Trading GTC order Good Till Cancelled GTT order validity Kite Zerodha

GTC orders on Kite: why Good-Till-Cancelled is not natively supported

From WebNotes, a public knowledge base. Last updated 21 June 2026. Reading time ~11 min.

Key facts

Is GTC offered on Kite?	No. There is no native Good-Till-Cancelled order; the closest tool is the GTT (Good Till Triggered) feature
Why GTC is unavailable	NSE and BSE cancel pending orders at the end of each trading day; neither exchange offers an open-ended order validity
Zerodha's substitute	GTT, a broker feature stored on Zerodha's servers, not at the exchange, that fires a limit order when a trigger is touched
Validity cap	GTT is valid one year for equity and only until contract expiry for F&O; it is not perpetual like a true GTC
Active GTT cap	500 active GTTs per account

A Good-Till-Cancelled (GTC) order is an order that rests at the exchange indefinitely, staying live until it either fills or the trader cancels it, and Zerodha Kite does not offer one, because neither the National Stock Exchange nor the Bombay Stock Exchange supports an open-ended order validity. Both exchanges purge their pending order books at the end of each trading day, so an order cannot natively persist beyond the session. The closest tool on Kite is the GTT (Good Till Triggered) feature, which Zerodha runs on its own servers as a broker-level workaround, with a validity cap that makes it not a true GTC.

This distinction matters because traders coming from US brokerages, where GTC is a standard order validity, often look for the same option on Kite and assume the GTT is its exact equivalent. It is not. A GTC would sit at the exchange forever; a GTT sits at the broker, fires only on a trigger, and expires after a fixed window. This article sets out why a true GTC is structurally absent from Indian equity trading, how the GTT replicates the intent, where the two diverge, and what the validity cap means in practice.

Why a true GTC is absent from Indian equity markets

The order validity types that NSE and BSE recognise are bounded to the trading day. A standard order is a DAY order: it is live for the session and cancelled at close if unfilled. The exchanges also support immediate validities such as IOC (immediate-or-cancel). What they do not support is an order that the exchange itself holds across multiple sessions until cancellation. The exchange order books are cleared at the end of each day, so an unfilled limit order does not carry forward; the trader must re-enter it the next morning.

This is a deliberate design of the Indian market microstructure, not an oversight. Carrying live orders across days at the exchange would require the exchange to hold risk against orders whose underlying conditions, the trader’s funds, the company’s corporate actions, the scrip’s eligibility, can change overnight. Indian exchanges keep order validity within the day and push the cross-day persistence problem to the broker layer. Because the exchange does not offer it, no broker operating on NSE or BSE can offer a genuine GTC that rests at the exchange; the order simply has nowhere to live overnight in the exchange system.

The practical consequence for a Kite user is direct. A regular limit order placed today and left unfilled is gone at session close. A buy limit Rs 50 below the market, set to catch a dip, lapses every evening and would have to be re-entered every morning to stand for weeks. That daily re-entry burden is exactly the problem a GTC solves elsewhere, and exactly the problem Zerodha’s GTT was built to solve from the broker side.

How Zerodha’s GTT replicates the GTC intent

Zerodha introduced GTT in 2019 as a platform-level answer to the missing GTC. The mechanism is server-side: the GTT is stored on Zerodha’s own infrastructure, not at the exchange. Zerodha’s engine monitors the last traded price during market hours, and when the price touches the trigger you set, the server places a regular limit order to the exchange on your behalf. The exchange only ever sees that final limit order, a normal day order; it never sees the standing GTT.

This server-side approach is precisely what lets a GTT have an extended validity the exchange cannot offer. Because Zerodha holds the trigger, not the exchange, the trigger can wait across many sessions without the exchange needing to carry a live order overnight. A long-term investor can set a buy GTT at a price well below the market and leave it; the GTT re-evaluates each session and fires only when the price arrives, with no daily re-entry. That is the GTC use case, delivered through a broker feature rather than an exchange order type.

The trade-off is that the order the exchange receives is a limit order, so a GTT carries limit-order behaviour: it fills at your limit price or better, and a gap move past the limit can leave it unfilled. A GTC at a US exchange that was a market-type resting order would behave differently. The GTT replicates the standing intent of a GTC, not necessarily its fill behaviour; the GTT trigger email versus execution price and why a GTT triggered but was not executed cover that fill gap.

GTC versus GTT: where they diverge

The two are often conflated, but they differ on three concrete axes.

Dimension	True GTC (not available in India)	Zerodha GTT
Where the order rests	At the exchange, indefinitely	On Zerodha’s servers, not at the exchange
When it reaches the exchange	It is the exchange order, live continuously	Only when the trigger price is touched, as a fresh limit order
Validity	Until filled or cancelled, no cap	One year for equity; until contract expiry for F&O
What fires	The resting order itself	A new limit order at your set limit price
Monitoring	Exchange order book	Zerodha server, market hours only
Per-account count	Set by exchange order limits	Up to 500 active GTTs

The validity cap is the sharpest difference. A GTC is perpetual by definition; a GTT is not. An equity GTT remains valid for one year from the date you place it, and if the trigger is not met within that window the GTT expires automatically and must be recreated. A futures or options GTT is shorter still: it stays valid only until the underlying contract expires, after which it lapses, because the contract it references ceases to exist. So even the GTT, the nearest thing Kite offers, is bounded in time and is not a Good-Till-Cancelled order. The full rule set is in GTT validity rules on Kite .

