Investing Zerodha charges IPO application charges DP charges STT ASBA UPI mandate

Zerodha IPO charges

From WebNotes, a public knowledge base. Last updated 21 June 2026. Reading time ~13 min.

Key facts

Cost to apply for an IPO	Zero. No brokerage on the application, no fee on allotment, no ASBA or UPI-mandate charge
Brokerage on selling allotted shares	Zero. Equity delivery brokerage at Zerodha is nil on both buy and sell
STT on selling listed shares	0.1 per cent of the sell turnover, deducted at source (delivery rate)
DP charge on the sell	Rs 15.34 per scrip per day (Rs 3.5 CDSL + Rs 9.5 Zerodha + Rs 2.34 GST); a debit charge, levied once per ISIN per day
Exchange transaction charge	NSE 0.00297 per cent, BSE 0.00375 per cent of turnover (Zerodha schedule, as of June 2026)
Stamp duty on the sell	Nil. Stamp duty is a buy-side levy, so selling allotted IPO shares attracts none

Applying for an IPO on Zerodha is free. There is no brokerage on the application, no fee when shares hit your demat on allotment, and no charge for the UPI ASBA mandate that blocks your money. The cost of an IPO at Zerodha is entirely a selling cost: it arrives only when you sell the listed shares, and even then the largest line item that retail investors expect, brokerage, is zero, because Zerodha charges nil brokerage on equity delivery .

This article separates the two halves of the question that clients run together. The application side is genuinely costless: ASBA blocks your own money in your own bank account, so you keep earning interest on it until allotment or release, and Zerodha takes nothing for routing the bid. The selling side carries the standard delivery-trade charge stack: securities transaction tax, the depository participant (DP) debit charge, exchange transaction charges, the SEBI turnover fee, and 18 per cent GST on the broker-side components. Every figure below is the Zerodha published rate as of June 2026; verify the current schedule at zerodha.com/charges before you act, because statutory rates change with each Union Budget and SEBI circular.

Conflict-of-interest disclosure. This guide is published by the WebNotes Editorial Team for informational purposes and is written independently. WebNotes operates a Zerodha account-opening referral programme, disclosed on the pages that carry the referral link; this guide does not carry it and earns no referral commission from the procedure described here.

Applying costs nothing

Zerodha levies no charge at any point in the application flow. You place the bid on Kite , approve the UPI mandate, and your bank blocks the application amount under the ASBA mechanism. ASBA, application supported by blocked amount, is a SEBI-mandated facility under which the money stays in your account and is only marked with a lien; it does not move to the company or to Zerodha until shares are actually allotted to you. If you get no allotment, the block is released and the money was never debited.

Three specific costs that clients ask about are all nil:

Brokerage on the application. Zero. Zerodha does not treat an IPO bid as a brokerage-bearing order. The same is true on allotment: shares are credited to your demat at the issue price with no transaction fee.
The UPI mandate charge. Zero. The UPI mandate is an NPCI rail that authorises the block; neither NPCI, your bank, nor Zerodha charges you for creating, approving, or executing it.
ASBA or sponsor-bank fee. Zero. The sponsor bank and the registrar are paid by the issuer out of issue expenses, not by you.

Because the money is only blocked and not paid, you also keep the interest. On a Rs 2 lakh retail application blocked for the typical three to four working days between bid and allotment, the savings-account interest accrues to you, not to the broker or the issuer. This is the structural advantage of ASBA over the pre-2016 cheque-and-refund model, where application money left your account on day one and came back as a refund weeks later.

Selling allotted shares: the charge stack

Allotted IPO shares are ordinary equity once they list. Selling them is an equity delivery sell, and it carries the standard Zerodha delivery charge stack. Brokerage is the line most people brace for, and at Zerodha it is zero on both the buy and the sell side of delivery, so it drops out entirely. What remains is statutory and depository charges.

The table sets out each component at the Zerodha published rate as of June 2026 for a delivery sell.

