What does it cost to trade crypto CFDs?

A crypto CFD has none of the fees you meet when you move coins: no coin withdrawal fee and no network fee. Its costs sit in the broker's quote and in the account terms instead.

You can price all of them before you click Buy. This lesson turns each one into money for a single trade.

The spread: paid when you open

Every crypto CFD quote has two prices. You buy at the ask and sell at the bid, and the gap between them is the spread. Bid, ask and spread in crypto covers how that gap forms.

Say BTCUSD shows 60,000.00 bid and 60,040.00 ask, an illustrative quote. The spread is $40 per coin. To turn it into money for your trade:

Spread cost = spread × contract size × lots

At an illustrative contract size of 1 coin per lot, 0.10 lot costs 40 × 1 × 0.10 = $4.00. Buy and close at once, and you are $4 down while the market stands still.

On crypto it is simpler to read the spread as a price gap in dollars than in pips.

MetaTrader 5 shows spread in points, one unit of the last decimal place: on a symbol quoted to two decimals, a $40 spread reads as 4000 points.

The spread also moves. It tends to widen when trading thins out or prices jump, so the spread when you trade can differ from the one you checked earlier.

Commission on some account types

Some accounts quote a tighter spread and charge a commission per lot on top. MetaTrader 5 lets a broker charge commission per lot, per deal or as a percentage, on entry, exit or both.

Compare accounts in money for the same trade. With illustrative figures, account A has the $40 spread and no commission: $4.00 on 0.10 lot.

Account B has a $10 spread plus $10 per lot each way. On 0.10 lot that is $1.00 of spread plus $1.00 in and $1.00 out, or $3.00.

Real rates can reverse the result, so run the sum with your broker's figures.

Swap: the charge for each night

Hold a crypto CFD past the daily rollover and the broker charges swap, the overnight financing fee. It grows with the size of the position, and each broker sets its own rates.

Long and short swaps are set separately, and on crypto both can be negative. A coin costs nothing to keep, while a CFD's swap repeats every night it counts.

With an illustrative swap of -$3 per night on 0.10 lot:

Crypto symbols can count weekend nights differently from forex, so the nights you pay for may not match the days you held. Trading crypto CFDs at weekends shows how to check.

Slippage and currency conversion

Your order fills at the price available when it reaches the broker. In a fast crypto move that can be worse than the price on your screen, and the difference is slippage. You only learn its size after the fill.

If your account currency is not the US dollar, profit, loss and costs on BTCUSD are converted at the current rate. That adds a small currency effect to every figure.

Where to find each rate

All of these sit in the symbol's specification. In MetaTrader 5, right click the symbol in Market Watch, choose Specification, and read:

• Spread, marked floating when it moves with the market.
• Commission, with how and when it is charged.
• Swap type, which says whether swap is in points, money or a percentage of the price.
• Swap long and Swap short, the rates for buy and sell positions.
• Swap rates, the multiplier for each day of the week.

When swap is given as a percentage, it is a yearly rate. MetaTrader 5 divides it by the days in the year the broker sets, 360 by default.

Take an illustrative 18% a year on 0.10 lot at 60,000, a $6,000 position: 6,000 × 18% ÷ 360 = $3 a night, the swap used in the examples here.

If you trade through an introducing broker, the broker may pay a rebate per lot into your trading account on the symbols it includes; the Exness and XM pages explain how that works.

Worked example: total cost and breakeven

Put the pieces together for one trade, with the same illustrative figures:

1. You buy 0.10 lot of BTCUSD at the ask of 60,040, when the bid is 60,000.
2. Spread: 40 × 1 × 0.10 = $4.00.
3. Commission: none on this account.
4. Swap: 3 nights × $3 = $9.00.
5. Total cost: $4.00 + $9.00 = $13.00.

To break even, the price must move far enough to pay $13. Each $1 move is worth 1 × 0.10 = $0.10 on this trade, so you need $13.00 ÷ $0.10 = $130.

You close at the bid, so the bid has to climb from 60,000 to 60,130. That is $90 above your entry at 60,040, which covers the $9 of swap.

The same method works for any symbol: total cost ÷ (contract size × lots) gives the move you need. For the forex version with commission and rebate, see the cost of one trade.