Trading CFDs with leverage exposes you to rapid losses and is not suitable for everyone.
Choice Broking advertises free account opening and zero brokerage on delivery. The headline numbers hold up, but the total cost of a year sits in a few smaller line items that the marketing page does not headline.
The broker is Choice Equity Broking Pvt. Ltd., incorporated in 2010 in Mumbai, part of the Choice International group. It is a SEBI-regulated domestic full-service broker, a member of NSE, BSE, MCX and NCDEX, and a CDSL/NSDL depository participant. Because the firm operates on Indian exchanges in rupees, there is no currency conversion layer in the cost stack.
The charge sheet at a glance
The structure breaks into four moments: money in, a trade, holding the account, money out.
One caveat before building a budget on this. The same fee disclosure also quotes a legacy plan at 0.20% for delivery and 0.02% for intraday. Which plan an account lands on decides whether the flat Rs 20 or a percentage applies, so confirm it on your own tariff sheet before the first order.
Step one: putting money in
Funding is the cheapest part of the journey. Choice Broking lists UPI and net-banking as its local rails, and there is no stated minimum deposit and no deposit fee in the published schedule. Settlement currency is INR, so nothing gets converted on the way in.
UPI moves near-instantly and the NPCI ceiling is roughly Rs 1 lakh per transaction per day, which is far above what a beginner needs for a first deposit. For a larger amount, NEFT or RTGS does the job in the same currency.
Step two: what a trade costs
Brokerage is where the zero-brokerage advertising earns its keep, and where the fine print matters. Delivery equity at Rs 0 and free direct mutual funds are real. Intraday and F&O sit at a flat Rs 20 per trade on the current plan.
On a small ticket, buy and sell one intraday position and you pay Rs 40 in brokerage before anything else. On a Rs 10,000 intraday trade that is 0.4% round trip, a meaningful drag when scalping for small moves. Delivery has no brokerage but still carries statutory charges, and those apply regardless of which plan you are on.
Statutory levies are set by the exchanges and the government, not by the broker, so treat them as fixed: STT or CTT on the relevant segment, exchange transaction charges, SEBI turnover fee, stamp duty on the buy side and GST on brokerage plus transaction charges. Choice Broking does not publish a consolidated statutory table in the facts we could verify, so the exact paise per lakh are not stated here. Check the official tariff page for the current segment-wise rates.
Step three: holding the account
A demat and trading 2-in-1 account comes with annual maintenance charges. Choice Broking states Rs 200 per year, with the first year free, and offers both standard and lifetime AMC plans. On a small account this line is close to trivial, roughly Rs 17 a month, but it is the charge that quietly continues in a year when you barely trade.
The line item beginners miss is the Rs 10 plus GST per debit transaction. Every time shares leave your demat account, that fee applies. Selling in small lots across several scrips adds up faster than the Rs 200 AMC ever will.
The AMC plan choice is worth one phone call or a check in the app before signing. A lifetime plan can be cheaper over many years, but only if you actually stay.
Step four: taking money out
Withdrawals follow the same INR rails as funding, and there is no published withdrawal fee in the schedule we verified. The realistic cost here is not money but time. Funds from a sale settle per the exchange cycle before they become payable, and the payout then runs through your bank, which can add a working day at the bank's end.
Keeping a buffer in the trading account rather than pulling small amounts out every week avoids repeated reconciliation between ledger balance and bank credit, which is where beginners lose track of what they actually made.
Where the fees get less comfortable
Nothing in the published schedule looks predatory, and no major SEBI action against the firm was verified at the time of review. The concerns are structural.
The first is plan ambiguity. Two pricing structures appear in the same disclosure, flat per-trade and percentage-based, and the difference changes the cost profile completely depending on ticket size. A trader doing twenty small intraday trades a month is far better off on flat Rs 20 than on 0.02%, and the reverse can be true for large single orders.
The second is the full-service model. As a domestic full-service broker, Choice Broking monetises through advisory and distribution alongside execution, which is normal for the category but means the cheapest path is not always the one offered first. Ask specifically for the plan you want.
The third is the wider context for Indian residents. Spot forex and CFD trading with offshore brokers is not permitted for residents, and remitting funds abroad for margin forex is not a permitted LRS purpose. That is not a Choice Broking issue, but it explains why a domestic exchange-linked account is the compliant route for most readers here. When comparing this broker against an international one, judge that firm on strong regulation such as FCA, CySEC or ASIC, client fund segregation, a published and unambiguous fee schedule, a long track record and support that answers. Those criteria travel well; marketing claims about leverage do not.
Worth it, or not quite
For a beginner with a small sum trading Indian equities, the arithmetic is genuinely competitive. Free delivery, free direct mutual funds, a free account opening and Rs 20 flat on intraday and F&O is a low-cost entry point, and the Rs 200 AMC is not the thing that will hurt you.
Comfortable for: a buy-and-hold equity investor who mostly uses delivery and direct mutual funds, pays Rs 200 a year plus debit charges and nothing else. Also reasonable for a beginner placing a handful of intraday or F&O trades a month, where flat Rs 20 stays cheap relative to ticket size.
Risky for: a high-frequency small-ticket scalper, because Rs 40 round trip on a small position is a heavy percentage drag, and anyone who has not confirmed which pricing plan their account is mapped to. If your style depends on tight per-trade economics or on cost certainty across many trades, compare against a broker with a fully published, single-plan schedule and a longer transparent fee history before committing.
Questions
How much does one intraday trade cost?
Flat Rs 20 per executed trade, so a buy and sell round trip is Rs 40 in brokerage plus statutory charges. On small positions that percentage is worth calculating before you trade.
What is the annual maintenance charge?
Rs 200 per year on the standard plan, with the first year free. The broker also lists a lifetime AMC plan; confirm the terms and the amount directly, since we could not verify a specific lifetime figure.
Are there withdrawal or deposit fees?
No deposit fee and no stated minimum funding amount are published, and UPI plus net-banking are the listed rails. We could not verify a separate withdrawal fee in the schedule, so check the current tariff page or support before assuming it is zero in every case.
What do debit transactions cost?
Rs 10 plus GST each time securities are debited from your demat account, for example when you sell holdings. It is small per event but adds up if you trade in many small lots. > [! TIP] Before your first order, open the tariff sheet in the app and screenshot it. Comparing that screenshot with your contract note a month later is the fastest way to catch a plan mismatch while it is still cheap to fix.