Can Sarathi place orders on my Dhan account today?

No. You can save Dhan credentials, and they are stored encrypted, but no adapter sends orders yet. A Confirm on a card routed to Dhan is rejected and journaled as failed.

Will the Dhan adapter trade on its own?

No. The adapter will place one order per Confirm tap. There is no autonomous mode to switch on, and a card that expires can never execute.

Does the DhanHQ API cost anything?

Dhan lists its trading APIs at ₹0 and its data APIs at ₹499 on dhanhq.co as of 30 August 2026. Sarathi's adapter only needs the trading side.

Which Sarathi tier unlocks a Dhan connection?

Starter. Whale adds a second broker account. Free accounts stay on the paper route.

Dhan with Sarathi: status, API facts, what ships

What Sarathi does with Dhan credentials today, what the planned DhanHQ adapter will do, and the DhanHQ API and SEBI framework facts that shape it.

Updated 30 Aug 2026

Planned

Planned Dhan is the first live broker Sarathi intends to route to. The connection exists in the product but the adapter does not: credentials can be saved, orders are not sent. Sarathi has no partnership or contract with Dhan.

What works today

Step	Status	Detail
Save Dhan credentials	Live	API key, API secret and an optional client id, entered in Settings. Needs the Starter pack or higher.
Encryption at rest	Live	Envelope encryption: each bundle gets its own data key, wrapped by a versioned master key held only on the server.
Route selection	Live	Saving credentials switches your route to Dhan; disconnecting switches it back to paper.
Order placement	Planned	No orders are sent. A Confirm on a Dhan-routed card is rejected with `Broker "dhan" is not configured`, the signal is marked failed, and the rejection is journaled.

Credentials are decrypted only at the moment an order is placed. The tier gate is enforced on the server: a Free account that tries to connect gets Connecting a live broker needs the Starter pack or higher.

What the adapter will do

The planned adapter is small on purpose. It implements the same interface the paper broker does, so nothing upstream of it changes.

One tap, one order. Confirm places one order on your Dhan account at the quantity you chose (½, 1×, 2×). Skip places nothing. Expiry places nothing, ever.
No autonomous mode. No toggle lets Sarathi act on an alert without you. The human decision is a required column in the data model, not a setting.
Journal the broker's answer. The order id, fill price and quantity Dhan reports, or its rejection reason, go to the same fill table paper uses, with route dhan.
Your account, your custody. Sarathi never holds funds or securities. The order goes to the account behind your credentials.

Not planned: order modification, basket or multi-leg placement, position management, or reading your holdings.

DhanHQ API facts

Checked 30 August 2026 on Dhan's pages.

Fact	Source
Trading APIs listed at ₹0; data APIs listed at ₹499 and sold separately	DhanHQ trading APIs
Order API rate limit set to 10 orders per second from 8 September 2025, "in accordance with regulations"	DhanHQ release notes, v2.3
API-key login for individuals: key valid one year, a new access token generated each day, access token valid 24 hours	DhanHQ release notes, v2.4, 22 September 2025
Static IP required for all order APIs (place, modify, cancel), configurable through an API	DhanHQ release notes, v2.4
Access token can be generated via API when TOTP is configured on the account	DhanHQ release notes, v2.5, 9 February 2026
A sandbox exists for testing against the API before going live	DhanHQ trading APIs

Two of these shape the adapter directly. The daily access token means a live Dhan route needs a fresh token each trading day, and a card must show as rejected, not silently retried, when the token has lapsed. The static IP requirement means the address calling Dhan's order API has to be whitelisted; whether that is Sarathi's server or one you supply is an open design question to settle before the adapter ships.

The SEBI framework, in plain words

On 4 February 2025 SEBI issued Safer participation of retail investors in Algorithmic trading. Its main points for a retail trader using a broker API:

The broker is the principal and any algo provider is its agent; the broker deals only with empanelled providers.
All API orders carry an exchange-issued identifier.
API access uses a unique key per user, a static IP whitelisted by the broker, OAuth-style authentication and two-factor login.
Retail traders using self-built algos register them only above an orders-per-second threshold, and may share them with immediate family only.

The 30 September 2025 extension set 1 October 2025 as go-live for brokers that were ready and 1 April 2026 as the date the framework applies to all brokers. Zerodha's overview of the NSE standards is a readable secondary source.

Sarathi places one human-confirmed order per tap and runs no marketplace. Whether a hosted bridge calling a broker API on your behalf counts as an algo provider under the framework is a question this page does not answer. Ask your broker.

Get started

Start on the paper route today; it is the default and never metered. The Starter pack lets you save Dhan credentials now; the live route turns on when the adapter ships. Until then, work through the pre-live checklist.