Tick Size for NSE Stocks: How the Minimum Price Step Works and Why It Changes

Try placing a buy order at ₹642.03 on a stock trading around ₹642 and your broker will reject it. Not because the price is unreasonable, but because NSE doesn’t allow that number. Every share on the exchange moves in fixed minimum steps, and the tick size for NSE stocks decides how big that step is. For a stock under ₹250 it’s one paisa. For a stock above ₹20,000 it’s five rupees.

Most of us never think about this until an order bounces. But tick size quietly shapes the bid-ask spread you pay, where stop-losses get clustered and even how the day’s price band is printed. NSE also reviews it every month, so the step on a stock you’ve held for a year may not be the step it trades on today. Let’s go through the rules as NSE has written them, then work through a few examples.

What tick size means on NSE

A tick is the smallest amount by which a price can change. If the tick is ₹0.05, the stock can trade at ₹642.00 or ₹642.05, but nothing in between. Every order price you enter has to be a whole multiple of the tick. That’s why ₹642.03 fails and ₹642.05 goes through.

Until mid-2024, ₹0.05 was the standard tick in NSE’s cash market, even for cheap shares. That changed in two stages. In its circular of May 24, 2024, NSE introduced what it called price-linked tick size: securities priced below ₹250 would move to a ₹0.01 tick instead of ₹0.05, effective from the trade date of June 10, 2024. Then a follow-up circular dated March 13, 2025 widened the steps for higher-priced shares, effective from the trade date of April 15, 2025.

The six price slabs for tick size on NSE stocks

Here is the current table from NSE’s March 2025 circular. It applies to securities in the EQ, T0, BE, BZ, BO, RL and AF series (and their corresponding BL series where applicable). Exchange traded funds are left out of it.

Two things jump out. The bottom two rows didn’t change in 2025; the overhaul was entirely about expensive stocks. And the jump at the top is steep. A share above ₹20,000 went from a five-paisa step to a five-rupee step, a hundredfold change.

Same slabs, very different steps in percentage terms

A ₹5 tick sounds huge, so it helps to look at the tick as a share of the price. We worked these out ourselves from the slab table:

• At ₹250, a ₹0.05 tick is 0.02% of the price. The cheapest stock in this slab has the coarsest step relative to its price.
• At ₹1,000, the same ₹0.05 tick is just 0.005%.
• Just above ₹1,000, ₹5,000 or ₹10,000, the new tick (₹0.10, ₹0.50 or ₹1) works out to roughly 0.01% of the price.
• Just above ₹20,000, a ₹5 tick is about 0.025%.

So for shares above ₹250, the slabs keep the step in a fairly narrow band of roughly 0.002% to 0.025% of the price, instead of letting a flat five paisa become almost meaningless on a ₹30,000 stock. Low-priced shares are a different story: on a ₹10 stock, even one paisa is 0.1% of the price. That looks like the intent behind the design, though NSE’s circulars don’t state a reason.

A tick isn’t a fee and it isn’t a rule about how far a stock can move in a day. It’s the spacing between the rungs of the ladder every order has to stand on.

Why the tick on your stock can change every month

This is the part most people miss. The tick isn’t fixed when a stock lists. According to the 2024 circular, NSE reviews the tick size of each security every month. It takes the closing price on the last trading day of the month, and whatever slab that price falls into sets the tick for the whole of the next month, starting from its first trading day. The 2025 update kept the monthly review and says the tick for a stock in the cash market and for its stock futures is decided and applied on the same dates.

NSE’s own illustration in the 2024 circular: the tick for July 2024 was set from the closing price of June 28, 2024, and the tick for August 2024 from the close of July 31, 2024. When the bigger slabs arrived, the first revision was done at the end of day on April 11, 2025, based on closing prices from March 28, 2025.

Worked example: a stock that crosses ₹250

Take a hypothetical company, Koyna Agro Products, that trades on NSE at around ₹238 through most of September. Its tick is ₹0.01, so you can bid ₹238.17 if you like.

In the last week of September the stock rallies and closes the month’s last trading day at ₹252.40. That close falls in the ₹250 to ₹1,000 slab. From the first trading day of October, Koyna’s tick becomes ₹0.05. Now ₹252.40 and ₹252.45 are valid prices, but ₹252.42 is not.

Suppose the rally fades and the stock drifts back to ₹244 by mid-October. Its tick stays at ₹0.05 for the rest of October, because the review only happens once a month. If it closes October’s last trading day below ₹250, it goes back to a ₹0.01 tick in November. Any order you had planned to the paisa needs repricing in the meantime.

