kiteconnect

What it is and what it does

Kiteconnect is the official Python client for Zerodha's Kite Connect trading API, a REST-like service for building investment and trading platforms. It wraps HTTP endpoints and WebSocket connections to let you place orders, fetch portfolio data, stream live market quotes, and manage mutual fund transactions. The library handles session management, order placement (including auto-slicing for large orders that exceed exchange limits), instrument lookups, and real-time tick subscriptions via WebSocket callbacks.

The package is designed for developers building trading applications on the Zerodha platform. It abstracts away HTTP request construction and WebSocket frame handling, exposing a Python object interface with constants for order types, exchanges, and transaction modes. Recent versions dropped Python 2.7 support and added auto-slice order placement; the current release (v5.2.1) is actively maintained and carries no known security vulnerabilities.

Use it for:

• Build a retail trading dashboard that places equity and derivative orders on NSE/BSE/NFO exchanges in real time.
• Stream live market tick data via WebSocket to update price displays or trigger algorithmic trading signals.
• Automate portfolio rebalancing by fetching holdings and placing orders programmatically during market hours.
• Place mutual fund orders and track their status without manual broker interaction.
• Handle large order quantities that exceed exchange freeze limits using auto-slice order placement.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Official Python client for the Kite Connect trading API, enabling real-time order execution, portfolio management, and live market data streaming via REST and WebSocket.

Yes. Kiteconnect is the official, actively maintained client for Zerodha's trading API with no security vulnerabilities, permissive licensing, and low install friction. Install it if you are building a trading application on the Zerodha platform. Do not install if you do not have a Kite Connect API account or are targeting a different broker's API.

Install

kiteconnect on PyPI

pip install kiteconnect

uv add kiteconnect

poetry add kiteconnect

Installing kiteconnect

Before you install

Low install friction with a pure-wheel distribution. Actively maintained with a recent release (22 days old) and 1293 repository stars. Depends on several C-extension libraries (pyOpenSSL, autobahn) that require system compilers on Linux/macOS or Visual C++ on Windows, but these are well-established packages.

License in practice

MIT license (permissive) allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions. You may use, modify, and distribute this package freely provided you include the original license notice.

Quickstart

from kiteconnect import KiteConnect

kite = KiteConnect(api_key="your_api_key")
data = kite.generate_session("request_token", api_secret="your_secret")
kite.set_access_token(data["access_token"])
order_id = kite.place_order(tradingsymbol="INFY", exchange=kite.EXCHANGE_NSE, transaction_type=kite.TRANSACTION_TYPE_BUY, quantity=1, variety=kite.VARIETY_AMO, order_type=kite.ORDER_TYPE_MARKET, product=kite.PRODUCT_CNC, validity=kite.VALIDITY_DAY)

Requires a Kite Connect API account with valid api_key and api_secret from Zerodha. C compiler (GCC on Linux/BSD/macOS, Visual C++ on Windows) needed for dependency compilation.

Verify before relying

• Whether the package works with Python versions beyond 3.7 (classifiers list 3.5–3.7 but requires_python is unspecified)
• Specific behavior and error handling for autoslice orders when child orders fail

Package facts

Evidence: kiteconnect-5.2.1-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

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