Charge	Rate on a delivery sell	Levied by	Notes
Brokerage	Rs 0	Zerodha	Equity delivery is zero-brokerage at Zerodha
Securities transaction tax (STT)	0.1 per cent of sell turnover	Central government	Delivery rate; charged on the sell value
DP charge	Rs 15.34 per scrip per day	CDSL + Zerodha	Rs 3.5 CDSL + Rs 9.5 Zerodha + Rs 2.34 GST; once per ISIN per day, any quantity
Exchange transaction charge	NSE 0.00297 per cent, BSE 0.00375 per cent	NSE or BSE	On turnover; rate depends on listing exchange
SEBI turnover fee	Rs 10 per crore	SEBI	0.0001 per cent of turnover
Stamp duty	Nil	State government	Buy-side levy only; a sell attracts none
GST	18 per cent	Central and state	On brokerage plus SEBI fee plus transaction charges

The two charges that actually matter on a small allotment are STT and the DP charge. On most retail allotments of one or two lots, the DP charge is the single biggest line, because it is a flat per-scrip charge that does not scale down with a small holding.

Securities transaction tax

STT on an equity delivery sell is 0.1 per cent of the sell value, deducted at source by the exchange and remitted to the government. It is charged only when you sell, not on allotment. On a sale worth Rs 30,000, the STT is Rs 30. STT is a transaction tax, separate from the income tax you pay on the capital gain; you cannot claim it as a deduction against the gain, and it is not refundable.

The DP charge

The depository participant charge is the levy that catches first-time IPO sellers. It is a debit charge: CDSL and Zerodha apply it whenever shares leave your demat, which a sell does. At Zerodha it is Rs 15.34 per scrip per day, built from a Rs 3.5 CDSL fee, a Rs 9.5 Zerodha fee, and Rs 2.34 GST on the Zerodha portion. Read DP charges at Zerodha for the full mechanics.

Three features of the DP charge decide how much it stings:

It is per scrip, not per share. Selling one share or ten thousand shares of the same company on the same day costs the same Rs 15.34.
It is per ISIN per day. If you sell two different IPO allotments on the same day, you pay it twice, once per company.
It is flat, not percentage. On a Rs 5,000 single-lot sale, Rs 15.34 is about 0.31 per cent of the proceeds, a meaningful drag; on a Rs 5 lakh sale it is negligible.

A woman registered as the first holder of the demat account gets a Rs 0.25 discount on the CDSL portion of the DP charge, a SEBI-encouraged concession applied automatically.

Exchange and statutory charges

The exchange transaction charge is a small percentage of turnover that goes to the listing exchange. At the Zerodha schedule as of June 2026 it is 0.00297 per cent on NSE and 0.00375 per cent on BSE; an IPO share trades on whichever exchange it is listed on, and most mainboard issues list on both, in which case the charge follows the exchange you route the sell to. The SEBI turnover fee is Rs 10 per crore, a rounding-error amount on a retail sale. GST at 18 per cent applies to the broker-side components, which here means the SEBI fee and the exchange transaction charge plus the Zerodha portion of the DP charge, since brokerage itself is zero.

Stamp duty does not apply on the sell

Stamp duty under the amended Indian Stamp Act, 1899, is a buy-side levy collected by the exchange-appointed clearing corporation. It is charged when you acquire securities, not when you dispose of them. Selling your allotted IPO shares therefore attracts no stamp duty. The allotment itself, the primary-market issue of shares to you, also does not attract the secondary-market stamp duty rate; issuers handle the issue-stage stamp duty as part of issue expenses. The practical point for the seller is simple: stamp duty is a zero line on an IPO sell.

Income tax on the gain is separate

The charges above are transaction charges. They are distinct from the income tax you owe on any profit, which is governed by the holding period from the date of allotment. A sale within 12 months is a short-term capital gain, taxed at 20 per cent under Section 111A of the Income Tax Act, 1961, for sales on or after 23 July 2024. A sale after 12 months is long-term, taxed at 12.5 per cent above the Rs 1.25 lakh annual exemption under Section 112A. Selling on listing day is, by definition, a short-term sale taxed at 20 per cent; read tax on listing-day gains for the detail. The holding period runs from the date of allotment, not the date of listing, which can matter near the 12-month boundary.

