What is Commission?

The fixed fee some brokers charge per trade, usually alongside a raw spread — the visible half of your trading costs.

Commission is a fixed fee charged by the broker for executing a trade, usually quoted per standard lot per side or per round turn — for example, $3.50 per lot per side, or $7 round turn. It is the standard pricing model on ECN and raw-spread accounts, where the broker passes through near-interbank spreads and earns from the commission instead. Standard accounts flip the model: no visible commission, but a wider spread with the broker's margin built in.

Neither model is automatically cheaper — the only honest comparison is total cost per trade: spread in pips converted to money, plus commission, plus average slippage. For scalpers making dozens of trades, a raw account with commission usually wins because tight spreads matter more than the fixed fee; for occasional swing traders, the difference is often trivial. Whatever the model, costs are the one certainty in trading, so they belong in your expectancy math from day one: a strategy that looks profitable before costs can be a slow leak after them.