Choosing the Right Broker for Algo Trading in India
When people think of algo trading, they often picture high-frequency quants and data scientists orchestrating enormous trades in microseconds. But what’s more interesting is how the infrastructure behind these trades has quietly become accessible to almost anyone.
In India, retail traders have stumbled into an environment that didn’t exist even five years ago. APIs that were once exclusive to institutional desks have been unshackled, either through regulatory prodding or competitive necessity. And yet, most traders don’t spend enough time thinking about which broker they entrust their automations to.
This is a little odd, because if you believe in automation, then you implicitly believe that most of the edge comes from system design—and part of system design is choosing the right pipes.
APIs Are Not All the Same
If you browse Reddit or small Telegram groups, you’ll see people asking which broker is “best for algo.” The answers are typically shallow—someone parroting “Zerodha” because it’s the largest, or “Upstox” because it has low fees. But what you learn over time is that APIs differ on several dimensions:
Latency:
Not everyone cares if an order is acknowledged in 20 ms or 200 ms, but if you run intraday momentum, you will care eventually.
Rate limits:
Every broker throttles how many requests you can send per second. This sounds academic until you try to backtest or stream hundreds of ticks per second and your system starts dropping packets.
Reliability:
No one advertises this, but in practice, some APIs randomly go down, especially when markets are volatile. You’ll never see this in a marketing PDF.
Support and documentation:
Brokers with clean, versioned REST APIs and proper WebSocket support are miles ahead of those that treat their developer portals like a side project.
So when someone says, “Just use the cheapest,” it’s like telling a startup to buy the cheapest hosting for their web app. It might work until you get serious.
The Peculiar Indian Landscape
India’s algo trading infrastructure is especially curious because it’s driven by a mix of regulatory caution and unregulated enthusiasm. On the one hand, the exchanges have rules about “unapproved” algos. On the other, brokers know they can’t compete for serious traders without opening up APIs.
This is why the landscape feels patchy. Zerodha charges for API access (though they recently slashed prices). Fyers offers it free. Upstox has moved in and out of free models. Angel One uses free APIs as a lead magnet. Some brokers like Dhan have built a narrative around “community-powered APIs.”
If you see it with a founder’s eye, you recognize it’s the same pattern in any emerging market: the incumbents defend their margins, the upstarts subsidize adoption, and eventually everyone converges to what the customer demands.
What Actually Matters
When I think about brokers for algo trading, I don’t think in terms of ranking. I think in terms of matching the broker to the trader’s mindset. Here are a few lenses you can use:
Beginners who want no-code automation:
You’re better off with brokers that integrate with ready-made platforms like Stratzy or Streak. You don’t need to obsess over latency yet.
Developers building their own systems:
Angel One SmartAPI, Fyers, Dhan, and Upstox are more transparent about API endpoints and rate limits. You want brokers who publish Swagger docs and version their API.
Cost-obsessed intraday traders:
ProStocks is underrated: ₹15 per order, unlimited intraday, and a low fixed monthly API cost.
Multi-asset traders with a global footprint:
Interactive Brokers feels like overkill to many, but if you trade currencies, commodities, and equities, it’s still the gold standard.
People who plan to scale volume significantly:
Eventually, you’ll have to care about margin facilities, hardware colocations, and institutional-grade infrastructure. For now, most retail brokers will be “good enough.”
A Thought About Edge
Here’s the inconvenient truth: if your strategy doesn’t have an edge, no broker will save you.
It doesn’t matter if your API is 10 ms faster or your brokerage is 1 rupee cheaper.
But once you do have an edge, the infrastructure becomes your second most important lever—because any friction (downtime, rejections, throttling) compounds your errors.
So the broker decision is not just a question of cost. It’s a question of whether your infrastructure is an enabler or a drag.
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