As of today, DhanHQ is free and DataAPI costs ₹499/mo. I understand that DhanHQ is more of an execution API while DataAPI is a web socket feed API.
What I am wondering is why do you charge for just the DataAPI and not for DhanHQ? I know getting the market feed from exchanges or data brokers is a costly affair but I am assuming so would be the case for maintaining the infrastructure for hosting DhanHQ. So why offer one for free and charge for the other one? Does this mean Dhan is bearing the costs for DhanHQ while passing on the costs for DataAPI to its users?
PS: This is not a complaint against charging for API and I know Dhan API cost is already on the lower end of the spectrum as compared to what other brokers and data providers charge. This is just a post to understand the pricing structure.
Hi @shashanks Thanks, this is an interesting question.
Well as a platform we have believed in only charging for brokerage from our users, and as a result of that we have never charged of Account Opening Fees, Platform Fees, AMC fees, or even simplest of fees like for payments or other value added services.
When it comes to DhanHQ APIs - we offer two services, trading APIs and Data APIs. Trading APIs, with the above principle we make revenue from brokerage and hence we kept them free.
When it comes to DataAPIs, yes - you are right as there are significant costs associated with data, infrastructure, network, bandwidth and likes. If provided for free, it results in abuse of data & infra, and as a result significant costs at our end which also has implications on our core trading platforms. So we keep these charged at an minimal price of INR 499 per month while we understand peers charge as much as INR 2000 per month. We feel INR 499 is a small and reasonable price to provide value for money + keep away abuse of our infra.
Having said that, in 2025 you will expect lot more from us for the value of this. We will introduce Option Chain on API, 20 Depth data, and few more enhancements with products, features and capabilities to be added.
@PravinJ Wow that was super quick! Thanks for responding
Your answer totally makes sense and I had presumed that the primary reason to charge for DataAPI would be to put in an entry barrier to avoid unfair usage. Yes, ₹499/mo is definitely worth the value it provides in terms of giving access to live market feed.
I am excited and looking forward to the upcoming new features in 2025! I am totally impressed with the consistency with which you guys are rolling our updates to your platforms and many of them being industry-firsts. Keep up the great work. After having lurked over these forums and tracking Dhan as a platform for over 3 years now, I am finally convinced that you guys are doing great work and here to stay. More action than words! In 2025, I have decided to migrate my entire trading account to Dhan.
Hi, Is there any plan to increase the data limit which is 5 days now for intraday charts data from data API, mainly needed for backtesting purpose of strategies to the users.
Can you help me with more on this? Is this because the indicators are constructed by you only during market hours and not afterwards? And to understand the problem statement better, would like to know if you store the data locally as well and complexity around the same.
Currently i am Backtesting my strategy on last 5 days data, as it is available only of this much of period after it i calculate the various user defined variables and decide to take trade based on mixed results of those variables.
I want to ask that is it possible to fetch OHLCV of last 3 candles or 4 candlesonly during live market instead of whole data since morning 9:15 to running time.
