Dhan Vs Zerodha Vs ICICIDirect – Which Broker To Choose In 2025

‘All that glitters is not gold’ and the reason to say this you will find it in this comparison between Dhan Vs Zerodha Vs ICICIDirect. Here I am talking about Zerodha which many of new and experienced traders and investors think as a gold however it is no more a gold and we will find out why I am saying this below.

You will find out who is best stock broker among them by comparing different services such as brokerage, trading platform (downloadable, web version plus mobile app), account opening charges, customer service, margin and lot more products these stock broker offers to its clients.

Having said that if we talk about above brokers, Dhan and zerodha is a discount broker whereas ICICIDirect is a full-time broker, so to be honest comparing them on one scale can’t be the right thing to do.

However, they all are in same business and industry and functioning among same group of people, therefore a comparison can be made on the different services offered by them in every segment.

By the way if you want you can read the separate review of Dhan, Zerodha and ICICIDirect direct by clicking on this links.(Dhan Review, Zerodha Review, ICICI Direct Review).

You will be surprised to know that Dhan trading platform is one of the best web based trading platform I have personally seen, it may sound little exaggerated but dhan even beats the Zerodha trading platform due to the various features available under the same page such as technical, advanced option chain data, customised option strategy builder, fundamentals of company, financials etc.

Now without wasting further time lets us jump direct to comparison part of different features and services you can get from above three stockbrokers.

Dhan Vs Zerodha Vs ICICIDirect Charges Comparison:

As you can clearly see in the table above as far as account opening and AMC charges are concerned Dhan is almost free and hence can be counted as best money saving in comparison to zerodha and ICICIDirect.

Having said that, in day to day trades what really matters are brokerage, this is what you pay most of time when you place any trade. Zerodha and Dhan undoubtedly tops the table with lowest brokerage in comparison to ICICIDirect.

Moreover for equity delivery based trades zerodha an dhan does not charge any brokerage whereas ICICIDirect have a nominal 0.05% brokerage on total turnover for delivery based trades.

Dhan gives Margin Trading Facility (MTF) for up to 4X leverage (75% funds) from Dhan for Equity Delivery trading. You can buy 950+ stocks and hold them for unlimited period of time.

ICICIDirect also gives 5x leverage in delivery based trades. However, Zerodha do not have this feature as of now.

So, overall Dhan stockbroker wins the race in terms of saving more money for you in comparison to Zerodha and ICICIDirect.

Let us now move on to compare the most important part for every trader and investor i.e. segments available and trading platform rating and features.

Dhan Vs Zerodha Vs ICICIDirect Trading Platform Comparison:

There are many forms of investing and trading in stock market in India, mainly there are three prominent stock exchanges:

1. National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) Ltd.
2. BSE Ltd. formerly known as the Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd.
3. Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd.(MCX)

National Stock Exchange of India(NSE) and BSE Ltd. both deals in segment of market mentioned below.

1. Equity
2. Equity Derivatives
3. Currency Derivatives (including Interest Rate Derivatives)
4. Commodity Derivatives
5. Debt

There are multiple segments or you can say financial products available just like a supermarket, apart from above you can invest and trade in ETF, Digital Gold, SGB, Bonds, Government securities(G-sec), IPO, OFS, Mutual funds, etc.

The reason I told you above is to be familiar with the financial products and then check various options available with stockbroker you are choosing, rather than just going by the hype.

In Zerodha vs Dhan Vs ICICIDirect there are many financial products are available take a look in below table:

Below are the overall rating of dhan, Zerodha and ICICIDirect, which means if you consider all different features, charges, cost effectiveness, better user experience among them.

What makes any stockbroker trading platform better is the integration of various financials third party apps or inbuilt software’s.

Zerodha trading platform have partnered with third party service integration as well such as Tickertape, Streak, Refinitiv, Smallcase for portfolio based investments and, Sensibull for option based strategies.

On the other hand Dhan have also made tie up with smallcase for making portfolio based investment moreover they do have a stock recommendation tool as well which gives long term investment ideas known as Stratzy and this feature is not available with zerodha and ICICIDirect.

Dhan also offers another feature known as WelathBasket, it is a basket of stocks/ETFs, based on a strategy, theme or idea. WealthBaskets are professionally managed and help you invest in Stock Markets in a systematic way.

Dhan also have a dedicated option trading platform (Web + App) which is not available at Zerodha and ICICIdirect.

