Zerodha Sentinel (price alert platform)
Zerodha Sentinel is a price and market condition alert platform operated by Zerodha , accessible at sentinel.zerodha.com. Sentinel allows traders and investors to set alert conditions on NSE and BSE listed instruments (equities, indices, futures, and options) and receive notifications via push notification to the Kite Mobile app , email, or SMS when the specified conditions are met. Sentinel operates independently of exchange order entry; it does not place orders on the exchange but only notifies the user, leaving the order decision and execution to the user.
Sentinel was announced via Zerodha’s Z-Connect blog in 2018 and launched as a browser-accessible portal distinct from Kite Web . It is also accessible from within the Kite Mobile app , where a dedicated alert management section integrates Sentinel’s functionality.
Features
Price-level alerts
The fundamental alert type in Sentinel is a price-level trigger. A user specifies an instrument and a price threshold; Sentinel monitors the instrument’s last traded price and fires the alert when the price crosses the threshold in the specified direction (rises above or falls below).
Example configurations:
- Alert when Nifty 50 falls below 22,000.
- Alert when Reliance Industries’ price rises above Rs 1,500.
- Alert when a specific futures contract’s price crosses a specified level.
Technical condition alerts
Beyond simple price levels, Sentinel supports alerts based on technical indicator conditions. Available technical conditions include:
- Moving average crossovers (for specified periods)
- RSI crossing above or below a specified level
- Volume spike (volume exceeding a multiple of the average volume)
- Price crossing the 52-week high or low
- Percentage change from previous close exceeding a threshold
These condition-based alerts allow traders to set up systematic monitoring without continuously watching charts, relying on Sentinel to surface setups matching their technical criteria.
Alert management
Sentinel’s web interface lists all active alerts with their instrument, condition, and creation date. Alerts can be paused (deactivated without deletion) or deleted. Triggered alerts remain in the history with the time at which the condition was met. The number of simultaneous active alerts is subject to plan limits; free-tier users and paid-tier users have different alert capacity caps.
Notification channels
Alert notifications are delivered via:
- Push notifications to the Kite Mobile app on Android and iOS devices where the app is installed and notifications are enabled.
- Email to the email address registered with the Zerodha account.
- SMS to the mobile number registered with the Zerodha account.
Users can configure which channels to use per alert, allowing higher-urgency alerts to trigger all three channels and lower-urgency informational alerts to trigger only email.
Technical design
Sentinel’s monitoring infrastructure consumes real-time market data (the same binary WebSocket data feed used by Kite Web and Kite Mobile ) and evaluates alert conditions against each incoming tick for subscribed instruments. Technical condition evaluation (moving averages, RSI) requires maintaining a rolling window of historical price and volume data per instrument; Sentinel’s back end maintains these rolling windows in memory for all instruments with active alerts.
Notification delivery on trigger uses a queue-based system (push via APNS/FCM for iOS/Android, SMTP for email, SMS gateway for SMS) to ensure delivery without blocking the alert evaluation loop.
Integration with Kite
Sentinel integrates with Kite Mobile at the notification level: push notifications from Sentinel alerts appear as Kite app notifications. Within the Kite Mobile app, the alert management section provides a Sentinel-linked interface for creating and managing alerts without leaving the app. On Kite Web , instrument tickers provide an “Add alert” option that navigates to the Sentinel portal pre-populated with the instrument.
Unlike the GTT (Good Till Triggered) order feature , which can submit an order to the exchange server-side when triggered, Sentinel only notifies; it does not take any action in the user’s account when an alert fires.
Comparison with GTT orders
Sentinel and GTT serve related but distinct purposes:
- GTT orders: Server-side conditional orders that submit to the exchange when triggered. The user pre-commits to a specific order (instrument, quantity, order type, price limit) at alert creation time. GTT is appropriate when the user wants automated order placement without needing to be present at the moment of trigger.
- Sentinel alerts: Notification-only; the user must manually log into Kite and place an order after receiving an alert. Sentinel is appropriate when the user wants to be informed of a condition and retain discretion over order parameters at the time of execution.
