Flat per order or a percentage: your note already knows
How you are billed changes which habits are expensive. Read the plan, not a two-year-old tweet.
Two traders with identical fills can pay very different brokerage, because one is on a flat per-order plan and the other is on a percentage of turnover.
And the difference is not academic — it decides whether splitting an order into five clicks costs you nothing or costs you five times.
Flat fees punish click-splitting
On a flat per-order plan, one order for five lots costs one fee. Five separate orders cost five. On a percentage plan, the number of clicks barely matters and the size does.
Neither is better in the abstract. What matters is whether your habits match your plan.
Flat ₹20 per executed order, entry and exit. On a percentage plan this chart would be almost flat.
Include GST when you quote a number
Brokerage quoted without GST understates the bill. Since GST applies to brokerage and to exchange transaction charges, the effective per-order cost is always a little higher than the headline.
Comparing brokers needs matched periods
Same product, same date range, same activity level. Anything else is marketing arithmetic. A journal that imports from more than one broker should compare only on those terms — and should never present a broker as an investment recommendation.
| Habit | Flat per order | Percentage of turnover |
|---|---|---|
| Few large orders | Cheap | Expensive as size grows |
| Many small orders | Adds up fast | Barely notices the count |
| Splitting entries into tranches | Charged every tranche | Roughly neutral |
| Multi-leg option structures | Every leg is an order | Scales with premium |
Directional guide only. Read your own plan and note; brokers price differently by segment.
Key takeaways
- Read brokerage logic off the contract note, not from memory.
- Flat plans make order-splitting expensive; percentage plans do not.
- Include GST whenever you quote a brokerage figure.
Not advice, not a call. NiyataBook is a personal trading journal, not a SEBI-registered investment adviser or research analyst. Everything above looks backwards at trades that already closed. What happened in a book does not promise what happens next, and F&O can take a year’s savings in a week.