Zerodha GTT: Full Setup, Use Cases & Pitfalls

Zerodha GTT (Good Till Triggered) is a free order type that stays active for up to 365 days. You set a trigger price; when the market hits it, Zerodha automatically places a limit order on the exchange. It's the closest thing Indian retail investors have to "set it and forget it" — and the closest thing to disaster if you set it without thinking.

Every long-term investor and swing trader hits the same wall sooner or later. You want to buy a stock at ₹450, but it's trading at ₹500. So every morning you place a fresh limit order, and every evening at 3:30 PM, it expires unfilled.

Place it again tomorrow. And the day after. Until you forget one Tuesday and miss the dip.

GTT solves exactly this. One trigger. One year of patience built in. Zero need to stare at the screen.

But the same feature that quietly executes a perfect dip-buy can also leave you holding a position you never intended to take. Usually because the setup looked right but the fine print bit later. This article walks you through both: the setup, and the fine print.

What a GTT order actually does

GTT stands for Good Till Triggered. It is not an order at the exchange. It is a conditional instruction sitting on Zerodha's servers, watching the Last Traded Price (LTP) of one specific stock or contract.

You give it two prices: a trigger price (the level that wakes it up) and a limit price (the price you'd be willing to transact at). When the LTP touches or crosses the trigger price, Zerodha fires a limit order to the exchange at your specified limit price. If the order fills, you've got a trade. If it doesn't, it sits till market close and then dies.

That distinction matters: a triggered GTT is not a guaranteed fill. It is only an instruction to place a limit order. The market still has to honour that limit price on the exchange.

One trigger is valid only once. If it fires and the limit order doesn't get filled, the GTT is consumed. You'll need to place a new one. The system does not auto-retry.

A GTT is valid for 365 days from the date you place it. After a year, if your trigger has never been hit, it gets auto-cancelled. You can place up to 500 active GTTs in your account at once.

Single trigger vs. OCO: pick the right one

Zerodha gives you two flavours of GTT. The names are technical; the difference is intuitive once you see it.

A Single trigger is one condition, one order. Use it when you have one specific level you care about: a price to buy at, a target to sell at, a breakout level to enter on. Anywhere a regular limit order would fit, but you don't want to refresh it daily.

An OCO (One Cancels Other) is two conditions, one position. It's used to bracket a holding with both a target and a stop-loss at the same time. The first leg to fire executes; the other gets auto-cancelled. This is the GTT type most retail investors underuse, and the one that protects them best.

Here's the rule I give my students: Single for getting in, OCO for getting out. Most beginners use Single triggers for everything and then wonder why their winners turn into losers. OCO solves that, but only if you set the stop-loss at a place that respects the stock's noise, which is a separate skill entirely.

How to place a Single GTT

The flow is nearly identical on Kite web and the Kite mobile app. I'll describe both side by side. Once you've done it twice, the muscle memory takes over.

The whole process takes under 30 seconds once you've set up your first one. You'll get a push notification and an email the moment your trigger fires.

Trigger price vs. limit price: where each one goes

The most common GTT mistake is setting the trigger and limit prices on the wrong side of the current market price. The diagram below shows where each should sit for a Buy and a Sell GTT in the most common case.

The rule of thumb behind both: set your limit on the "wrong side" of the trigger, by a small margin. For a buy, you'd accept paying a rupee or two more than the trigger. For a sell, you'd accept getting a rupee or two less. That tiny cushion is what converts a triggered GTT into a filled trade in 95% of cases.

If you set trigger and limit at exactly the same price, you're hoping the exchange has resting liquidity at that precise level the moment your order arrives. In a liquid Nifty 50 stock, often it does. In a mid-cap or small-cap, often it doesn't, and your GTT triggers, doesn't fill, and dies at 3:30 PM.

How to place an OCO GTT

OCO is where most of the long-term value of GTT actually lives. It's the difference between hoping you'll remember to book profits, and having the booking happen whether you remember or not.

One subtle thing the form does: it shows you the implied R:R (risk-to-reward) ratio between your target and stop legs. If your target is ₹100 above the entry and your stop is ₹40 below, the R:R is 2.5. Below 1.5, most discretionary setups don't have the cushion to absorb a wrong call.

The seven use cases that actually matter

Most articles list a dozen GTT use cases. In practice, retail investors use it for about seven things. I'll go through each, with the type of GTT that fits and a brief note on the trap to avoid.

1. Buying on a planned dip (Buy Single)

You've identified a stock you want, but the current price has run up. Set a Buy Single GTT at your target entry: say, the 50-day moving average, or a previous support level.

The GTT waits patiently. If the dip comes, you're in. If it doesn't, you don't chase.

This is the single most common use case for serious investors, and the one I personally use the most. It enforces discipline: you commit to a price upfront, and you don't talk yourself into paying more later.

Trap: If the stock drops far below your trigger in a single gap-down (bad news overnight, for example), the GTT still triggers, at your limit price, which now looks too expensive. The market opened below your trigger, and the trigger condition was breached at the open. Plan for this by setting limit only slightly above trigger.

2. Buying on a breakout (Buy Single, trigger above CMP)

The opposite play. Stock is at ₹500, range-bound between ₹480 and ₹520. You don't want to enter inside the range.

You want to enter only if it breaks out above ₹525. Place a Buy Single with trigger ₹525, limit ₹528.

