Best ITR Filing Platforms in India: Fees Compared (2026)

The Income Tax Department's own portal files your return free — so every commercial platform is selling you something else: prefill quality, capital-gains imports, expert review, notice cover. Some of that is worth paying for; some is a wrapper around the same free form. This post compares the options on their own pages — as of November 2026 — with the department's free route as the baseline every price should be measured against.

The baseline: the department's portal, free

The e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in files ITR-1 through ITR-7 at no charge, with prefill from your Form 16 data, AIS and 26AS (Form 168 from Tax Year 2026-27), and the department's own instructions state the modes of filing — electronically under digital signature, through an electronic verification code, or paper for the small set of filers still permitted it. The prefilled data is genuinely good for salary and bank interest; it is weaker at capital gains, where broker P&L statements still need manual mapping into Schedule 112A. If your return is one Form 16 and a savings interest line, the free portal is not just adequate — it is the reference implementation everyone else resells. Source: incometaxindia.gov.in, November 2026.

ClearTax: the broker-import heavyweight

ClearTax's filing page leads with the features that matter to investors: one-click capital-gains import from 80+ brokers, loss set-off handled through every schedule, expert-assisted tiers for F&O and intraday traders, freelancers and professionals, and RSU/ESOP plus foreign-income cases with Schedule FA filing by experts — wrapped in what it markets as notice protection with a money-back guarantee, and ₹1,766 crore-plus of refunds delivered last year per its own counter. Source: cleartax.in/income-tax-efiling, November 2026. The plan prices sit behind its dynamic plan selector rather than a static table, so check the live price for your form type at filing time — historically the self-serve tiers have been modest and the expert tiers priced like the CA service they are.

TaxBuddy: the published price list

TaxBuddy's price page is the most transparent of the set, listing plans per return type: Salary + 1 House Property at ₹699–₹799; Business & Professional Plan at ₹1,599; Capital Gain Plan at ₹1,999; Multiple Capital Gain Income at ₹2,999; Crypto Currency Plan at ₹2,999. Source: taxbuddy.com/itr-price, November 2026. The ladder tells you exactly what complexity costs: each additional asset class is roughly another ₹1,000. For a salaried filer with one house property, the entry plan prices close to the convenience of not fighting the portal's capital-gains schedules; for a crypto-and-multiple-gains filer, ₹2,999 buys the scheduling work that is genuinely error-prone by hand.

Quicko: the trader-friendly free tier

Quicko's pricing page structures by complexity: a free plan for beginners with simple tax situations, a step-up plan for individuals with diverse income sources, a basic plan plus capital gains, and an all-inclusive plan for high-net-worth filers — with a dedicated track for stock-market investors and traders and a Zerodha partnership page signalling where its integrations run deepest. Source: quicko.com/pricing, November 2026. Like ClearTax, its rupee prices live in the app flow rather than a static table — check inside for the current figures. The free tier's existence makes Quicko the natural first stop for a salaried filer who wants guided software without paying, and its trader tooling (F&O and intraday treated as business income) is the reason traders cluster there.

Vakilsearch and the CA-assisted lane

Vakilsearch markets expert CA-assisted ITR filing for salaried individuals, businesses, freelancers and NRIs, with dedicated pages per return type — ITR-1, foreign income, proprietorship — and prices behind its plan selector at the time of checking. Source: vakilsearch.com, November 2026. The broader point: the CA-assisted lane — ClearTax experts, TaxBuddy's assisted plans, Vakilsearch, or your own CA — competes on review and representation, not on the form. What you are buying is a human checking the schedules, handling a notice if it comes, and answering for the numbers. That is worth real money when your year includes an ESOP exercise, a property sale, foreign assets or an F&O loss maze; it is worth nothing when your Form 16 is your only document.

The comparison, by return type

Sources: vendor pages as listed, November 2026. ClearTax and Quicko prices are flow-dependent — verify live before paying; TaxBuddy's figures are from its published price page.

