Broker API Comparison: Order Placement

Every broker API in this comparison accepts the four order types that matter most:

• Market — buy or sell at whatever price is available
• Limit — only at your price or better
• Stop-loss limit — becomes a limit order when a trigger price is hit
• Stop-loss market — becomes a market order when a trigger price is hit

One API in this list does not accept stop-loss market orders. Everything else in the table below is about the extras, which is where brokers genuinely differ.

✅ provided · ⚠️ provided with a limitation · ❌ not provided · — not stated in the documentation

Order types each Indian broker API accepts

Broker	Bracket	Cover	After-market	Standing (GTT)	Two-leg (OCO)	Iceberg	Basket / multi-leg	Auto-slice
Fyers	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Dhan	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
Zerodha	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
Upstox	❌	⚠️	✅	✅	⚠️	❌	✅	✅
Angel One	✅	❌	✅	⚠️	❌	❌	❌	❌
Nuvama	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
AliceBlue	✅	✅	✅	✅	—	❌	❌	❌
Shared platform — Symphony XTS	✅	✅	✅	⚠️	✅	❌	⚠️	❌
Shared platform — Kambala	✅	✅	✅	⚠️	❌	❌	⚠️	❌
Kotak	✅	✅	✅	⚠️	❌	❌	❌	❌
Mastertrust	✅	✅	⚠️	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
SAS Online (Stocko)	⚠️	⚠️	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
Groww	❌	❌	⚠️	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌
Motilal	❌	❌	✅	⚠️	❌	❌	❌	❌
5paisa	—	—	✅	—	—	❌	—	❌
Choice	❌	❌	✅	⚠️	❌	❌	❌	❌
Sharekhan	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌

What the columns mean

Bracket order places your entry together with a target and a stop-loss, so the exit is already in place when you get filled. Cover order places your entry with a compulsory stop-loss. These are the two most commonly missed features, and they do not travel together — Angel One has bracket but not cover, Zerodha and Upstox have cover but not bracket.

After-market order is queued outside trading hours and sent when the market opens.

Standing order, usually called GTT, waits for a trigger price and can sit for weeks or months. Read the ⚠️ marks carefully here, because two different things get called the same name:

• A real standing order is a separate instruction held by the broker. Zerodha, Angel One, Upstox, Dhan, Fyers, Groww, Nuvama and AliceBlue offer this.
• A long validity on an ordinary order is not the same thing, and is what Kotak, Motilal and Choice offer. The order is live now, it just does not expire at the end of the day. On Choice this works only in the cash segment, and the order can then no longer be modified.

Two-leg (OCO) means a target and a stop-loss placed as a pair, where filling one automatically cancels the other. This is the genuinely useful form of a standing order, and it is much rarer than a plain one.

Iceberg shows only part of a large order to the market at a time. No broker API here offers it as an order type. Nearly all accept a disclosed quantity instead, which does much the same job. Some brokers cap how much you may hide. Two exceptions: Groww does not accept a disclosed quantity at all, and Sharekhan accepts one only when modifying an order, not when placing it.

Auto-slice splits an order that is too large for one instruction into several smaller ones automatically, and returns several order numbers.

Limitations behind the ⚠️ marks

Broker	Limitation
Angel One	Standing orders work only in the cash segment and only for delivery and margin products. They cannot be used for intraday.
Upstox	Cover orders can no longer be placed through the current order interface, though older cover positions are still recognised. Its standing orders need an entry trigger, so a plain target-and-stop-loss pair on an existing position cannot be expressed.
Groww	An after-market status exists in the data, but the documentation gives no way to actually place one. Its standing orders are not available in the commodity segment.
Symphony XTS	The platform supports standing orders, but IIFL’s version leaves them out entirely, along with spread orders and the margin calculator. Multi-leg is offered as spread orders rather than baskets.
Kambala	Multi-leg is offered as two-leg and three-leg spread orders. Standing orders exist on the underlying platform but are not documented in every broker’s version of the API.
Mastertrust	Does not accept after-market orders. Market and stop-loss market orders are also refused inside a bracket order, so a bracket entry must be a limit order.
Sharekhan	Accepts only one request type, and works out whether an order is market, limit or stop-loss from the price and trigger you send rather than from an order-type field. Bracket and cover orders cannot be placed. It also does not accept a disclosed quantity on a new order, only when modifying one.
Choice	Accepts all four core order types but nothing beyond them — no bracket or cover orders, and no true standing order. After-market orders are supported, though they are chosen as a product type rather than as a separate setting. Modifying an order means resending every field rather than just the one you are changing, and the quantity you send must be the quantity still pending, not the original.
SAS Online	Bracket and cover orders carry a written warning that they may not be switched on for every broker, so confirm before relying on them. Quantity cannot be changed on either.
Motilal	Does not accept stop-loss market orders — the only API here that leaves out one of the four core types.

Order rate limits

Most brokers cap order placement at about ten orders per second, and that cap is usually shared across placing, modifying and cancelling rather than counted separately for each. Several add a daily cap. A few cap how many times a single order may be modified.

Two brokers stand apart. AliceBlue documents no limit at all on placing, modifying or cancelling. And one broker publishes higher limits for professionally registered automated trading than for everyone else.

AutoTrader Web keeps you within your broker’s limits, so you do not have to manage this yourself.

Market orders and price protection

Many brokers no longer accept plain market orders through their API. This follows algo-trading rules, and it is the single most consequential difference on this page — because a market order is what most automated strategies send by default.

Brokers handle it in three different ways.

How the broker handles it	Brokers
Converts it for you automatically	Fyers, IIFL, Zerodha
Accepts a protection percentage you supply	Zerodha, Kotak, AliceBlue, Mastertrust, SAS Online, Kambala platform, Upstox (on standing orders)
Neither — a market order is simply rejected	The rest

“Converts it for you” means you send a market order and the broker turns it into a limit order at a protected price, without you doing anything. “Accepts a protection percentage” means the broker still needs a limit order, but will let you say how much slippage you will tolerate, and caps the fill price accordingly.

Note that Zerodha appears in both rows: it converts automatically and lets you set the band yourself.

What this means for you

You do not have to manage any of this. AutoTrader Web has its own Market Price Protection (MPP), which converts your market order into a limit order at a price near the live price, with a safety buffer so it still fills. You keep placing market orders and they keep going through, whichever broker you use.

Where your broker already converts market orders itself — Fyers, IIFL and Zerodha — the system detects that and does not convert a second time. If you see the message “Broker has built-in MPP. Skipping conversion” in your activity log, that is what happened, and it is information rather than an error.

You choose how big the buffer is in Settings → General: None, Small, Normal or Aggressive. Normal suits most people.

See Market Price Protection for the full setting, and Broker does not allow market orders if you have hit the error.

One caution. Broker positions on this are still moving, and at least one broker’s own pages currently contradict each other — its order specification still lists market orders while its platform page says they are not allowed. If market orders matter to your strategy, confirm the current position with your broker.

Related help

• Order updates comparison — how you learn an order filled
• Margins comparison — checking margin before you order
• All six areas — the comparison hub
• Precautions — broker-by-broker limitations