120 on NSE costs ₹65.12 all-in: ₹40 brokerage (₹20 per executed order), ₹11.70 STT at 0.15% of the sell premium, ₹5.08 exchange charges at 0.03553% per side, ₹0.02 SEBI turnover fee (₹10 per crore), ₹0.20 stamp duty at 0.003% on the buy side, and ₹8.12 GST at 18%. The trade's ₹1,300 gross profit therefore lands as ₹1,234.88 net. The fixed ₹40 brokerage dominates the bill on a single lot; every other charge scales with premium turnover, so enter your own premiums in the calculator above for your lot size and strike.
Do I pay STT when buying options?
No. For options, STT is charged only on the sell side — 0.15% of the premium you receive, at the rates effective from April 2026. The buy leg is exempt from STT; instead it carries stamp duty at 0.003% of buy-side turnover, plus brokerage, exchange charges, the SEBI fee and GST. That asymmetry is why your exit bill is always heavier than your entry bill, and why this calculator prices the two legs of the trade separately.
What is STT on options trading in India?
Since April 2026, STT on options is 0.15% of the premium, charged on the sell side only; there is no STT when you buy. One important exception: if a long option expires in the money without being squared off, STT is levied at 0.15% of the option's intrinsic value rather than its premium — a figure that can exceed the premium you paid and turn a profitable expiry into a net loss. In almost every case, selling before expiry is the cheaper and cleaner exit.
Which trading charges are the same at every broker?
STT, exchange transaction charges, the SEBI turnover fee and stamp duty are fixed by the government, the exchange and the regulator, so they are identical no matter where you trade — on this schedule: STT 0.15% of sell premium, NSE exchange charges 0.03553% per side, SEBI ₹10 per crore, stamp duty 0.003% on the buy side. GST at 18% is also uniform, applied to brokerage plus exchange and SEBI charges. The charge that genuinely differs between brokers is brokerage itself — a flat ₹20 per order at discount brokers such as Zerodha, but often a percentage of premium at full-service firms — along with extras like auto square-off or call-and-trade fees. Compare brokers on the brokerage line; every other line of the bill is already fixed.