How to choose, honestly

Start from your return's complexity, not from the ads. One Form 16 and nothing else: the free portal, full stop — a paid tool adds nothing but a wrapper. Salary plus a small equity portfolio: the free portal works if you enjoy Schedule 112A mapping; a Quicko free tier or a ₹699 plan buys the broker import and the peace of mind. Multiple capital gains, F&O, ESOPs, foreign assets or crypto: the paid scheduling and expert review earn their fee in errors avoided — a defective-return notice costs more time than any plan price. And whatever you use, the document discipline is identical: reconcile Form 16, AIS and 26AS before filing, e-verify within 30 days, and keep the computation sheet our ITR guide walks through.

The expert-assisted interview

Before paying any expert tier, ask four questions and insist on specifics. One: who signs and files — a named CA or a pooled queue? Two: does the fee cover notice representation later, and for how long — the platforms’ notice-protection products differ in scope, and the money-back guarantee on ClearTax’s page has conditions worth reading. Three: who is liable for a wrong computation — the platform’s terms, not the sales page, answer this. Four: what does a revision cost if you spot an error after filing? A service that answers all four crisply is a professional service; one that answers in marketing is a form-filler with a premium price.

The surge calendar

Filing demand is violently seasonal — it concentrates in the weeks before the due dates our ITR guide lists (July 31 for ITR-1/2, August 31 for non-audit business returns for AY 2026-27), and again in December when belated returns close. Expect slower expert turnaround, occasional price action on assisted tiers, and portal congestion in those windows; the platforms’ own support queues thin out in the quiet months. The practical move for anyone with a complex return: start in the quiet season with draft numbers, so the expert review happens in slack time and the filing itself is a five-minute confirmation rather than a deadline-day scramble. The cheapest expert help is the kind bought early.

What goes wrong

• Paying for simplicity you already have. A ₹699 plan on a Form-16-only return buys you a slower version of the free portal. The platforms earn their keep on complexity, not on salary slips.
• Trusting imports blindly. Broker P&L imports are excellent at mapping trades and mediocre at corporate-action edge cases — bonus issues, demergers, the 2018 grandfathering line. The importer's output is a draft, not a computation; check the big ISINs by hand, as our capital-gains guide insists.
• Buying expert cover for a notice you caused. Notice protection covers the platform's own work, not data you omitted. If the AIS shows a deposit you never disclosed, no plan tier saves you from the mismatch — fix the disclosure first, as our Form 26AS guide explains.
• Price-chasing across years. Plan names and prices churn annually; what holds is the shape — free portal for simple, software for schedules, humans for representation. Re-verify each platform's live price in filing season rather than trusting a year-old listicle, including this one: the figures above are dated November 2026 and will move.

The free-portal checklist inside any tool

Whichever platform you pick, four moves belong to you, not the software. Pull Form 26AS (Form 168 from Tax Year 2026-27) and the AIS, and reconcile every TDS and high-value line against your own records before entering anything — mismatches, not honesty, are what trigger scrutiny, as our Form 26AS guide explains. Choose the regime once, deliberately: the new regime is the default, and our old-versus-new post is the arithmetic to run it against. E-verify within 30 days of filing or the return is treated as never filed. And keep the computation sheet — the tax, the TDS, the challans — in one folder per year, because a future notice references a past year, not this season's app.

The verdict

The best filing platform is the one matched to your worst schedule. Salary-only filers: the department's free portal, and keep the ₹699–₹799 in your pocket. Investors: a broker-import tool — TaxBuddy's published ₹1,999 capital-gain plan or ClearTax's 80-broker import — pays for itself in one avoided mapping error. Traders, freelancers and ESOP holders: expert-assisted tiers on ClearTax, TaxBuddy or a CA, with the notice-cover question asked directly before you pay. Every route ends the same way: e-verify within 30 days, reconcile against 26AS, and file by the calendar in our ITR guide — because no platform, free or paid, saves a return from being late.

This is educational content, not investment advice. Consult a SEBI-registered advisor for decisions specific to your situation.