Trading Fee Calculator
Round-trip cost at your own maker and taker rates, the move needed just to break even, and what share of a small win the fees consume.
- Entry fee
- 5.00 USD
- Exit fee
- 5.00 USD
- Round trip
- 10.00 USD
- Round trip as % of notional
- 0.100%
- Move needed to break even
- 0.100%
- Fees per month at this rate
- 200.00 USD
- Share of a 1% gross win
- 10.0%
Fee rates are yours to enter because they depend on your tier, your volume and any discounts you hold — a rate table shipped in a page is stale within weeks. The last line is the one worth looking at: on small moves, the round trip can be a large fraction of the gross result.
Fees are charged on notional
The thing to internalise is that the fee is a percentage of the position value, not of your profit. A trade that moves 0.05% in your favour still pays fees on 100% of the notional, twice.
round trip = notional × (entry rate + exit rate)
break-even = round trip ÷ notional (as a price move)So the break-even move is simply the sum of the two rates. Everything else on the page is that number in different clothes.
The line that matters
Share of a 1% gross win is the one to look at. It answers the only question that decides whether costs are a footnote or the whole story: how big is the round trip relative to what you are trying to capture?
- Targeting 5% moves — fees are noise.
- Targeting 1% moves — fees are a visible tax.
- Targeting 0.2% moves — fees may exceed the edge entirely.
A strategy can have a genuine edge and still lose money, because the edge is measured gross and the account is settled net. Nothing about the signal has to be wrong for that to happen.
Maker versus taker is a real decision
Taker fees are typically several times maker fees. Switching both sides of the round trip between the two options above shows the difference directly, and on a high-turnover approach it compounds into a material number over a month.
The trade-off is not free. A resting limit order may not fill, and the trades it misses are not randomly selected — you tend to get filled when the market comes to you, which is not always when you wanted it. That adverse selection is a real cost and it does not appear in any fee schedule.
Where this fits with the rest
Fees are one of three costs that sit between gross and net:
- Fees — this page. Scale with turnover.
- Funding — scales with holding time on perpetuals. See the funding rate calculator.
- Slippage — scales with size relative to book depth, and is the one no calculator can give you.
The futures PnL calculator combines the first of these into a single trade; this page is for seeing what it costs across many.
FAQ
Why do I have to enter my own fee rates?
Because they depend on your tier, your volume over a trailing window and any discounts you hold — so there is no single correct number to ship, and a rate table baked into a page would be wrong within weeks. Read yours from your venue fee schedule and enter it; the result is then actually yours rather than approximately somebody else’s.
What is the difference between maker and taker fees?
A maker order rests on the book and adds liquidity; a taker order crosses the spread and removes it. Venues charge takers more, sometimes several times more. The practical consequence is that the choice between a limit order that waits and a market order that fills now is also a fee decision, and on small moves it can be a large share of the result.
How much do fees really matter?
It depends almost entirely on how large your intended move is relative to the round trip. On a 5% target, a 0.1% round trip is noise. On a 0.3% target it is a third of the gross result. The "share of a 1% gross win" line is there to make that ratio visible, because it is the number that determines whether a strategy survives its own costs.
Does this include funding?
No — funding is a separate cost that applies to perpetual positions held across settlement intervals, and it depends on holding time rather than on turnover. For anything held longer than a few hours it can exceed the trading fees. The funding rate calculator covers it.