The two systems coexist in the Zerodha ecosystem; a trader may use Sentinel for awareness and GTT for automated execution of pre-planned trades. Some traders use both simultaneously: a Sentinel alert on a specific price level notifies them to log in and review the situation, while a GTT order at a nearby price provides an automatic execution backstop if the alert is not acted upon promptly.
Alert capacity and subscription limits
Sentinel’s number of simultaneous active alerts is subject to plan limits tied to the user’s Zerodha account type or a Sentinel-specific subscription tier. Free-tier users have a smaller alert capacity cap; the specific limits are published on Zerodha’s Sentinel support pages and may be updated over time. Users who regularly require more alert capacity than the free tier provides may need to review older, redundant alerts to free capacity before creating new ones.
Triggered alerts remain in the history view and count against capacity in some implementations; clearing old triggered alerts restores capacity. Active alert management (regular review, deletion of no-longer-relevant alerts) is therefore a practical aspect of using Sentinel at scale.
Comparison with competitor alert services
Price alert services are offered by most major Indian retail broker platforms and by financial data portals:
Upstox alerts: Price alerts integrated within the Upstox Pro mobile app and web terminal. Functionally comparable to Sentinel for basic price-level alerts; technical condition alerts may vary in scope by platform version.
Angel One alerts: Angel One’s platform includes price alerts and push notifications for research calls (buy/sell target hits). The research-integrated alert is a feature distinct from Sentinel’s purely price-condition design.
Moneycontrol alerts: Portfolio and watchlist price alerts delivered via email and push notifications. Available without a broker account, serving a broader audience than broker-specific alert tools.
TradingView alerts: TradingView’s hosted platform offers sophisticated Pine Script-condition-based alerts firing via webhook, email, or push notification. For traders with TradingView accounts linked to Kite , TradingView alerts can complement Sentinel for indicator-based alerts not available natively in Sentinel.
Sentinel’s advantages for Zerodha clients are its deep integration with Kite Mobile push notifications, its accessibility from within Kite Web ’s watchlist interface, and its zero-friction setup without needing a separate third-party account.
Alert reliability and infrastructure considerations
Price alert platforms face a fundamental challenge in balancing real-time evaluation speed with infrastructure cost. An alert monitoring platform that subscribes to every tick for every instrument with an active alert requires streaming market data infrastructure equivalent to a full market data feed consumer. For a broker with a large client base and millions of active alerts, the data processing and notification delivery infrastructure is non-trivial.
Sentinel’s alert evaluation is subject to the same data infrastructure reliability constraints as Kite Web and Kite Mobile . During periods of high market volatility, when sudden price moves are most likely to trigger multiple alerts simultaneously, the notification delivery queue may experience delays between the moment an alert condition is met in the market data feed and the moment the push notification reaches the user’s device. This latency, while typically minimal under normal conditions, means that Sentinel is a notification tool rather than a guarantee of real-time execution. Traders relying on alerts for time-critical actions should treat Sentinel notifications as prompts to review and act, rather than as real-time execution triggers.
Use cases
Swing traders monitoring breakout levels: A trader monitoring a stock that has been consolidating near a resistance level sets a Sentinel alert just above the resistance. When the alert fires, they evaluate whether volume and momentum confirm the breakout and decide whether to place an order.
Long-term investors watching valuation levels: An investor who wishes to buy a stock at a specific valuation multiple sets a price-level alert at the price corresponding to their target P/E ratio. When the stock drops to that level, the alert notifies them to review and potentially purchase.
Options traders watching underlying price movement: An options writer who has sold a call spread sets an alert at the short strike price of the spread. If the underlying approaches the short strike, the alert prompts them to review their position and potentially adjust.
Portfolio monitoring for stop-loss levels: A trader holding a long equity position sets a Sentinel alert at their stop-loss price. If the stock falls to that level, the alert fires and the trader manually places a sell order. This is similar in function to a GTT order but gives the trader the flexibility to review the situation before executing, rather than committing to an automatic sell at the trigger price.
See also
References
- Zerodha Z-Connect Blog. “Introducing Sentinel, alerts on Zerodha”. z-connect.zerodha.com. 2018.
- Zerodha Support. “Sentinel, price alerts”. support.zerodha.com. Accessed May 2026.
- Zerodha. “Sentinel portal”. sentinel.zerodha.com. Accessed May 2026.