I am actively using AliceBlue (and its API) from last 1 year. Here is my honest review:
1. Account Opening:
Not so smooth. Took around 15 days to open. They have regional presence of the contact person in Mumbai, who helps openning the account. I dont know why they did not go with Aadhaar based system, just like other brokers. But, once accoount is opened, never faced any issues.
2. Platform:
Mobile & Web: Compared to other discount brokerâs (except Zerodha), both platforms are good and simple. But overall bit slow in terms of ading symbols, placing orders etc.
In the past 1 year, faced issues 6-7 times mainly related to logins. Few times, it did not allow to login from both the platforms with the message username or password not correct. This resolved after sometime. Other than that, I have never faced any issues.
As far as Zerodhaâs platforms goes, there is no match for Kite. It is very simple, super fast. Zerodha have done commendable job to improve the platform and kept it that way.
As far as technical issues goes, no one is immune from that. I have account with almost 6-7 brokers and faced issues with all of them. It is not just the brokers faults, there are many layers in between connecting to exchange, Anything goes down no matter whatever redundancy you put in between, no one can claim 100% uptime for their platforms. Just accept this fact and choose a broker who does not breaks so often.
3. Leverage:
I chose AliceBlue speciifically for the leverage for Option Writing, They provide 10x on normal days, and 5x on Wednesday/Thursday under Freedom 20 plan. You can request 10x on Wed & Thu but it is charged rs 20 per lot. Rs 20 / lot is too much of a brokerage. Once, I did request 10x on expiry but seeing the contract note, never opted again.
However, since now with New Margin framework, I dont see a need for the leverage, even this June month, I did not use the leverage at all. All my strategies are now hedged and positional, I now do not plan anything specially for Expiry day hence no need for the extra leverage. Having said that, extra leverage does help if you get good opportunity on the expiry day (just keep your greed in check).
4. Hidden charges
I did not see any hidden charges.
5. OTM Strikes
One of the other reason to move away from Zerodha, You can buy any strike which is away some % from spot (For Nifty I guess it is 3%) which is more than enough. In fact I rarely faced issues placing buy for OTM strikes. SASOnline even allows all strikes.
6. API
I am a software developer and try to automate as much as possible. I started with Zerodha Kite API, but cost is high (2000/- for the api), when compared to Upstox I moved to Upstox (now upstox do not accept new API account request).
When I opened account with AliceBlue, I requested the API access, and it was enabled in just few days. Its totally free (api & streaming data). But there were challenges integrating with my system. They dont have .Net client, I had to write complete .net core wrapper for their REST based APIs. Also, even though, API documenation is good it is not complete, it lacks few of the API endpoints, which I found from other sources.
I never faced any issues executing orders through the AliceBlue API nor with their streaming data. I never validated the latency of the streaming data but it did not matter to the type of strategies that I execute. Few seconds latency here and there I can live with that.
7. Support
I interacted few times with the support. It is slow and they reply with usual template messages. I can not comment more on this as my interaction with the support was limited.
I think, overall I would give 4 out of 5 to AliceBlue. Specialy for the leverage (whoever need them) and APIs. Mobile & web plaforms are not bad either.
@siva-reddy
Also, a suggestion to Zerodha, when now almost all brokers are providing free access to the APIs, Zerodha still charging insane amount, they should at least bring down the API charges if can not make it free, at least price it under 500-700/-, that should be reasonable I guess. Just my suggession.
I understand OTM strike issues with Zerodha, please try to find a way to allow all OTM strikes, otherwise there will be no use of new margin framework on Zerodha platform. I am aware of routing through Orbis or something but I dont know how seamless this process is and this applies to orders placed through API as well?