Trading Fees Comparison Calculator

Broker trading fees erode returns quickly, and the faster you trade the more of the return they take. A fair comparison has to account for commissions, spreads, exchange fees, and financing costs on a margin account.

Total trading cost per round-trip (buy + sell): Total Cost = (Commission Buy + Commission Sell) + (Spread Cost × Trade Size) + Exchange Fees + Regulatory Fees

Commission cost:

• Flat fee brokers (e.g. Interactive Brokers tiered): $0.005/share, min $1.00 per order
• Commission-free brokers (e.g. Robinhood, Webull, Schwab): $0 commission on US stocks/ETFs
• Futures: $0.25–$2.25 per contract per side (e.g. NQ Micro = $0.25/side at some brokers)
• Options: $0 to $0.65 per contract; $0.65/contract is common at TD Ameritrade, E*Trade

Spread cost (especially significant for forex and CFDs): Spread Cost = Spread (pips or %) × Lot Size

Forex example: EUR/USD spread = 1.2 pips = $12 per standard lot (100,000 units).

Regulatory fees (US markets):

• SEC fee: $8.00 per $1,000,000 sold (negligible for small trades)
• FINRA TAF: $0.000166 per share sold, max $8.30 per order
• Exchange fees: Vary; typically $0.001–$0.003 per share (often rebated for limit orders adding liquidity)

Financing / margin interest: Daily Margin Interest = (Margin Balance × Annual Rate) ÷ 365

Typical margin rates: 5–12% annually at most brokers; Interactive Brokers ~6.8% for balances under $100K (2024 rates).

Break-even gain calculation: Break-Even Move (%) = Total Round-Trip Cost ÷ Trade Value × 100

Worked example, stock trade comparison: Buy 100 shares of a $50 stock ($5,000 position), then sell.

Watch the minimum on that last row. 100 shares at half a cent is $0.50, which is below the $1.00 per-order floor, so you pay $1.00 each way and $2.00 for the round trip. The per-share rate only becomes the binding number above 200 shares. Below that you are paying the minimum, and a tiered schedule can quietly cost more than a flat one on small orders.

That is why the per-share row has its own minimum field. Leave it blank and the calculator does the naive multiplication, which is the same mistake the table above is warning about. Fill it in and it charges whichever is larger, order by order, the way the broker does.

What this actually costs an active trader. Five round trips a day, 21 trading days a month, at $4.95 a side:

105 round trips × 2 sides × $4.95 = $1,039.50 a month, or about $12,500 a year

That is the number to weigh against whatever the flat-fee broker gives you in return, and it is why execution costs decide the viability of high-frequency retail strategies before the strategy itself gets a vote. Position size does not change it: commission per trade is flat, so the smaller your average trade, the larger a share of it the fee takes.

Fee schedules change, and these are old. Every figure quoted above was accurate in 2024 and several will have moved since. They are here to show the shape of the structures, not as current prices. Pull the numbers off your own broker’s published schedule and type those in, because a comparison built on remembered rates is worth nothing.