Overtrading cost calculator
Every trade costs money before it wins or loses: brokerage, STT, exchange charges, GST, stamp duty and slippage. The trades you take beyond your plan pay all of it too. Enter how many trades you take, how many your plan really needs and what one trade costs you, and see what the extra trades cost you in a month and a year.
Your trading day
Nothing you enter leaves this page.
Count round trips: one entry and its exit is one trade. Your broker tradebook shows the real number.
How many real setups your strategy gives you on a normal day.
Brokerage, STT, exchange charges, GST and stamp duty for one trade. About ₹50 to ₹100 for a small options trade with a ₹20 per order broker. Check your contract note.
The gap between the price you wanted and the price you got, in and out. Even one point on a small options position adds up.
Around 20 to 22 if you trade every session.
Used only to show the yearly cost as a share of your account.
What your extra trades cost
₹1,20,000
every year
- Extra trades a day
- 5
- Cost of one extra trade
- ₹100
- Every day
- ₹500
- Every month
- ₹10,000
That is 40.0% of your capital a year, spent on trades your own plan did not ask for. It is also 63% of everything you pay to trade. Your account has to earn this back before it makes a single rupee of profit.
This calculator runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to us, stored or logged.
Why the cost of overtrading is easy to miss
You see charges one contract note at a time, ₹60 here, ₹80 there. Nobody adds them up across a year. But a trader who takes five more trades a day than their plan needs pays for 1,200 extra trades a year.
These costs are not small at the market level either. SEBI found that individual F&O traders spent about ₹50,000 crore on transaction costs between FY22 and FY24, and about ₹25,000 crore in FY26 alone.
The cheapest way to cut this cost is not a cheaper broker. It is fewer trades that were never in your plan. Our guide to stopping overtrading shows how to find those trades in your own tradebook.
Questions
How much does one F&O trade cost in charges?
For a small options round trip with a ₹20 per order broker, brokerage, STT, exchange charges, GST and stamp duty often come to ₹50 to ₹100. Bigger positions and futures cost more. Your contract note shows the exact figure.
What is slippage in trading?
Slippage is the difference between the price you wanted and the price you actually got. It happens on the way in and on the way out, and it grows when you trade fast or in thin contracts.
How many trades a day is too many?
Any trade your plan did not call for is one too many. If your strategy gives three good setups on a normal day and you take eight, five of them are overtrading, whatever the number.
Does this calculator send my numbers anywhere?
No. It is arithmetic that runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent, stored or logged.
Know your number. Then keep to it.
LossGuardian counts your real trades from your broker and tells you the moment you go past the number you set. It is read-only, so it never places or cancels an order. It just makes sure you notice.