Spread markup on cent accounts versus standard accounts

[FXS London Scalper]

A cent account with your usual broker is a common way to run a new EA on real money at tiny size. Before trusting the results, compare its cost with your other accounts on the same symbol and hours, because the markup can be large.

How to compare: log ticks or spread at entry on each account for EURUSD, 08:00 to 12:00 London, for a couple of weeks.

A worked example with plausible numbers:

• Standard account, no commission: 1.1 pips.
• Cent account, no commission: 1.6 pips.
• Raw account: 0.15 pips plus 0.7 pips commission equivalent, about 0.85 in total.

In that case the cent account is almost twice as expensive as raw and about 45% more than standard. For an EA with a 5 pip average winner, the gap between 0.85 and 1.6 pips can turn a slightly positive strategy into a losing one.

That changes what the cent test tells you. If the EA survives on the cent account, it should be fine on raw. If it fails, it might still be fine on raw and the test was too harsh. So adjust cent results for the cost difference before deciding anything: add back the extra spread per trade and recompute.

Has anyone seen cent accounts with spreads close to standard? The markup probably varies a lot between brokers.