Roundup: Raw vs standard accounts, commissions and rebates, doing the cost maths properly
Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2026 9:12 am
Roundup: Raw vs standard accounts, commissions and rebates, doing the cost maths properly
Raw versus standard comes up constantly, and the board has a handful of threads that each cover one piece of the maths. Pulling them together, the answer is less "raw is always cheaper" and more "convert everything to one unit and check it at your own size and hours".
Get everything into one number
The commission structures thread is the place to start. Commission gets quoted per side per lot, per million traded, in the account currency, or tiered by volume, and you can't compare any of that by eye. Convert it to round-turn cost per lot in pips. A $3.50 per side commission is $7 round turn, which on EURUSD is about 0.7 pips. Per-million pricing moves with the exchange rate, and a €3 commission on a EUR account is not the same as $3 on a USD one.
Then add the spread you actually pay, not the advertised one. The break-even thread runs a clean example: raw at 0.2 pips plus 0.7 commission is 0.9 total, standard at 1.2 with no commission is 1.2 total, so raw wins at every size. Simple enough, until you hit the exceptions.
Where raw stops winning
Rebates and cashback
The rebate threads disagree a little on how much this matters. The maths is easy: $2 back per lot round turn is 0.2 pips, so a 0.9 pip cost becomes 0.7. The interesting point from the IB cashback thread is that a flat rebate per lot is a much bigger slice of the cost on cheap pairs than on expensive ones, which quietly nudges you towards trading whatever the rebate flatters. The rebates thread is blunt that rebates should never change behaviour, and to check whether it's paid as cash or as credit with withdrawal strings.
The rest of the bill
The fee structures and cost audit threads widen the view: swaps, deposit and withdrawal charges, conversion costs when your deposit currency differs from the account currency, inactivity fees. The audit thread suggests taking your last 50 to 100 trades and costing every one. A good refinement from a reply there is to measure spread at the moment of each fill rather than using the day's average, because if most of your trades are at the open, the daily average flatters you.
For someone trading a few times a week the standard versus raw difference can be small. For a scalper it can be most of the edge, which is why the account types thread says to run it with your own average lot and trade count before picking.
Has anyone run the per-100-trades comparison and found standard actually came out cheaper for them? Curious what size and pairs that was on.
Threads this pulls from
Raw versus standard comes up constantly, and the board has a handful of threads that each cover one piece of the maths. Pulling them together, the answer is less "raw is always cheaper" and more "convert everything to one unit and check it at your own size and hours".
Get everything into one number
The commission structures thread is the place to start. Commission gets quoted per side per lot, per million traded, in the account currency, or tiered by volume, and you can't compare any of that by eye. Convert it to round-turn cost per lot in pips. A $3.50 per side commission is $7 round turn, which on EURUSD is about 0.7 pips. Per-million pricing moves with the exchange rate, and a €3 commission on a EUR account is not the same as $3 on a USD one.
Then add the spread you actually pay, not the advertised one. The break-even thread runs a clean example: raw at 0.2 pips plus 0.7 commission is 0.9 total, standard at 1.2 with no commission is 1.2 total, so raw wins at every size. Simple enough, until you hit the exceptions.
Where raw stops winning
- Minimum commission per ticket. On very small lots this can make raw the expensive option.
- News and rollover, when raw spreads widen and you're paying commission on top.
- Slippage. The "true cost per 100 London scalps" thread insists on including average adverse slip, and found a "cheap" raw account with ugly fills that lost to a supposedly worse one.
Rebates and cashback
The rebate threads disagree a little on how much this matters. The maths is easy: $2 back per lot round turn is 0.2 pips, so a 0.9 pip cost becomes 0.7. The interesting point from the IB cashback thread is that a flat rebate per lot is a much bigger slice of the cost on cheap pairs than on expensive ones, which quietly nudges you towards trading whatever the rebate flatters. The rebates thread is blunt that rebates should never change behaviour, and to check whether it's paid as cash or as credit with withdrawal strings.
The rest of the bill
The fee structures and cost audit threads widen the view: swaps, deposit and withdrawal charges, conversion costs when your deposit currency differs from the account currency, inactivity fees. The audit thread suggests taking your last 50 to 100 trades and costing every one. A good refinement from a reply there is to measure spread at the moment of each fill rather than using the day's average, because if most of your trades are at the open, the daily average flatters you.
For someone trading a few times a week the standard versus raw difference can be small. For a scalper it can be most of the edge, which is why the account types thread says to run it with your own average lot and trade count before picking.
Has anyone run the per-100-trades comparison and found standard actually came out cheaper for them? Curious what size and pairs that was on.
Threads this pulls from
- Raw vs standard: true cost per 100 London scalps (spreadsheet math)
- Break-Even Trade Size for Raw vs Standard Accounts
- Commission Structures: Per Lot, Per Million and Per Side
- Account Types: Choosing Between Standard, Raw, and Others
- Volume Rebates and Cashback: How They Change Effective Spread
- Raw account rebate / IB cashback: does it change pair selection?
- Fee Structures: Reading the Real Price of Trading
- Auditing Your Trading Costs, Where Your Profit Quietly Goes