Your broker's P&L screen shows what the price did. It does not show what the trade cost you to place. Those are two different numbers, and the gap between them is bigger than most traders think — especially if you trade often.
This is a plain walk-through of the charges on an Indian trade: what each one is, roughly how it is worked out, and why frequency matters more than size.
Gross P&L is not what lands in your account
Say you buy and sell and the price moves in your favour by ₹5,000. That ₹5,000 is your gross P&L. Before it becomes yours, a fixed set of charges comes off the top. What is left is your net P&L. On a small position the charges can be a rounding error. On a frequently-traded one they add up fast, because most of them apply to every single trade regardless of whether you won or lost.
The charges, one by one
STT / CTT — the transaction tax. Securities Transaction Tax (equity and F&O) or Commodities Transaction Tax (MCX). This is a government levy, not a broker fee. It is charged on turnover, and for intraday, futures and options it falls on the sell side. The rate depends on the segment — equity delivery is charged on both sides, futures on the sell, options on the sell-side premium, commodities on the sell. This is usually the largest single line on an F&O or commodity trade.
Exchange transaction charges. A small fee the exchange (NSE, BSE, MCX) takes on turnover. The exact rate varies by segment and changes from time to time, so it is not worth memorising — but it is there on both legs.
SEBI turnover fee. A flat ₹10 per crore of turnover. Tiny, but it shows up.
GST. 18%, charged on the brokerage plus the exchange charges plus the SEBI fee. Not on the whole trade value — only on those service charges.
Stamp duty. A state-collected charge on the buy side. For most segments it is a small fraction of a percent, and it was standardised across states in 2020, so where you live no longer changes it much.
Brokerage. What your broker keeps. Discount brokers usually charge a flat amount per order (often around ₹20) or nothing on equity delivery. Full-service brokers charge a percentage. This is the one line you can actually shop around on.
A worked example
Take a commodity futures trade with about ₹5.4 lakh of turnover on each side. The transaction tax comes to roughly ₹54, the exchange fee about ₹3, the SEBI fee about ₹1, GST about ₹0.70, and stamp duty about ₹11. Add a discount broker's flat fee and you are near ₹70–110 in charges on that one round trip.
On a single trade with a healthy move, ₹100 of charges barely registers. The point is not this one trade.
Breakeven is not zero
Because charges come off every trade, the price has to move a little in your favour just to get you back to flat. That is your breakeven — the distance the trade must travel before the first rupee of profit is actually yours. On small positions, or on options bought cheap, that breakeven distance can be a surprisingly large share of the premium. Plenty of trades that look green on the price screen are red once charges are in.
Why frequency, not size, is the real bill
Here is the part that does not show up on any single contract note. Most of these charges are per trade. Two hundred trades in a month carry the fixed portion of these charges two hundred times, whether each one made money or not. A strategy with a genuine edge can still finish the month down purely on the charge count.
This is where charges stop being an accounting detail and become a behaviour question. If a run of quick, back-to-back trades after a loss is a habit for you, the charges on those trades are a real, recurring cost sitting on top of whatever the trades themselves did.
You will not see that pattern in any one contract note. You see it across a month of them. That is what a post-trade journal is for: TradeDNA reads your own tradebook and surfaces the overtraded days and revenge-pattern trades in your history — retrospectively, in plain English, with what each habit cost you.
Work out the exact number
Rates change and vary by segment, so rather than estimate, use the free brokerage & charges calculator — pick your segment, enter your prices and quantity, and it shows every line (STT/CTT, exchange, SEBI, GST, stamp duty), your net P&L, and the breakeven move, using current rates. No signup needed.
Educational only. This explains how trading charges work in India; it is not tax or investment advice, and it makes no recommendation about any trade or instrument. Verify current rates against your broker's contract note and the official exchange schedules.