Kite Connect API pricing in 2026: Personal, Connect and renewal credits

Which Kite API plan includes the data you need?

The plan boundary is market data. Zerodha's free Personal tier includes order, GTT and alert management, margin computation and portfolio management. Its help page explicitly excludes historical and real-time data. Connect adds those data services to the Personal features.

That makes “free API” an incomplete description if your program expects Zerodha to supply its price feed. An order workflow using another legitimately available data source has a different requirement from a program downloading candles or subscribing to live prices. Check the actual functions you need before creating the app. Paying for Connect does not include your brokerage, infrastructure or every service surrounding a strategy; the broader API charges comparison covers those separate costs.

How the ₹2,000 posts became a ₹500 subscription

1. Before February 2025, described retrospectively

   Two separately charged data components

   Zerodha's 24 April 2025 post describes the earlier arrangement as ₹2,000 for data and another ₹2,000 for historical data. Read that account as history, rather than a current tariff.

   Source: [4]

2. 8 February 2025

   Historical add-on charge removed

   Matti's official forum announcement says the additional ₹2,000 historical fee stopped from this date. Existing Connect apps received history permission and new apps included it. The base subscription was still needed.

   Source: [3]

3. March–April 2025

   Execution became free while data remained paid

   Matti's May announcement dates free order and account APIs to March. The separate 24 April announcement announced free execution and still described data at ₹2,000. Announcement date and availability date are different evidence.

   Source: [5]

4. May 2025

   Connect data fee reduced to ₹500

   The official May pricing announcement lowers real-time plus historical data from ₹2,000 to ₹500 monthly. The June update, published 18 July 2025, separately confirms the reduction and free order/account tier.

   Source: [5]

5. October 2026

   Brokerage-based renewal credits added

   The 7 October announcement introduces 500 Developer Credits for eligible monthly brokerage of ₹2,000 or more. This changes renewal payment for eligible users, rather than the published Personal/Connect feature boundary.

   Source: [7]

Personal versus Connect: documented plan capabilities

Zerodha product and support pages opened 14 October 2026. Stated retail subscription prices; GST treatment of ₹500 is not stated.

Function or charge	Personal	Connect
Subscription	Free	₹500 per app per month
Order, GTT and alert management	Included	Included
Margin computation and portfolio management	Included	Included
Real-time WebSocket market data	Not included	Included
Historical candle data	Not included	Included
Brokerage-based renewal credits	No paid subscription to renew	Eligible paid users; monthly brokerage and active-app conditions

Plans and features: Zerodha support/product pages. Active-app requirement and renewal mechanics: official October forum replies. A subscription inclusion does not establish uninterrupted availability or trading results.

Sources: [1], [2], [7]

Per app is a billing unit, not a whole-account bundle

The support page prices Connect per app. An official staff response also distinguishes an app/API key from an individual account: separate Connect apps carry separate monthly subscriptions. Combining apps inside one developer account does not, by itself, make the paid data subscription a single flat account fee.

For illustration, two charged Connect apps at the stated ₹500 price amount to 2 × ₹500 = ₹1,000 in a month before any credit adjustment. One app charged for twelve months amounts to 12 × ₹500 = ₹6,000. These are subscription arithmetic, with tax treatment unresolved, rather than a full trading invoice. We do not calculate a two-app credit discount because the published reply needs clarification.

A zero subscription payment in an eligible renewal month says nothing about transaction charges on executed trades. Keep the renewal entry separate from brokerage in your records. If the invoice states a tax treatment that the public page omits, retain that invoice; do not transplant a tax statement about the former ₹2,000 price into today's ₹500 calculation.

Historical lookback and request span answer different questions

Kite's historical documentation describes several years of archived candles. It lists minute, 3-minute, 5-minute, 10-minute, 15-minute, 30-minute, 60-minute and daily intervals. A request window specifies how much of that archive one call asks for. It does not tell you when the archive begins.

The staff table below was last edited in May 2020 and remains published. It is a dated reference, not a fresh authenticated endpoint test. A separate June 2024 staff reply says minute-level data begins around early 2015, while some NSE daily series extend to the late 1990s with no fixed universal starting date. Those statements do not guarantee complete history for your chosen instrument.