Worked example: an expensive stock

Now a hypothetical engineering stock, Rewa Precision, which closed the last trading day of the previous month at ₹14,920. That’s in the above ₹10,000 to ₹20,000 slab, so this month it trades in ₹1 steps: ₹14,920, ₹14,921, ₹14,922. An order at ₹14,920.50 is invalid. Under the pre-April 2025 rules, the same stock could have moved in five-paisa steps, which allowed nineteen valid prices strictly between ₹14,920 and ₹14,921. Today there are none.

New listings, splits and bonus issues

The 2024 circular also covers the awkward cases.

• IPOs: NSE uses the issue price fixed at allocation as the reference price. A hypothetical IPO priced at ₹236 would therefore start trading with a ₹0.01 tick.
• A stock already listed on another exchange: the reference price is the last available closing price three trading days before the NSE listing date.
• Splits, bonus issues, dividends and rights issues: the existing tick carries on until the next monthly review.
• A new security created by a corporate action, and its parent: the parent’s tick continues, whatever the price, until the next monthly review.

The split rule produces a small oddity worth knowing. Say a hypothetical stock closed last month at ₹1,840, so it carries a ₹0.10 tick, and then splits each share into ten mid-month. It now trades around ₹184, a price that would normally get a one-paisa tick. But it keeps the ₹0.10 step until the month-end review resets it. For a couple of weeks, a ₹184 stock moves in ten-paisa steps.

Where tick size touches your actual trading

The spread can never be narrower than one tick

The best bid and the best offer can’t sit closer together than one tick, because there’s no valid price between them. On a ₹184 stock with a ₹0.01 tick, the tightest possible spread is one paisa. If that same stock had a ₹0.05 tick, the tightest spread would be five paisa.

Our own arithmetic shows why that matters for active traders. Buying 500 shares at the offer and selling them at the bid when the spread is one tick costs 500 × ₹0.01 = ₹5 on a one-paisa tick, and 500 × ₹0.05 = ₹25 on a five-paisa tick. That’s before brokerage and taxes. Whether real spreads actually sit at one tick depends on how liquid the stock is, so treat this as the floor, not the norm.

Price bands get rounded to the tick

NSE’s 2024 circular says all price calculations, including closing price, base price, common equilibrium price and settlement price, are aligned to the stock’s tick size. That includes the common equilibrium price discovered in the NSE pre-open session. The price band method itself didn’t change, but the band prices it produces are also aligned to the tick. (Our explainer on NSE price bands and circuit limits covers how the bands themselves are set.) So if a hypothetical stock with a ₹0.05 tick closes at ₹643.20 and has a 5% band, the raw upper limit of ₹675.36 won’t be the number you see. The band will sit on a valid five-paisa step instead.

Stop-losses and limit orders

Round numbers attract orders, and coarser ticks push even more orders onto the same few prices. On a ₹14,920 stock with a ₹1 tick, every stop placed “just under ₹14,900” lands at ₹14,899, not scattered across ₹14,899.05, ₹14,899.10 and so on. If you’re placing stops on expensive shares, it’s worth asking whether you want to sit exactly where everyone else does or one tick away from the crowd.

The tick you traded on last month is not a promise for this month. One month-end close across a slab boundary is enough to change it.

How to check the current tick on a stock

NSE says the applicable tick for each security is carried in its security files, which members load into their trading software. It also puts the CM security file up daily on the all-reports section of nseindia.com. For most of us, the practical route is simpler: look at the last trading day’s close of the previous month, match it to the slab table above, and you’ll know the step. If an order gets rejected for an invalid price, that’s usually the first thing to check.

Common mix-ups

“Tick size and lot size are the same thing.” They aren’t. Tick size is about price steps. Lot size is about how many shares make up one derivatives contract.

“The tick changes the moment a stock crosses ₹250 or ₹1,000.” No. It’s decided by the closing price on the last trading day of the month and holds for the whole of the next month.

“ETFs follow the same slabs.” NSE’s March 2025 circular explicitly leaves exchange traded funds out of this framework.

“A big tick means the stock is more volatile.” The tick says nothing about how much a stock moves. It only sets the spacing between valid prices.

Quick checklist before you place an order

1. Which slab did the stock’s close on the previous month’s last trading day fall in?
2. Is your limit or trigger price a whole multiple of that tick?
3. Has there been a split or bonus this month that left the stock on an older, larger tick?
4. Are your saved or standing orders still priced in valid steps after the month-end review?
5. Is your stop sitting exactly on a crowded round number, and do you want it there?

Tick size is a dull rule with real consequences. It decides which prices exist at all, it sets the floor for your spread, and on expensive shares it now moves in rupees rather than paise. Check it once a month for the stocks you trade and you’ll stop being surprised by rejected orders. For a wider view of the risks that matter more than a single paisa, see our risk management in trading guide.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. The companies and prices in the worked examples are hypothetical. Trading in equities and derivatives carries risk. Please do your own research or consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making investment decisions.