Spread and commission cost calculator
A scalper that wins 6 pips a trade on its tester spread can lose money on a real account. Set the edge and the costs to see what is left.
- Cost per trade
- 1.6
- Cost per month
- 96
- Net per month after costs
- +264
- Extra spread that wipes out the edge
- 4.4 pips
How it is calculated
cost per trade = (spread + 2 × slippage) × pip value × lots + commission × lots; pips kept = pips won − cost per trade ÷ (pip value × lots), which is also the extra spread that takes the result to zero.
Why small costs matter so much
Costs are paid on every trade, win or lose, and they do not shrink when the edge does. A strategy that wins 6 pips and pays 1.6 in spread and slippage gives up more than a quarter of its edge before commission.
The fewer pips a strategy aims for, the larger that share. Backtests often run on a fixed or zero spread, which is why a scalper can look excellent in the tester and lose on a live account.
How Monetio prices costs
The report prices every trade of your file under a cost preset: a raw-spread account, a standard retail account and a bad-execution case. Spreads are stored in basis points of price, so gold and EURUSD compare fairly, and shown here as pips.
It also finds the slippage per side that takes the whole record to zero. Under one pip is flagged, because ordinary execution costs that much.