How we calculate your PipTax
Every trade carries a price tag before it wins or loses a single point. Your broker charges you through the spread, through commission, and — if you hold overnight — through swap. Added together, that is your PipTax: the true, all-in cost of a trade with a given broker. This page shows exactly how we work it out, so you can check our sums yourself.
The three cost components
Spread is the gap between the buy and sell price. Open a trade and you start that gap's-worth behind — it is paid the instant you enter, whether the trade lasts thirty seconds or thirty days.
Commission is a fixed fee per lot, typically charged per side (once to open, once to close). "Raw spread" accounts charge it in exchange for a tighter spread; many "standard" accounts charge none and widen the spread instead. Neither is free — the cost has simply moved.
Swap is the overnight financing charge (occasionally a credit) applied to any position held through the broker's rollover time, usually around 10pm UK time. It reflects the interest-rate gap between the two currencies plus the broker's mark-up, and most brokers apply a triple charge one day a week to cover the weekend.
A worked example: one lot of EUR/USD
One standard lot of EUR/USD is €100,000 of exposure, and one pip is worth roughly $10. The figures below are an illustration for a hypothetical raw-spread account — they are not any broker's actual pricing. In the calculator itself, every figure comes from a named broker's published specifications and carries the date we retrieved it.
| Component | Illustrative figure | Cost on 1 lot |
|---|---|---|
| Spread | 0.2 pips | $2.00 |
| Commission | $3.50 per lot, per side | $7.00 round turn |
| Swap (long, one night) | −0.65 pips per night | $6.50 |
| PipTax, one-night hold | ≈ 1.55 pips | $15.50 |
Close the same trade within the day and the swap vanishes: $9.00, or 0.9 pips. Run it on a commission-free standard account with a 1.1-pip spread and the intraday cost is $11.00 — dearer here, but the gap is small enough that one broker's mark-up can flip the answer. That sensitivity is exactly why we model rather than guess.
Modelling your trading profile
A single trade tells you little; a month of trading tells you a lot. The calculator asks three things: how many trades you place per day, your typical size in lots, and how long you hold. From these it builds your monthly cost at each broker:
- Per trade: spread cost + round-turn commission, plus swap × the number of nights held (with the weekly triple-swap day included).
- Per month: the per-trade figure × your trade count, using each broker's published figures for the instrument and account type you select.
Why "cheapest" depends on how you trade
There is no single cheapest broker — only a cheapest broker for a profile. A scalper placing twenty intraday trades a day pays the spread and commission twenty times and the swap never; tight raw spreads dominate, and half a pip of difference adds up materially across a month of trades. A swing trader placing three trades a week and holding for five nights pays entry costs rarely but financing repeatedly; swap rates dominate, and a slightly wider spread barely registers. The same set of published figures can rank brokers in opposite orders for these two people, which is why our ranking recomputes for your inputs instead of showing one league table.
Where the numbers come from
Today's figures are drawn from each broker's published specifications — the typical spreads, commission schedules and swap rates the brokers themselves state on their websites. Every figure in the calculator is labelled as indicative sample data and carries the date we retrieved it. Be aware that spreads are variable in live markets: a "typical spread" on a broker's site is that broker's claim, not our measurement.
Launching soon: live measured data, recorded from demo trading feeds, so we can report the spreads streamed through the trading day rather than a single advertised number. Demo pricing can differ from live pricing — in spreads, execution and swaps — so when that feature ships, every comparison will state plainly which kind of data it uses, including that measured figures are demo-derived and that live costs may differ.
Our honesty rules
- Rankings read cost data only. The code that orders brokers has no access to affiliate information. A broker that pays us nothing can outrank one that does.
- We show our working. Every figure traces to a named, dated source, and the formulas are the ones on this page.
- We show each broker's own loss figure. Where a broker publishes the percentage of retail investor accounts that lose money trading CFDs with it, we display that percentage alongside the broker — dated, and refreshed when the broker updates it.
- We disclose. Some outbound links are affiliate links. They are marked as such, and every recommendation carries a disclosure line.
- We correct. If a broker or a reader shows us a figure is wrong, we verify it and update it, with the change dated.
What we don't do
- No trade signals, and no buy or sell calls — ever.
- No investment advice. We explain costs and mechanics only.
- No profit claims or performance promises.
- No paid placement in rankings, under any label.
Risk warning: trading CFDs is high-risk and most retail accounts lose money. PipTax measures what trading costs; it says nothing about whether any trade will be profitable.
PipTax is operated by Evander Labs. Questions about this methodology are welcome at hello@piptax.com.