Very often traders who do not trade with option strategies may incur huge losses. Mostly because option strategies are complicated and require complex math’s.

But with dhan latest tool has solved this problem and made options trading with pre-build strategies a lot simpler.

Last but not the least Dhan has also partnered with Tactic who provides Trade Ideas & Strategies of top SEBI registered traders in currently 3 modes – Intraday, Positional & BTST. This feature will greatly help the new as well as experience traders and is not available with Zerodha where as ICICIDirect has it’s own research team to give paid recommendations to trade and invest both in equity and derivatives.

1Cliq by oipulse is integrated with Dhan which helps fast traders to identify trends especially scalpers. You can have trade execution with predefined SL, auto Trailing SL, MTM target and stop loss are some of it’s amazing features which is not available with Zerodha or ICICIDIRECT.

Dhan also has Auto-Detection of Candlestick Patterns on Charts on their trading platform which means charts will now automatically recognize & display the names of 37 widely known Candlestick Patterns. Combine this with dhan other features like 20 Depth Data, Price Alerts, Import Watchlists, etc. you have enough data to help you with your trades.

You will be amazed to know that dhan trading platform is one of the best trading platform I have come across recently, which even beats zerodha and ICICIDirect trading platform in many aspect.

Talking about ICICIDirect they have dedicated platform for all three devices downloadable, web and mobile app with great technical and fundamental tools and resources.

ICICIDirect have also tied up with third party service such as Sensibull for ready made options trading strategies and Smallcase. smallcases are the easiest way to buy & manage multiple portfolios of stocks/ETFs.

You can invest in US Stocks such as Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. using ICICI Direct trading platform which is very unique feature offered to clients and is currently not available with dhan or zerodha.

ICICI Direct is much better for people who not only do intraday trade but make other investments, such as investment in ELSS, PPF, SIP’s, FD, RD, ETF’s etc., or looking for Loans or credit cards, Insurance etc. 

Having said that Zerodha and ICICIDirect both lacks behind Dhan in terms of more extraordinary features such as mentioned above.

Dhan isn’t just another trading app it’s a next-gen platform built for serious traders and investors who want powerful tools, zero hidden fees, and a smooth trading experience.

From native TradingView integration to zero AMC and free API access, Dhan delivers everything you need to trade smarter all in one place.

🚀 And here’s the kicker:
For a limited time, you can open a Dhan account absolutely FREE — with zero maintenance charges and instant activation.

This is your chance to upgrade your trading game with one of the fastest-growing platforms in India.

👉 Don’t wait — open your Dhan account now before the offer ends!
Start Trading with Dhan Today

To prove my point let us in brief review the web based trading platform for ICICIDirect Vs Dhan Vs Zerodha one by one.

Zerodha Trading Platform Review:

Zerodha is known for its best trading platform since inception, they have 3 dedicated platforms for its users:

1. Zerodha Pi for desktop, which is a downloadable version
2. Zerodha Kite for Web, which a browser based trading platform
3. Zerodha Kite Mobile App, which a mobile App

Let us discuss Zerodha Kite which is a web or say browser based trading platform, which can be opened on any web browser you use. Just like a website but with all the tools and resources needed.

All zerodha trading platform are very secured, because of its 2 factor authentication, you need to enter the password and than a 6 digit pin to login. Once logged in you will see this page:

On left hand you will see the market watch, from here you can add or delete the scrips. When you move and hover over any stock it will give you different option like charts, market depth, buy sell order and many more.

Below image shows when you click on to know the market depth, (just to let you only zerodha as of now have the facility for level 3 data), what it means, the market depth that you will see have more depth , usually most other brokers will show only 5 best bids but zerodha shows 20 data for buy and sell orders.

You can display and use any type of chart with different candlestick patterns

You can also draw trend-lines, Fibonacci arc, cross-line on the chart itself.

Open Best Free Trading/Demat/Mutual Fund account online within minutes and start investing and trading in stocks, FNO, Commodity, Currency, ETF, SGB, IPO, Gold and many more Products..

Dhan Trading Platform Review:

Dhan have 3 trading platform for all devices known as Dhan App for Mobile, Dhan for desktop web version and dedicated option trading platform (Web + App) by dhan.

It is not possible to review all of them under one post however, will review the dhan web version trading platform and as the functionalities and features remains same across different version hence it does not matter.

Dhan web or say browser based trading platform, which can be opened on any web browser you use. Just like a website but with all the tools and resources needed.