Validity cap and the active-order limit

Two numbers define the GTT’s standing capacity. First, the validity: one year for equity, contract-expiry for F&O. Zerodha sends email and app reminders as the one-year equity expiry approaches, but the obligation to recreate an expired GTT rests with the trader; an investor who forgets will find the GTT silently lapsed. Second, the count: an account can hold up to 500 active GTTs at any time. Earlier published guidance cited a lower cap of 50, which has since been raised to 500; a trader maintaining individual triggers across a large portfolio should treat 500 as the working ceiling and prune stale GTTs with delete on the GTT tab when resetting a strategy.

Neither number exists for a true GTC, which is perpetual and limited only by the exchange’s general order limits. The presence of a hard validity cap and an account-level count is part of what marks the GTT as a managed broker feature rather than an exchange order validity.

What GTC is not on Kite, and the right tool instead

A trader wanting a GTC on Kite is really asking for one of two things, and each maps to a different tool. If the aim is to keep a single price condition standing across days, the GTT is the answer, within its validity cap. If the aim is an intraday or single-session standing stop that fills at market on a gap, an SL-M order on a day order is the tool, but it lapses at session close like any day order and is not a multi-day instrument. There is no Kite order that combines perpetual exchange-level standing with guaranteed fill, because the exchange layer that would carry it does not exist in India.

For traders comparing brokers, the same structural limit applies across the market. Several Indian brokers offer GTT-equivalent features, Groww’s Auto Trigger, Angel One’s Smart Orders, Upstox’s Trigger Orders, all using the same broker-side storage approach because none can offer a true exchange GTC. They differ mainly in the validity cap, the maximum order count, and the instruments supported, not in the fundamental fact that the order rests at the broker rather than the exchange.

Regulatory and structural context

GTT and its peers are broker-level facilities, not exchange-recognised order types, so they sit under each broker’s client agreement and terms of service rather than under an exchange order-validity circular. SEBI’s intermediary-conduct rules require a broker to disclose the risks of such conditional-order services clearly, because the broker, not the exchange, is responsible for monitoring the price and firing the order. The exchange’s order-transparency requirements apply to the final limit order the GTT releases, not to the standing GTT, which the exchange never sees. This division, exchange day-validity plus broker-side persistence, is the structural reason a true Good-Till-Cancelled order is absent from Indian equity trading and unlikely to appear without a change at the exchange layer itself.

External references

References

Zerodha support, What is the validity of a GTT order? (as of 21 June 2026): one-year equity validity from placement; F&O GTT valid only until contract expiry; auto-deactivation on trigger.
Zerodha support, How can I use the GTT feature? (as of 21 June 2026): server-side storage; trigger releases a limit order to the exchange; 500 active GTT cap; dealing desk does not manage GTTs.
Zerodha Z-Connect, Introducing GTT, Good Till Triggered orders (2019): GTT introduced as a workaround for the absence of multi-day order validity at NSE and BSE.
NSE capital market trading regulations on order validity types (DAY, IOC), under which the exchange order book is purged at session close.
SEBI intermediary-conduct provisions requiring disclosure of the risks of broker conditional-order services to clients.

Frequently asked questions

Does Zerodha offer Good-Till-Cancelled (GTC) orders?

No. Zerodha Kite has no native GTC order. NSE and BSE cancel pending orders at the end of each trading day, so an order that stays live indefinitely is not an exchange order type. The closest tool is the GTT feature, which Zerodha runs on its own servers.

Why is there no true GTC order in India?

NSE and BSE operate day-validity order books that are purged at session close; they do not provide an open-ended order that rests at the exchange until cancelled. Without exchange support, no Indian broker can offer a genuine GTC; brokers replicate the intent with server-side conditional orders instead.

What is the difference between GTC and GTT?

A GTC order would rest at the exchange indefinitely until filled or cancelled. A GTT is stored on the broker’s servers, not the exchange, and only sends a limit order when a trigger price is touched. A GTT also has a validity cap, one year for equity, unlike a perpetual GTC.

How long does a GTT stay active on Zerodha?

An equity GTT is valid for one year from the date you place it, after which it expires and must be recreated. A futures or options GTT is valid only until the contract expires. Neither is perpetual, so a GTT is not a true Good-Till-Cancelled order.

Can I keep a limit order open for several days on Kite?

No. A regular limit order on Kite is a day order; it lapses at session close if unfilled and must be re-entered the next day. To keep a price condition standing across days, use a GTT, which re-fires from the broker side without daily re-entry, within its validity cap.

Is a GTT the same as a GTC at other brokers?

Most Indian brokers offer the same server-side workaround under different names, such as Auto Trigger, Smart Orders, or Trigger Orders. None is a true exchange-level GTC, because no Indian exchange supports perpetual order validity. They differ mainly in the validity cap and the maximum order count.

Reviewed and published by

WebNotes Editorial Team

The WebNotes Editorial Team covers Indian capital markets, payments infrastructure and retail investor procedures. Every article is fact-checked against primary sources, principally SEBI circulars and master directions, NPCI specifications and the official support documentation published by the intermediary in question. Drafts go through a second-pair-of-eyes review and a separate compliance read before publication, and revisions are tracked against the SEBI and NPCI rule changes referenced in the methodology section.

Last reviewed: 21 June 2026
Conflicts of interest: WebNotes is independent. No relationship with any broker, registrar or bank named in this article.