Trap: Breakout buys with GTT are vulnerable to "fakeouts": the price spikes above ₹525 briefly, triggers your GTT, then falls back into the range. You're now long at the top of the range. This is why breakout players usually pair the entry with a tight OCO stop-loss on the way back into the range.

3. Booking a target on a holding (Sell Single)

You bought TCS at ₹3,200, it's at ₹3,800, and your target was ₹4,000. Place a Sell Single GTT at trigger ₹4,000, limit ₹3,995. When it hits, you've booked the trade. No second-guessing, no greed, no "let me wait one more week".

Trap: Without a stop-loss leg, you have no downside protection. If the stock falls from ₹3,800 back to ₹3,000, the GTT just sits there waiting for ₹4,000, which may never come. For protection, use OCO instead.

4. Bracketing a holding with target + stop (Sell OCO)

The grown-up version of use case 3. You bought TCS at ₹3,200, it's at ₹3,800, you're up 18%. Set an OCO: target leg at ₹4,000 to book gains, stop-loss leg at ₹3,500 to protect what you've made. Whichever fires, the other cancels.

This is the use case that separates serious investors from hopeful ones. You've defined both your exits in advance. You don't have to monitor anything. The market makes the decision.

Trap: Setting the stop-loss too close. ₹3,500 on a stock that routinely swings 2–3% in a day will get hunted out on noise. Stop-loss placement is a skill of its own, covered in detail in stop-loss hunting.

5. Long-term portfolio automation (Buy Single, multiple stocks)

You've identified ten stocks you'd own at the right price. Place ten Buy Single GTTs at the price you'd be happy to buy each at. Now you've automated a year's worth of patient accumulation.

As each GTT triggers, you have an entry. The ones that never trigger save you from buying at bad prices.

This is how I've seen many investors silently build long-term portfolios — not by buying everything today, but by deciding upfront what's worth holding, and at what price, and then letting time and the market do the rest.

Trap: If all ten GTTs trigger on the same panic day (think March 2020), you may not have funds for all ten. Make sure your trigger prices spread across plausible "dip" depths, and that your account has the cash if a broad correction hits.

6. F&O target and stop-loss (NRML OCO)

You're holding a Bank Nifty futures long. You want to book at 1,000 points up and exit at 400 points down. Place an NRML OCO with both legs.

Now you can leave for the day, fly to another city, or take a meeting without checking the screen. Whichever leg hits first executes; the other cancels.

Trap: F&O GTTs have execution-range checks. The exchange has a band around the LTP within which limit orders are acceptable. If your limit price falls outside this band (usually for far-OTM options on a volatile day), the order is rejected at the exchange even if your GTT triggered cleanly.

7. Re-entering at a "second chance" price (Buy Single)

You exited a winner at a target, the stock kept running, and now you're sitting on the sidelines wishing you'd held. A Buy Single GTT at a meaningful pullback level, say the previous breakout zone, gives you a defined re-entry without chasing.

It's the only psychologically clean way to handle FOMO. You're not chasing the move; you're stating a price at which you'd be happy to be back in.

If the market gives it to you, you're back in. If it doesn't, you're not. Either way, no chasing.

Trap: The pullback may never come. That's not a problem with GTT — it's information. The market is telling you the trend is stronger than you thought. Don't keep lowering your re-entry trigger; that's a different mistake.

Four ways your GTT quietly dies

Now the part most beginners learn the painful way. A GTT is a conditional instruction with several silent failure modes. Each one can leave you holding a position you didn't intend, or missing an entry you'd planned around. Know all four before you place your first one.

A fifth, rarer failure: if the trigger and limit prices are too close to the LTP at the moment of placement (less than 0.25% for stocks above ₹50, less than 9 paise for stocks below ₹50), the GTT is rejected outright. Zerodha enforces a minimum gap to prevent accidental "place GTT, GTT triggers in 2 seconds" scenarios.

None of this means GTT is unreliable. It just means GTT is plumbing — and plumbing has failure modes you should know about before you depend on it.

Check your active GTTs once a month. Check your demat holdings before assuming a sell GTT will fire. Renew your TPIN.

Limitations you should know upfront

Beyond the failure modes above, there are some hard limits on what GTT supports.

No intraday (MIS) support. GTT works only for CNC (cash-and-carry delivery) and NRML (overnight F&O) orders. Intraday MIS, BO, and CO order types are not supported.

This is by design. Intraday positions get auto-squared at 3:20 PM anyway, so a 1-year GTT for an MIS position would make no sense.

No currency or commodity. GTT is available on NSE equity cash, NSE F&O, BSE equity, and now MTF. Currency derivatives and MCX commodities are not yet supported. Zerodha has said this is on the roadmap.

One-time use per trigger. A triggered GTT is consumed regardless of whether the order executed. If the order fired but didn't fill, you have to re-place the GTT manually. There's no auto-retry.

500 active GTTs maximum. Across your entire account. For most investors this is plenty; for systematic portfolio-tracking traders managing 200+ names, it can become a real ceiling.

No support from the dealing desk. Zerodha's call-and-trade desk does not place, modify, or cancel GTTs. You have to do it yourself. This is a notable departure from regular order support.

Order history disappears after one day. Once a GTT triggers and fires, you can see it in the GTT history on the day it triggered. From the next day onwards, that entry is gone from the GTT screen. Check your regular order book for the executed trade if you need to audit later.