And here we make a comparative analysis of three of the most used mobile trading/investing platforms in India - Groww, Zerodha Kite (by Zerodha), and Upstox - to see which one of them is the best trading app in India in your case. I will be dividing their strengths, weaknesses, fees, and best-fit cases to enable you to make a choice based on them.
Key feature comparison
- Fees & charges
- Groww: Account opening is free. Delivery equity is free (on most occasions), intraday/F&O flat- 20/order (in most cases) or 0.05% (whichever is less).
- Zerodha: Sell side delivery without commission; intraday/F&O 20/order or 0.03% whichever is less. Demat Annual maintenance (AMC) Demat 300/yr in most cases.
- Upstox: Free delivery; intraday/ F & O 20/ order or so. Opens free accounts in most offers.
- Platform strength & user-experience
- Groww: Simple to use, clean interface, awesome for a beginner/investor. But less sophisticated trading aids, such as sophisticated option plans.
- Zerodha Kite: Powerful, consistent platform; active trading community, much educational material through their educational centre, Varsity. However, according to some users, UI is not as flashy, or new features are slow.
- Upstox: This one will be available as a technology-driven, fintech-friendly broker that has robust trading options (charts, analytics) and maintains low costs.
- Best use-case/target user
- Groww: The best to invest over the long term, to invest as a beginner, to invest in mutual funds, and to invest in a straightforward application.
- Zerodha: Good when you are a serious trader, desire a robust ecosystem, full-fledged, and consistently stable platform.
- Upstox: A fair compromise: not too serious (yet) to attract traders, competitive charges, decent tools, and easy to get started with.
- Limitations/things to check
- Groww: Simple trading/complex derivatives/trading strategies. Other complaints include unsavory hidden fees or reduced intraday support.
- Zerodha: There are AMC, Demat maintenance fees; advanced functionality (including some) may require third-party applications; the user interface is not as user-friendly.
- Upstox: Despite the features, some users report a certain amount of app lag, interface is slightly immature; depending on the services, some parts are not as polished as the best players.
My recommendation: Which app when?
- When you are a beginner, like simple investing (buy and hold), mutual funds, periodic stocks, and less complications, then use Groww.
- When you are an established investor/trader, requires total control, powerful tools, and does not feel uneasy with more features, then Zerodha Kite is likely the most suitable.
- In case you are straddling the middle, i.e., you invest regularly = + you want to trade at times, you care about cost and tools at the same time, then Upstox is a very good fit.
Final verdict
In India, there is no one-size-fits-all best trading app; it is all about what you want to achieve and how much you are going to trade, and what features are required.
- Because easy and cheap: Groww.
- To have complete professional features set + reliability: Zerodha.
- To tech-savvy, low-cost, hybrid investor/trader: Upstox.
Had to choose a single best choice for most people, I would gravitate towards Upstox, purely due to the fact that it will give them good features + good cost structure + big usability. However, when you are less concerned with high fees on pure delivery investing, Zerodha is extremely difficult to compete with. And in case you are just learning and in need of something extremely easy, Groww is excellent.