Demat Account Charges Explained: What You Actually Pay

Demat account charges come in four buckets: the recurring annual maintenance charge, the per-transaction DP debit charge, the broker's brokerage on your trades, and a statutory stack of taxes and levies that no broker can waive. Most 'hidden cost' complaints trace to not knowing which bucket a charge belongs to — or to the per-ISIN DP charge behaving in a way nobody explained. Here is the full bill, with the rules that fix some of it at zero and worked examples of what a normal investing year costs.

What SEBI has already made free

Under the SEBI Master Circular for Depositories (December 2024), these are capped at zero at every DP in India:

• Account opening: no charge beyond statutory levies.
• Credit of securities: shares, ETFs, bonds and MF units arriving in your account (from buys, IPO allotments, corporate actions) cost nothing.
• Custody: no charge for the depository holding your securities.
• Account closure: no closure charge, ever.
• Upfront AMC refunds: if you paid AMC annually or half-yearly upfront and close or shift the account mid-year, the DP must refund the balance quarters pro-rata. (Source: SEBI Master Circular for Depositories, paras 1.10.1 to 1.10.4.)

Everything below is broker-set or statutory — and this is where comparing brokers actually pays.

Bucket 1: Annual Maintenance Charge (AMC)

AMC is the fee for the account existing. It is billed quarterly, annually or monthly depending on the broker, and first-year waivers are common marketing tools. Verified current rates:

Source: broker charge pages as verified on 2 November 2026.

The BSDA tier changes the AMC game

Since 1 September 2024, every DP must offer the Basic Services Demat Account tier under SEBI circular 91 of June 2024: NIL AMC when holdings are up to ₹4 lakh, maximum ₹100 a year from ₹4 to ₹10 lakh, and conversion to regular AMC above ₹10 lakh. You qualify with one demat account where you are sole or first holder, and only one BSDA is allowed across CDSL and NSDL combined. DPs must open or convert eligible accounts to BSDA by default unless you opt out by email, and other service charges cannot be higher than for regular accounts. (Source: SEBI/HO/MIRSD/MIRSD-PoD1/P/CIR/2024/91.)

Holdings value is measured on daily closing prices at each billing cycle, and if your portfolio grows past ₹10 lakh the regular AMC applies from that date. So a ₹3 lakh portfolio at Zerodha can pay zero AMC on BSDA; the same portfolio at a zero-AMC broker pays zero anyway. The tier exists so no small investor anywhere pays locker rent.

Bucket 2: DP charges — the per-ISIN debit fee

The charge that generates the most confused emails. When securities leave your demat account — a sell, an off-market transfer, a gift — the DP levies a flat fee per ISIN (scrip), not per share, and not on buys. CDSL's own fee has been a uniform ₹3.50 per debit transaction since 1 October 2024, with a ₹0.25 discount for female first holders. The broker adds its own charge on top, plus 18% GST. (Source: CDSL tariff change as reported by Moneycontrol, September 2024; Zerodha charges page.)

Worked example — you sell 500 shares of one company at Zerodha: the DP charge is ₹15.34 (₹3.5 CDSL + ₹9.5 Zerodha + ₹2.34 GST). Sell 1 share of the same company next week: still ₹15.34. At Upstox it is ₹20 per scrip per day on sell; at Groww it is ₹3.5 depository fee plus ₹16.5 broker fee, waived entirely when the total debit value is under ₹100. (Source: Zerodha, Upstox and Groww charge pages.)

Three consequences worth internalising:

• Batch your sells. One order debiting five ISINs costs five DP charges; five ISINs sold on separate days cost the same. But selling a ₹40,000 position as one order versus ten micro-orders is the difference between one ₹15.34 hit and ten.
• SIP-style small sells are taxed by friction. Selling tiny lots weekly means the DP fee is a much larger percentage of the trade than the brokerage.
• It hits the trading ledger, not the contract note. Zerodha, for instance, books the DP charge on the trading account ledger when stocks are sold. (Source: Zerodha charges page.) That is why people 'discover' it weeks later.

