What the fee calculator shows
Fees look small when you read them as a percentage of the position: 0.05% per side, 1 pip of spread. They look very different when you measure them against your stop, which is what decides your risk. This calculator converts the round-trip cost of a trade into R, the size of your stop, and shows the win rate a setup needs once that cost is paid.
The result is often a surprise. A setup that needs to win 40% of the time on paper can need 56% after costs, and the difference has nothing to do with the strategy.
How to use it
- Choose the units. Use % of price for crypto and stocks, where fees are a percentage of the trade value. Use pips for forex and CFDs, where you pay a spread and a commission per lot.
- Enter the distance from entry to your stop and to your target.
- Enter the costs: the fee and the slippage per side, or the spread, the slippage per side, the round-turn commission per lot and the pip value per lot.
- Optional: enter your win rate, trades per month and risk per trade to see the expectancy before and after costs and the share of your account the costs take each month.
The formula
round-trip cost = 2 × (fee + slippage) % of price
= spread + 2 × slippage + commission ÷ pip value pips
cost in R = round-trip cost ÷ stop distance
break-even rate = (stop + cost) ÷ (stop + target)
(without costs: stop ÷ (stop + target))
expectancy after = expectancy before − cost in R
monthly drag = trades per month × cost in R × risk per trade %
A winner nets the target minus the cost; a loser costs the stop plus the cost. So every trade, winner or loser, gives up the same cost in R. That's why the expectancy simply drops by the cost in R.
Worked examples
The same fee schedule hits three styles of trading very differently. Costs in the crypto rows are an example of 0.05% fee and 0.01% slippage per side, 0.12% per round trip. The forex row assumes a 0.8-pip spread, 0.2 pip of slippage per side and $7 of commission per lot round turn at $10 per pip, 1.9 pips in total.
| Setup | Stop | Target | Cost | Cost in R | Break-even before | After costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto scalp | 0.30% | 0.45% | 0.12% | 0.40 R | 40.0% | 56.0% |
| Forex intraday | 10 pips | 15 pips | 1.9 pips | 0.19 R | 40.0% | 47.6% |
| Crypto swing | 3% | 6% | 0.12% | 0.04 R | 33.3% | 34.7% |
The scalp is the clearest case. Its 0.12% cost is 40% of a 0.30% stop. At a 50% win rate the setup earns +0.25 R per trade before costs and loses 0.15 R per trade after them. At 100 trades a month and 1% risk per trade, costs take 100 × 0.40 × 1% = 40% of the account per month. The swing trade pays exactly the same fee rate and gives up 0.04 R, about a tenth as much.
Why tight stops make fees expensive
The fee is a fixed share of the price. Your stop is the unit everything else is measured in. Halve the stop and keep the same risk in dollars, and the position doubles, so the fee in dollars doubles while the risk stays put. That's the whole reason short-term strategies struggle: the edge per trade shrinks with the timeframe, and the cost per trade in R grows.
We measured how this plays out on real data in 2,160 crypto scalping strategies on 1-minute data: none of the frequent ones covered a 0.22% round trip.
Ways to bring the cost in R down
- Trade less often. The monthly drag is trades × cost in R × risk.
- Use wider stops with a smaller position. Same dollar risk, smaller position, smaller fee.
- Pay maker fees instead of taker fees where your exchange charges less for limit orders that rest in the book. Limit orders can also go unfilled, so backtest them honestly.
- Avoid wide-spread hours. Spreads on many pairs widen around the daily rollover and major news.
For the exact break-even price of a single trade, use the break-even calculator. To turn a win rate and payoff into a 100-trade projection, use the expectancy calculator.