The full cost of a one-lot retail trade, worked

Take a single retail lot allotted at a Rs 300 issue price, 50 shares, sold on listing day at Rs 360. Application cost: zero, the Rs 15,000 was merely blocked and released against the allotted shares. Sell value: Rs 18,000.

Brokerage: Rs 0.
STT: 0.1 per cent of Rs 18,000 = Rs 18.
DP charge: Rs 15.34.
Exchange transaction charge (NSE, 0.00297 per cent of Rs 18,000): about Rs 0.53.
SEBI fee (Rs 10 per crore of Rs 18,000): about Rs 0.02.
GST (18 per cent on the broker-side components, here the Zerodha DP portion plus the exchange and SEBI fees): the GST on the DP charge is already inside the Rs 15.34; the additional GST on the small exchange and SEBI components is under Rs 0.10.

Total transaction cost: roughly Rs 34 on an Rs 18,000 sale, around 0.19 per cent. The DP charge and STT together account for nearly all of it, and the DP charge is the part that hurts on smaller allotments. Separately, the Rs 3,000 listing gain is a short-term capital gain taxed at 20 per cent, about Rs 600, payable when you file your return, not deducted at the trade.

Common misreadings

Expecting a fee to apply: there is none. The blocked application money is not a charge; it is your own money under a lien, returned in full if you get no allotment.
Forgetting the DP charge on a tiny allotment: Rs 15.34 is flat per scrip. On a single small-value lot it can be a noticeable share of the proceeds, so factor it in before selling one lot at a thin profit.
Assuming brokerage applies on the sell: Zerodha equity delivery is zero-brokerage. The sell cost is STT, the DP charge, and small statutory levies, not brokerage.
Confusing transaction charges with income tax: the Rs 30-odd of transaction charges is separate from the 20 per cent short-term capital gains tax on the profit, which you pay at return-filing time.
Treating the issue-price block as the cost basis incorrectly: your cost of acquisition for capital gains is the issue price you paid on allotment, not the blocked amount or any later market price.

External references

References

Zerodha, charges schedule for equity delivery and corporate actions (as of June 2026), zerodha.com/charges.
SEBI (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2018, on the ASBA application mechanism.
Income Tax Act, 1961, Section 111A (short-term capital gains on listed equity) and Section 112A (long-term capital gains), as amended by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024.
Indian Stamp Act, 1899, as amended for securities-market stamp duty (buy-side levy).
CDSL tariff on depository participant transaction charges, including the woman first-holder concession.

Frequently asked questions

Does Zerodha charge anything to apply for an IPO?

No. Applying for an IPO on Zerodha is free. There is no brokerage on the application, no fee when shares are allotted, and no charge for the ASBA UPI mandate. The money is only blocked in your bank account, not paid to Zerodha.

Is there a brokerage when I sell my allotted IPO shares?

No. Zerodha charges zero brokerage on equity delivery, which is how allotted IPO shares are sold. You still pay statutory levies: STT at 0.1 per cent, the DP debit charge, exchange transaction charges, SEBI turnover fee, and GST.

What is the DP charge on selling IPO shares at Zerodha?

Rs 15.34 per scrip per day, made up of Rs 3.5 CDSL fee, Rs 9.5 Zerodha fee, and Rs 2.34 GST. It is a debit charge levied once per ISIN on the day you sell, regardless of quantity. A woman first-holder gets Rs 0.25 off the CDSL portion.

Is there any cost for the UPI mandate or ASBA block on an IPO?

No. The UPI mandate that blocks your application money carries no fee from Zerodha, NPCI, or your bank. ASBA blocks funds in your own account without moving them, so you earn the interest on the blocked amount until allotment or release.

Do I pay STT when IPO shares are allotted to me?

No. STT is not charged on allotment. It is charged when you sell the listed shares, at the 0.1 per cent delivery rate on the sell value. The primary-market allotment itself carries no securities transaction tax.

Is selling on listing day taxed differently from selling later?

The transaction charges are identical. The income tax differs: a sale within 12 months of allotment is a short-term capital gain taxed at 20 per cent under Section 111A, while a sale after 12 months is long-term, taxed at 12.5 per cent above the Rs 1.25 lakh annual exemption under Section 112A.

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.