Punch Trade vs Dhan 2026: Native Charting Engine vs TradingView Ecosystem

Written By Sunaina Agarwal - Last Updated: May 08, 2026

Two brokers built for active traders, both registered with SEBI, both pushing charting depth — but the engineering choices behind those charts diverge sharply. Punch Trade (SEBI: INZ000300936), operated by Market Pulse Securities Pvt. Ltd., runs a single-engine native charting stack: charts, indicators, and order routing share the same codebase. Dhan (SEBI: INZ000006031), a brand owned by Raise Securities Private Limited and founded in 2021, runs the deepest TradingView integration among Indian brokers — TradingView awarded Dhan "Best Broker in APAC" in both 2023 and 2024, and "Best Options Trading Platform (Global)" in 2024. Single-engine native versus TradingView ecosystem is the core architectural choice traders are making between the two. This comparison covers charting, brokerage at scale, execution, scalper tooling, financial health, and how each broker positions for active F&O.

Quick Comparison

Charting Architecture

Punch Trade ships a native in-house charting engine — owned and maintained by Market Pulse Technologies, the engineering group whose charting stack has powered roughly 80 Lac traders across broker integrations over the past decade. The engine is not a TradingView embed and not a third-party charting library. Because the chart layer and the execution layer share the same codebase, Punch can ship features that need both layers to talk to each other — trade-from-chart on Android and web, drag-and-drop SL/TP across mobile and web, default-on Protection Orders linked to the chart UI, and the ability to plot call or put premium movement directly on the spot price chart, a feature not currently available on Dhan. Smart Money Concepts (Fair Value Gap, Break of Structure, Change of Character) are native indicators. Multi-layout charting supports up to 8 charts on desktop and 2 on mobile, with 15 chart tabs in parallel.

Dhan runs TradingView at two surfaces — the main Dhan app and tv.dhan.co, a dedicated TradingView trading interface. Pine Script, custom indicators, and TradingView's community library are accessible inside the integration. Multi-layout supports up to 8 simultaneous charts with 20+ layout combinations; drawings sync to cloud automatically. Trade-from-chart on tv.dhan.co supports six order placement methods including drag-and-drop, hover-to-create, and a floating Scalper window. Dhan users can also connect tradingview.com directly for trading. The trade-off cuts both ways: traders who already live in TradingView gain a fluent broker integration; traders who want native broker control over the chart layer don't get that on Dhan, since the chart layer is governed by TradingView's roadmap.

Brokerage Math at Scale

Punch charges ?1 per executed order (?1.18 including 18% GST) across equity delivery, intraday, futures, and options. Dhan charges ?0 on equity delivery for individuals, ?20 per executed order or 0.03% of trade value (whichever is lower) on intraday, and ?20 per executed order on F&O. Both brokers waive AMC for individual accounts. The cost difference materialises in F&O. The table below covers 10, 30, and 80 F&O orders a day across 22 trading days, including 18% GST on brokerage.

Note: Dhan offers a 50% intraday brokerage discount for women customers — ?10 per intraday order instead of ?20. The discount applies to intraday only, not F&O. Verify current discount terms at dhan.co before opening an account.

Statutory charges (STT, stamp duty, transaction charges, SEBI turnover, GST on brokerage) apply equally on both platforms. STT effective from April 1, 2026: Futures 0.05%, Options 0.15% on the sell side; equity delivery and intraday rates unchanged.

Execution and Order Types

Order execution on Punch is reported on a real-time status dashboard at punch.trade/status: 0.01-second execution, 99.99% reliability, and 99.999% uptime, all three values published live. Trailing Stop-Loss runs across the platform — it shipped via Builder's Lab. Protection Orders default to on. Standard order types — Market, Limit, SL, SL-M — are supported. GTT, AMO, Bracket, and Cover orders are not yet available on Punch.

Dhan reports through its proprietary DEXT engine that 95% of orders execute under 25 milliseconds, with a meaningful share under 10ms — published via engineering documentation and an AWS case study rather than a real-time public dashboard. Dhan supports trailing stop-loss, Super Order (entry + target + SL in one order), Forever Order with OCO, and Bracket and Cover orders. Trader's Controls — Kill Switch (24-hour block), Trade Buddy, SOS Alerts — sit alongside the order workflow.

Ecosystem and Product Breadth

Dhan operates a multi-platform ecosystem. The Options Trader app (Android, iOS, web) houses Quant Mode (automated strike selection across nine logical conditions), a Strategy Builder with pre-built multi-leg strategies and real-time payoff visualisation, Straddle Chain, and an F&O Screener. DhanHQ ships free trading APIs with a Python SDK and webhooks. Dhan supports commodities, currency derivatives, mutual funds (0% commission direct plans), bonds, IPOs, and an MTF for up to 4x leverage on 1,700+ stocks. Mobile app rating: 4.7 stars on Google Play, 10M+ downloads.

Punch Trade is currently equity, F&O, and ETFs — no commodities or currency yet, no native MFs or IPOs yet, no public API yet, no separate Options Trader app, and no iOS app yet. What Punch runs alongside the trading platform is Builder's Lab, a public feature-voting platform where over 500 trader requests have been processed. Shipped examples include Drag & Drop SL/TP (471 votes), Trade-wise PnL (247 votes, shipped in 9 days), Split Charts (189 votes, shipped in 11 days), Fair Value Gap (313 votes), Scalper Mode (241 votes), and Trailing Stop-Loss. Stock Research and Reports are launching soon.

Financial Health

Dhan and Punch sit at very different commercial stages despite serving the same archetype of evolved trader. Dhan crossed unicorn status in March 2025 at a $1.2 billion valuation following a $120 million Series B led by Hornbill Capital and MUFG. The company reported approximately ?400 Cr profit after tax on ?900 Cr revenue in FY25. Headcount is 550+. The TradingView APAC awards (2023, 2024) and Best Options Trading Platform Global (2024) underscore the commercial scale of the integration partnership.

Punch Trade is earlier-stage by design: a 50-person team operating on $10M of seed capital from Stellaris Venture Partners, SIG, Prime Venture Partners, and Innoven Capital. Angel investors include Kunal Shah (Cred), Vatsal Singhal (Ultrahuman), and Nitish Mittersain (Nazara). Active client counts are not publicly disclosed. The financial gap is real and worth weighing — different stages, similar trader archetype, different paces of feature shipping.

Who Should Consider Each

Punch Trade suits traders who want native broker control over the chart layer — premium plotting on spot, mobile trade-from-chart, native Smart Money indicators, and Scalper Joystick with preset SL/TP. Active F&O and intraday traders running 10 or more orders a day will see brokerage costs structurally lower at ?1 per executed order. Punch is not the pick for traders who need commodities or currency yet, an iOS app yet, mutual funds or IPOs yet, an API yet, or a separate Options Trader app.

Dhan suits traders whose charting workflow lives inside TradingView (Pine Script, community indicators), who run multi-leg options strategies and want a dedicated Options Trader app, who need commodities, currency, MFs, IPOs, or MTF, or who want a free API for programmatic trading. Dhan also offers a native iOS app today.