Inactivity fees, data fees and other quiet costs

[FXS London Scalper]

Spread and commission are the costs everyone compares. But there are smaller fees that only show up when you read the full fee schedule. I checked the documents of five brokers I've used or considered.

What I found:

• Inactivity fees: $10–15 per month after 3–12 months without trades. Easy to forget an old account.
• Withdrawal fees: from free to $25 per bank transfer, sometimes free once a month.
• Currency conversion: 0.5–1.5% when deposit currency differs from account currency, rarely shown upfront.
• Platform data fees: some charge for premium data or certain platforms unless you trade a minimum volume.
• VPS: "free" only above a monthly volume.
• Swap markups: hard to see, but swaps on some brokers are clearly worse than others.

For an active scalper, most of these are small. But conversion is a big one: depositing EUR into a USD account at a 1% markup, and then withdrawing again, costs 2% before you trade.

I now keep a short table for each broker with all fees. Has anyone been surprised by a fee they didn't know about?