Kite Connect API

Kite Connect is Zerodha’s official trading API — a set of HTTP and WebSocket interfaces that lets software place, modify and cancel orders, read positions, holdings and margins, and stream live market data from a Zerodha account programmatically. It is the plumbing beneath most Zerodha-based algo setups in India: whatever builds the signals, Kite Connect is how the order reaches the exchange.

Access works on three credentials. An API key and API secret identify your application — created from the Kite Connect developer console, where the API subscription carries a monthly fee (check Zerodha’s current pricing). An access token authorizes each day’s session: the user logs in through Zerodha’s own login flow, and the resulting token is exchanged using the secret. Access tokens expire daily, so every algo system needs a morning re-authentication step — a deliberate regulatory-friendly design, not an oversight.

Example

A hypothetical flow at 9:20 am: the system refreshes its access token, checks margins, and on a strategy signal posts an order — for example, buy one lot of NIFTY futures (75 units) at market as an intraday product — then subscribes to the WebSocket feed to track the position’s MTM and manage the stop. Each step is one API call; rate limits apply, so well-built systems batch and throttle requests.

Why it matters

For systematic traders, the broker API is where theory meets production: token expiry, rate limits, order rejections and partial fills are all realities strategies must handle. Most traders never call the API directly — platforms manage the connection, while the trader supplies only their API credentials.

INDfolio AI connects to Zerodha through Kite Connect, alongside six other brokers — see Zerodha.