Honestly, this is one of the best web based trading platform I have personally seen due to the various features available under the same page such as technical, advanced option chain data, customised option strategy builder, pre-build FNO strategies, fundamentals of company, financials etc.

On left hand you will see the market watch, from here you can add or delete the scrips. When you move and hover over any stock it will give you different options.

If you know how to trade options then all the important details such as option chain, option delta, option moneyness etc. is easily available for you.

With Dhan platform you get the maximum no. of indicators you want in life. They are just one click away.

You can display and use any type of chart with different candlestick patterns

Whether you want to use:

MACD indicator

Bollinger Bands indicator

RSI indicator

Volume Indicator

Support and Resistance indicator and many others

Dhan gives Trading View charts along with ChartIQ on both web and mobile application. Different Candlestick patterns etc. you name the indicator and it will be there.

As, you can see in the above image of order window, you can place different types of orders in intraday trading, if you select the option delivery, it will give you the option to place different order for delivery.

You can add- withdraw funds directly, create or back-test trading strategies use Free DHAN API to trade and lot more.

The user interface is so clean and up to the mark, you can easily know which icon will do what, as the moment you will hover to any it will tell you the functionality of it.

So all in all Dhan trading platform has everything what is needed for a hassle-free trading platform.

Below are some of the brilliant features of Dhan stock broker:

1. Access 4,000+ Scrips and major Indices like Nifty 50, Bank Nifty, FinNifty
2. Stock Trading App offers 1,600+ Stocks for Intraday Trading
3. MTF with 4x Leverage on 1,000+ Stocks & Unlimited Holding Period
4. Create a Basket of Stocks & Place Order in 1-Click
5. Daily, Weekly, Monthly SIP in Stocks
6. Busy Between 09:15 AM to 3:30 PM? Place After Market Orders
7. ₹0 Brokerage on Stock Investing & ₹20 for Intraday Trading
8. Buy/Sell Directly from Option Chain
9. Get Real-time Payoff Graph, Greeks & Live Trade Volumes
10. Advanced Order Types like Trailing Stop Loss, Iceberg, Forever (GTT)
11. Get Instant Pledge Margin for Option
12. Buying/Selling on 1,500 Stocks
13. Buy Options Quickly with Flash Trade
14. ₹20 on Options for All Segments
15. ₹20 or 0.03% (whichever is lower) on Futures for All Segments
16. Choose from 1,000+ Direct Mutual Funds
17. Start SIP in Equity, Debt, Hybrid, and Index Funds
18. Save Taxes with ELSS Funds
19. Find Top Rated Funds Easily on Mutual Funds SIP App
20. Add Multiple Funds in Cart and Invest in 1-Click
21. Manage Mutual Fund SIP with AutoPay or 1-Tap Top-up
22. Pay ZERO Charges for investing mutual funds – Absolutely Free!
23. Access to All Stock Market ETFs – Nifty BEES, Gold, Debt, Global
24. Daily, Weekly, & Monthly SIP in ETFs
25. Pledge ETFs in your Portfolio to get Money for Trading
26. MTF with 4X Leverage for Swing Trading ETFs
27. Separate ETF Dashboard for Tracking Returns
28. ₹0 Brokerage on ETF Investing
29. Trade All Currency Pairs: 4 INR & 3 Cross Currency
30. Trade All Commodities: Gold, Silver, Crude Oil, Natural Gas etc.
31. Trade Currencies & Commodities from Charts
32. Pre-Apply for Upcoming IPOs
33. Bid for Mainboard & SME IPOs
34. Invest in IPO at ₹0 Charges

Special Features Built by Dhan Broker to Solve Problems:

• Trade Options on TradingView.com only via Dhan
• Access & Trade NIFTY, NIFTY BANK, FINNIFTY from Charts
• Set Alerts on Losses and Over Trading with Trader’s Controls
• Evaluate what went right and wrong in your strategy with Traders Diary
• Save your Order and Execute later whenever you want with Draft Order

Incredible Dhan Features for Option Trading:

