Zerodha

Is Zerodha safe?

Yes, by the standards of Indian brokers. Zerodha Broking Ltd is regulated by SEBI, keeps your shares in a demat account in your own name, and must pass client cash to the clearing corporations every night. It earned ₹4,283 crore in 2025-26, more than any other Indian broker, and its only SEBI order we found is a minor industry-wide settlement, though NSE's inspections have produced ₹2.70 crore of fines. We score Zerodha 78/100.

The main risk is not losing your shares but losing access to your account at a bad moment. Zerodha's Kite platform has had several outages, and as a private company it publishes less about its finances than its listed rivals.

Which Zerodha company holds my account?

You sign up with Zerodha Broking Ltd, a SEBI-registered stock broker (INZ000031633) and member of NSE, BSE, MCX and MSEI. The same company is a depository participant (IN-DP-431-2019), so your demat account is opened through it at CDSL or NSDL. Zerodha says it has more than 1.8 crore (18 million) customers with about ₹9 lakh crore of assets, and in its 2026 update it called itself the largest Indian broker by assets held.

Mutual funds bought through Coin are held as units in your demat account, and Zerodha's own funds are run by a separate company, Zerodha AMC. Zerodha serves Indian residents and non-resident Indians, not general UK, EU or US investors.

What protects my investments if Zerodha fails?

India has no single scheme like SIPC or the FSCSDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary. Protection rests on three rules that apply to every SEBI broker.

• Your shares are not in a broker pool. They sit in your own demat account. Since September 2020 a broker can only use them as margin through a pledge in the depository system, which you confirm with an OTP sent by the depository.
• No client money stays with the broker overnight. Since July 2023 SEBI has required brokers to upstream all client funds to the clearing corporations each day, as cash, a lien on a fixed deposit or units of overnight funds.
• Exchange compensation. If an exchange declares a broker a defaulter, its investor protection fund pays legitimate client claims up to a per-investor limit, which each exchange must review at least every three years. NSE's fund pays up to ₹35 lakh per investor, raised from ₹25 lakh for brokers declared defaulter or expelled after 13 August 2024.

There is no excess insurance on top, and none of this covers market losses. The protection is the same at Groww and Angel One; what differs is each firm's record.

How strong are Zerodha's finances?

Very strong in earnings, less transparent in detail. Zerodha's profit rose 1.2% to ₹4,283 crore in 2025-26 on flat revenue of about ₹8,847 crore, according to Kamath's annual update, as reported by BusinessLine. Founder Nithin Kamath wrote in Zerodha's 2026 update that trading activity had "slowed down significantly" since the 2024 market peak.

The same update flagged a new risk. Zerodha's margin trading facility (MTF), launched in December 2024, had a ₹9,000 crore book, and clients had borrowed about ₹6,000 crore, which Kamath put at about 25% of Zerodha's net worth. "MTF is one area where the business growth is scaring me," he wrote, warning of a sharp market fall. A borrowing book that size is well covered, but it is the reason we score financial strength below Groww, whose accounts are listed and audited every quarter.

Has Zerodha had problems?

SEBI's record against Zerodha Broking is unusually light for a broker of its size. The only order we found is a March 2026 settlement in which it paid ₹1 lakh, one of 111 brokers that settled allegations that their trading APIs had been linked to algo platforms advertising guaranteed returns. Rivals such as Angel One have several larger cases. BSE's list of enforcement actions shows three orders against Zerodha, in November 2023 and August 2025 (one after a joint inspection with SEBI), and all three were advice with no penalty.

The National Stock Exchange's record is heavier. Its file of actions taken after inspecting trading members, linked from NSE's regulatory-actions page, covers inspection years 2017-18 to 2026-27 and lists 117 rows for Zerodha Broking. Forty-six are fines, netting ₹2.70 crore; the rest are advice, cautions, warnings or no action. The two largest were ₹1.05 crore (inspection year 2021-22, a fine with directions) and ₹92 lakh (2023-24), both after offsite inspections, as are most rows in the file. NSE gives no dates or reasons, and notes that the amounts may vary pending appeals. These are exchange inspection actions, not SEBI orders. The total is the largest of the four Indian brokers we score, ahead of Angel One at ₹68.8 lakh, though Angel One has far more and larger SEBI cases. Spread over nine years it is small next to Zerodha's profit, but it is more than the light record SEBI's orders suggest.

Reliability is the weaker point. The Economic Times reported in January 2024 that Kite had gone down in four consecutive months, and clients asked for compensation for trades they could not close. On 5 December 2025 a Cloudflare failure took Kite offline along with other Indian trading apps; Kamath apologised and pointed clients to Kite on WhatsApp as a backup. In September 2026 Zerodha said an order placement problem for some BSE derivatives contracts affected all brokers.

How to keep your Zerodha account safe

1. Use the Kite app code or an authenticator app for login, not SMS; Zerodha supports TOTP stored on a hardware device.
2. Check the login alerts Zerodha sends for unfamiliar locations, and change your password if one is not yours.
3. Read every depository OTP for pledges and sales before you approve it.
4. Save the call-and-trade number and set up Kite on WhatsApp before you need them.
5. If you use MTF, size positions on the basis that the app may be unavailable for part of a volatile day.

How we scored it

Financial strength (82), regulation (82) and account security (80) are Zerodha's strongest factors: high profits, SEBI and exchange oversight, and app-based two-factorTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary login for everyone. Conduct (72) has only one minor SEBI settlement but is held back by ₹2.70 crore of NSE inspection fines and repeated outages. Investor protection (76) reflects strong segregation but a modest compensation fund and no excess cover.