Bucket 3: brokerage on the trade itself

Delivery brokerage (buy-and-hold trades) is now zero or flat-₹20 across the major discount brokers: Zerodha ₹0 on delivery, Upstox ₹20 per order, Groww ₹20 or 0.1% whichever is lower (min ₹5), HDFC Sky ₹20 or 2.5% whichever is lower, Angel One with a ₹500 brokerage-free window in the first 30 days. (Source: respective broker charge pages.) Intraday and F&O pricing differs per broker and is beyond this page's scope.

Bucket 4: the statutory stack

Government and exchange levies apply identically no matter the broker. For equity delivery (Source: Zerodha and Upstox charge pages, reflecting NSE/BSE/SEBI tariff and the Indian Stamp Act):

On a ₹1,00,000 delivery round trip (buy and sell), the statutory stack alone is roughly ₹2,300 — over ₹2,000 of it STT. No broker comparison changes this; only your turnover does.

The smaller charges worth knowing

• Pledge/unpledge: ₹20 + GST per ISIN per request at Groww; ₹30 + GST at Zerodha. Relevant if you use margin trading facility or F&O collateral. (Source: Groww and Zerodha charge pages.)
• Dematerialisation/rematerialisation: converting physical certificates costs per-certificate fees (Groww: ₹150 per certificate plus courier). (Source: Groww pricing page.)
• Off-market transfers: Zerodha ₹25 per transaction — this is the charge behind gifts and transfers to family accounts. (Source: Zerodha charges page.)
• Auto square-off: ₹50 per position if the broker closes your intraday position after the cut-off (Groww, Upstox). (Source: Groww and Upstox pricing pages.)
• Delayed payment charges: interest on debit balances — Groww 0.05% per day (18% a year equivalent); Zerodha 18% a year or 0.05% per day. (Source: Groww and Zerodha pages.)
• Physical statements: capped at ₹25 per statement for BSDA accounts under SEBI's BSDA circular; brokers otherwise charge small per-page fees (Groww ₹10 per page). (Source: SEBI circular 91; Groww pricing page.)

Two worked annual profiles

Profile A — buy-and-hold, ₹3 lakh portfolio at a zero-AMC broker: 8 delivery buys, 4 sells across 4 ISINs. Brokerage ≈ ₹80–160, DP charges ≈ ₹80 (4 × ~₹20), AMC ₹0, statutory stack per the table. Total: a few hundred rupees.

Profile B — same investor at Zerodha without BSDA: same trades, but add ₹300 AMC + ₹53 GST from year 2, and DP charges of ₹15.34 × 4 ≈ ₹61 + GST. Total: still under ₹1,000 — the difference is real but small. Now double the trading frequency and Profile B's DP-plus-AMC lead shrinks to brokerage differences, which is why the right answer depends entirely on your pattern.

Price your own pattern precisely with the broker annual cost calculator: it takes delivery and options order counts, per-order brokerage, AMC, holdings value and BSDA status, and computes the statutory legs from the site's fee engine rather than assuming them.

How to audit what you were actually charged

• Contract notes show brokerage and the statutory stack for each trade, day by day.
• The trading ledger shows where the DP charges, pledge fees and AMC actually hit.
• The CAS from CDSL/NSDL arrives by email monthly when you transacted and half-yearly when you did not, covering all your demat accounts and MF folios against your PAN. (Source: SEBI CAS circular SEBI/HO/MRD-PoD2/CIR/P/2024/93.)
• The depository's published tariff list shows what your DP is allowed to charge — DPs must file their tariff structure with the depositories every year for exactly this purpose. (Source: SEBI Master Circular for Depositories, para 1.10.5.)

If a charge does not match the published tariff, the escalation path runs DP first, then the depository, then SEBI SCORES.

Sources

SEBI Master Circular for Depositories (3 December 2024); SEBI BSDA circular SEBI/HO/MIRSD/MIRSD-PoD1/P/CIR/2024/91 (28 June 2024); SEBI CAS circular of 1 July 2024; CDSL uniform debit tariff as reported by Moneycontrol (September 2024); official charge pages of Zerodha, Upstox, Groww, Angel One and HDFC Sky verified on 2 November 2026.

The honest summary: opening, holding custody, credits and closure are free by regulation; AMC and DP charges are the only recurring leaks, and both are manageable — BSDA or a zero-AMC broker kills the first, batching your sells tames the second. The statutory stack is unavoidable, and the only lever that touches it is turnover.