1. Readymade Option Strategies – Fast create and execute popular option strategies like Straddle, Strangle, Iron Condor, and many more with our options app.
2. Custom Strategy Builder – Create your own derivative trading strategies and execute them from the same platform. Simple. Convenient. Powerful option strategy builder!
3. Options Screener & Scanner – Identify and monitor scrips based on Volume, OI, Trends, Buildup, IV, and more with our option trading analysis app.
4. Outlook Based Ideas – Search scrips available for option trading ideas based on Bullish, Bearish, or Netural market outlook.
5. Realtime Pay-off Graph – Dhan app for option analysis helps you understand the potential P&L for your strategies before you execute them.
6. Dedicated Commodity & Currency Dashboard – If you are Trading Across Segments than you can Manage your positions in separate, dedicated dashboards.
7. Forever Order with OCO – Set a target price that stays active on Dhan FnO app until the specified price hits, including OCO for F&O trading.
8. Instant Pledge Margin – Pledge shares from your demat account to get more margin for f&o trading within minutes.
9. Option Chain – Trade calls and puts directly from the option chain with Greeks and other awesome insights on Dhan option trading app.
10. Synced Across All Dhan Platforms – All Dhan platforms are synced in real-time all across Positions, Orders, Basket, Margin & Funds, Portfolio, Charts, Watchlist and Tradebook.

Dhan mobile App have been downloaded on playstore for more than 1.5 million with a user rating of 4.6 which also shows the trust they have created among users within small time period.

Hence If you want a Safe & Trusted stock market app with Advanced Features, Fast Order Execution, Seamless Charts, Simple UI, and Helpful Customer Support? Dhan share market app has it all!

Whether you’re an intraday trader, an options strategist, or a long-term investor, Dhan offers the perfect blend of speed, simplicity, and smart technology — without burning a hole in your pocket.

Why wait? Open your Dhan account now and take control of your trading journey with confidence.

👉 Click here to get started with Dhan

ICICI Direct Trading Platform Review:

ICICI direct have three trading platforms

• Web based trading platform : Trade Racer web
• Desktop based trading platform : Trade Racer
• Mobile trading platform: ICICI Direct Markets mobile app

It is not possible for me to discuss all three of them individually in a single post, moreover the features remains same across all trading platform versions hence we would be knowing in brief about the Trade racer Web version and ICICIDirect Markets mobile app.

Let us know more about them:

You can also place the trades directly from the chart while doing technical analysis under flash trades.

Dhan Vs Zerodha Vs ICICIDirect which is better?

Dhan broker is a rising star and it is much better than both Zerodha and ICICIDirect If we do a overall comparison of various charges, features hence I would advise anyone to go with Dhan and avoid Zerodha and ICICIDirect as of now.

Expressing my opinion in terms of all technological tools, advanced platforms, robust management I would rate Zerodha 8.8 out of 10. 

According to the latest NSE reports  there are about 300+ stock brokers in India, however what makes Dhan a leading and strong contender in the stock broking industry is the tools and resources they have in their trading platform.

Moreover there are no hidden charges and the brokerages are very minimal if we do the industry comparison. They are also backed by cash enriched investors so nothing to fear.

If I have to rate Dhan broker after looking at there breakthrough pricing model for brokerages as well as other charges and experiencing there simple yet great user interface for trading platform I would give it 9.6 out of 10.

Dhan isn’t just another trading app it’s a next-gen platform built for serious traders and investors who want powerful tools, zero hidden fees, and a smooth trading experience.

From native TradingView integration to zero AMC and free API access, Dhan delivers everything you need to trade smarter all in one place.

🚀 And here’s the kicker:
For a limited time, you can open a Dhan account absolutely FREE — with zero maintenance charges and instant activation.

This is your chance to upgrade your trading game with one of the fastest-growing platforms in India.

👉 Don’t wait — open your Dhan account now before the offer ends!
Start Trading with Dhan Today

Expressing my opinion in terms of all technological tools, advanced platforms, robust management, margin and brokerage, I would rate ICICIDirect 8 out of 10.

What makes ICICI direct different from other is the strong hold and backup from ICICI Bank, India’s top private bank. Secondly, apart from this they also offer PMS (portfolio management services), insurance, loans, gold investment, research advisory, mutual funds etc.

I hope you above comparison between these stockbrokers have certainly helped you to choose the right broker for you. I wish you all the best for your financial journey ahead.

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If you are a beginner in trading and investing, please read this amazing guide on How stock market works in India?

Learn the basics of option trading step by step here.

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Note: Please do your own research and make investment. Moneycontain will not be responsible for any of your losses at all. The point made is for educational purpose only and intended to give information. All investments are subject to risks, which should be considered prior to making any investments.