There is another boundary for derivatives: the documented continuous facility returns daily candles for expired NFO and MCX futures using a live contract's token. It does not describe a complete expired-options intraday archive. Confirm the contract, interval, dates and returned timestamps before paying for a research workflow. A successful download alone cannot establish that a dataset is suitable for a particular backtest.

Published staff reference for historical request windows

Staff forum table last edited May 2020; reopened 14 October 2026. Published day spans per request, not total retention. No account-level download test performed.

Documented candle interval	Maximum span in staff table
1 minute	60 days
3, 5 or 10 minutes	100 days
15 or 30 minutes	200 days
60 minutes	400 days
Daily	2,000 days

The staff reply supplies the limits; current historical docs supply the supported interval list. Additional interval labels in user posts are not treated as official support.

Sources: [12], [11]

Subscription renewal and daily authentication are separate

1. 1

   Create the appropriate app

   Choose Personal for the documented free account/order functions, or Connect when you need its included data. Adding money to a developer account and selecting a plan are different actions.

2. 2

   Use the documented login exchange

   Kite's user documentation starts with the browser login and a returned request token. The server exchanges that token for an access token using the app credentials. Protect the secret; this is not a reason to send passwords or authentication secrets to a chat assistant.

3. 3

   Plan for the session boundary

   The access token expires at 6 AM on the next day unless invalidated earlier through the API or a master logout. Renewing a monthly subscription does not renew that daily session. The documented refresh-token permission is limited to certain approved platforms; do not assume it is available to a normal retail app.

4. 4

   Check the network used for orders

   Zerodha says a whitelisted static IP is required for API order placement from 1 April 2026. Its setup allows one required primary IP and an optional second IP, with one whitelist modification per calendar week. WebSocket data, orderbook and positions can use any IP. Our static-IP guide explains the wider setup choices.

Connect's price does not remove rate limits

The current exceptions documentation lists historical requests at 3 per second and quote requests at 1 per second. Order placement has simultaneous ceilings of 10 requests per second, 400 orders per minute and 5,000 orders per day across segments and varieties. It also permits a maximum of 25 modifications per order. These are different limits, so meeting the short burst limit does not establish that a sustained workload is allowed.

Treat a rate-limit error as information about the request flow. A retry loop without checking order status can make an operational problem worse; the paid plan is not a guarantee that every submission succeeds. This page compares published access conditions and does not measure response time, fill quality or uptime.

Documented live-feed capacity

Instruments on one WebSocket connection

Up to 3,000

Published subscription capacity, not an observed throughput benchmark.

Source: [10]

WebSocket connections for one API key

Up to 3

Plan entitlement and authentication still apply.

Source: [10]

Keep the trading record beside the developer bill

A subscription tells you which services were available. It does not explain why a trade was taken or whether an execution matched the intended rule. Preserve those observations separately from the developer-account renewal ledger so a data bill is not mistaken for evidence of trading improvement.

For a wider choice of workflow, use choosing a broker API. For reviewing trades placed with Zerodha, the Zerodha trading-journal guide discusses the record beyond the API. OneTradeJournal entries are made by hand; there is no broker connection or trade import. None of the prices or capacities above establishes that a particular strategy will work.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of these. Each was checked on the date shown.

1. [1]Kite API plans and Developer Credits · checked 14 Oct 2026
2. [2]Zerodha API product overview · checked 14 Oct 2026
3. [3]Historical add-on included from 8 February 2025 · checked 14 Oct 2026
4. [4]Free personal APIs, 24 April 2025 · checked 14 Oct 2026
5. [5]May 2025 Connect price reduction · checked 14 Oct 2026
6. [6]June 2025 update, published 18 July 2025 · checked 14 Oct 2026
7. [7]Official October 2026 credit announcement and replies · checked 14 Oct 2026
8. [8]Official staff explanation of per-app fees · checked 14 Oct 2026
9. [9]Kite API exceptions and rate limits · checked 14 Oct 2026
10. [10]WebSocket subscriptions · checked 14 Oct 2026
11. [11]Historical candle documentation · checked 14 Oct 2026
12. [12]Staff historical request-span table, edited May 2020 · checked 14 Oct 2026
13. [13]Staff comments on historical availability, June 2024 · checked 14 Oct 2026
14. [14]Kite authentication and session expiry · checked 14 Oct 2026
15. [15]Zerodha static-IP setup · checked 14 Oct 2026