DP Charges are the charges you pay when you sell your shares. It’s charged each time you sell shares of a company.
The number of shares does not matter. Whether you sell 1 shares or 100 shares, the DP Charges will be the same.
DP Charges means Depository Participant charges – part of which goes to the Depository (CDSL or NSDL) and the rest of it goes to the brokerage companies (Zerodha, ICICI etc).
All brokerage companies charge this fee, but the charges can vary from one broker to another.
DP Charges Example
Let’s say your broker is Zerodha. The company charges ₹ 13.5 (plus GST) per script on the day you sell your shares.
Day 1: You buy 10 shares of Reliance Industries and 10 shares of Infosys. These shares are deposited in your Demat account. You do not have to pay any DP Charges when you buy.
Day 5: You sell 2 shares of Reliance and 2 shares of Infosys. Total DP Charges would be ₹ 31.86. You sold shares of two different companies, so it would be 13.5 x 2 = 27 + 18% GST. Total 31.86.
Day 6: You sell 1 share of Reliance. Total DP charges would be ₹ 15.93. Since you sold shares of only one company, the charges will be 13.5 + 2.43 (18% GST on 13.5).
Day 7: You sell 5 shares of Infosys. Total DP charges would be ₹ 15.93. The number of shares does not matter.
Do note: Government taxes and brokerage charges are different from DP Charges. It’s applicable on every transaction you make – both when you buy and sell share.
Does Broker earn DP Charges?
The DP Charges that you pay is shared between the Depository (CDSL or NSDL) and the Depository Participant (i.e the broker, Zerodha or others).
Zerodha uses CDSL as its depository. So, out of the ₹13.5 you pay – CDSL gets ₹ 5.5 and Zerodha gets the remaining ₹ 8.
If you are wondering what is CDSL, it is one of the two depositories in India. CDSL is promoted by Bombay Stock Exchange. It’s a listed company in the stock market. The other depository is NSDL.
The shares you buy are not stored with your broker. It’s stored safely with the depository.
The article explaining what is ‘DP Charges’ ends here. Below, we will be listing DP Charges of all major brokerage companies.
ICICI DP Charges
ICICI Bank or ICICI Direct does not charge ‘DP Charges’ separately. It’s included in the cost of each transaction – which is a minimum of ₹ 35 or 0.55% of the transaction value. This brokerage fee of 0.55% is not charged by discount brokers like Zerodha or Upstox.
HDFC DP Charges
HDFC Bank or HDFC Securities does not charge ‘DP Charges’ separately. It’s included in the cost of each transaction – which is a minimum of ₹ 25 or 0.5% of the transaction value. The charges are very similar to ICICI Direct, but HDFCSec charges lower brokerage.
Upstox DP Charges
Upstox charges ₹ 18.5 (not including GST) as DP charges. These charges are significantly higher than Zerodha.
One point worth mentioning – On their website, this is what they say:
This is a little misleading. Upstox makes it seem that the charges are levied by CDSL – which is only partially correct. Out of the ₹ 18.5 that they charge, only ₹ 5.5 goes to CDSL. The remaining ₹ 13 goes to Upstox.
Angel Broking DP Charges
Angel charges ₹ 20 as DP Charges. Out of which ₹ 5.5 goes to CDSL and the remaining ₹ 14.5 is earned by Angel Broking.
Kotak DP Charges
Kotak Securities charges only ₹ 4.5 as DP Charges, which goes directly to NSDL. However, like ICICI and HDFC they have heavy brokerage charges when you take delivery of shares into your demat account.
You would need to pay a minimum of ₹ 27 or 0.49% of the transaction value, whichever is higher.
To make it simpler, suppose you sell shares worth ₹10,000. You would need to pay ₹ 49 (Brokerage fee) + ₹ 4.5 (DP charge) + GST of 18%.
Sharekhan DP Charges
ShareKhan charges ₹ 5.5 as DP Charges, which goes directly to CDSL. Their brokerage structure is similar to ICICI, HDFC and Kotak. They charge minimum of ₹ 16 or 0.5% of transaction value as brokerage fee.
5Paisa DP Charges
Discount broker 5Paisa claims to have the lowest DP Charge in the industry. The company charges ₹ 12.5, out of which ₹ 5.5 goes to CDSL and 5Paisa earns ₹ 7.
However, there is a brokerage fee of ₹ 20 on their basic plan. So, if you sell shares, you will be charges ₹ 20 + 12.5 + 18% GST – which would be ₹ 38.35 when you sell shares, quantity and transaction value does not matter.
Axis Consolidated DP Charges
Axis Direct has a different approach to DP Charges. It appears as ‘Consolidated DP Charges’ in the statement and is charged once a year (at the end of the year). There have been several complaints related to this by customers of Axis Direct.
