Forex Spread: What It Costs You and When It Stops Mattering

Key takeaways

• Price the spread in money, not pips. On a standard lot of a pair quoted in US dollars, one pip is 10 dollars, so a 1.2 pip spread costs about 12 dollars the instant you open.
• A zero-spread account is not a cheaper account. Every raw-pricing account checked here replaces the spread with a commission, and the round-turn commission runs from 6 to 7 dollars per lot.
• Compare spread plus commission as one number. An account quoting 1.6 pips with no commission and one quoting 0.0 pips plus 6 dollars can land within a couple of dollars of each other.
• Most brokers do not publish a spread for a specific currency pair at all. Of the brokers checked for this page, several publish only an account-level starting figure, and some publish nothing per pair.
• Global FX turnover reached 9.6 trillion dollars a day in April 2025, up 28 per cent on 2022. Pages still quoting 7.5 trillion are a full survey cycle out of date.

What the spread actually is

Every currency pair carries two prices at once. The bid is what you receive if you sell; the ask is what you pay if you buy. The spread is the distance between them, and it is measured in pips.

You pay it at the moment of entry, not at exit. Open a position and it shows an immediate small loss equal to the spread. Price has to travel that distance before the trade is level.

That mechanic explains why the spread matters enormously to one trader and barely at all to another. Paid on a ten-minute position it is a large share of the outcome; paid on a three-week position it is noise.

The spread is not the only charge. Accounts marketed on very low spreads recover the difference as a per-lot commission, and positions held overnight are charged or credited a swap. Comparing one of the three in isolation compares the wrong thing.

What brokers actually publish

Before comparing numbers it is worth seeing how little is published. The table pairs each account’s advertised starting spread with the commission charged on that same account, because those two only mean something together.

Figures verified against each broker’s own published terms on 2026-08-29. Entities are named because terms differ by entity: XM’s commission is published for its European and UK entities but not for XM Global Limited, whose client agreement refers instead to a schedule inside the platform. “Not disclosed” means the broker publishes no figure of that kind, not that the figure is zero.

Two things stand out. Not one of these brokers publishes a spread for a named currency pair, so every figure above is an account-level starting point rather than a price you will be quoted. And every account advertising a spread at or near zero carries a commission that the headline number leaves out. The same accounts, set side by side with a fifth broker and the swap-free terms attached, are in the comparison of lowest spread forex brokers.

Pricing the spread per trade in account currency

A pip only becomes a decision once it is money. For a standard lot of 100,000 units on a pair quoted in US dollars, one pip is 10 dollars. A mini lot is 1 dollar and a micro lot is 10 cents.

So a 1.2 pip spread on one standard lot costs about 12 dollars at the moment you open. On a raw account quoting 0.0 pips with a 6 dollar round-turn commission, the same trade costs about 6 dollars. On the same broker’s 1.6 pip commission-free account it costs about 16 dollars.

Now scale by how often you trade. Ten standard lots a month costs roughly 160 dollars on the commission-free account and roughly 60 dollars on the raw account, plus its residual spread at each fill.

That is the whole comparison, and it is why the raw account is not automatically cheaper. Trade rarely and in small size and the difference is a few dollars a month, which is not worth choosing an account over. Trade often and it becomes the largest controllable line in your costs.

Fixed against variable spreads, and who each suits

A fixed spread stays the same whatever the market is doing. A variable spread tracks the underlying market and moves with liquidity, tightening in an active session and widening around news and at the daily rollover.

Fixed suits a trader who needs the cost known in advance, which usually means someone sizing positions to a precise risk figure or running a system whose entries are calculated from a fixed cost assumption.

Variable suits a trader active in the deepest hours, because the average paid over a month is normally lower, at the price of occasional wide moments. The judgement is which failure you prefer: a slightly higher cost on every trade, or a much higher one on trades that land during a news release.

When swap overtakes spread as your real cost

This is the part most spread guides leave out, and it changes which number you should be optimising.

The spread is paid once per trade. The swap is charged every night the position stays open, and on Wednesdays it is usually charged three times to cover the weekend. So one is a fixed entry cost and the other compounds with time.

Set them side by side. A 1.2 pip spread on a standard lot is a one-off of about 12 dollars. If the nightly swap on that position is a debit of a few dollars, it has matched the spread within a handful of nights and passed it thereafter, and it keeps going for as long as you hold.

The practical consequence is a threshold. If your holding period runs past roughly a week, the account that saves you a few dollars of spread per trade is not the account that saves you money. Read the swap table for the pairs you actually trade, in the direction you actually trade them, because the two directions are not symmetrical and one of them may even pay you.

It is also why a position trader should not pay a higher minimum deposit to reach a raw-pricing account: the cost dominating their trading is not the one that account improves.

What a quoted average spread does not tell you

An average is a single number standing in for a distribution, and the shape of that distribution is what actually costs you money.

A pair can average a tight spread across the month while being several times wider for the minutes around a scheduled release. If your strategy trades those minutes, the average describes a market you are never in.

Ask three things of any average. Over what window it was measured, since a figure taken across the London and New York overlap flatters the quiet hours. On which account type. And on what date, since an undated figure describes conditions that may have changed.

Retail loss-rate percentages deserve the same scepticism. A figure of that kind belongs to one entity, for one period, and is published under a specific regulator’s disclosure rule. Quoted without the entity and the period it is not a fact about the industry, and the only version worth relying on is the one on the disclosure of the entity you are about to open an account with.

Reading a broker’s spread disclosure

Start with the account comparison page, where the headline starting figure lives, then find the contract specifications, where per-instrument detail sits if it exists at all.

Check which entity the page belongs to. A broker operating several regulated entities can publish different costs for each, and the page you land on from a search result is often not the entity that would hold your account.

Then read the words around the number. “From” means a best case, not an average. A figure given without an account type, a pair and a date is a marketing claim rather than a price, and is honestly recorded as not disclosed.

When this is not for you

Optimising the spread is the wrong project for a large number of traders, and two cases cover most of them.

The first is the position trader. If you hold for weeks, your cost is dominated by the swap charged every night, and moving to an account that saves a pip on entry changes almost nothing while it may cost you a higher minimum deposit to get there. A trader holding one standard lot for a month pays the spread once and the swap around thirty times; choosing the account on the spread optimises the smaller of the two by a wide margin.

The second is the trader whose size makes the difference immaterial. On a micro lot, one pip is 10 cents, so the gap between a 1.6 pip account and a 0.0 pip account is a fraction of a dollar per trade. If you trade a few micro lots a month, no account choice available to you will change your results, and the time is better spent on the strategy.

EasyTradeWeb may be compensated if you open an account through links on this page. That does not change what is written above, and no broker is presented here as a recommendation.

A checklist before you choose an account on its spread.

1. Write down your average holding period. If it is longer than about a week, read the swap table first and treat the spread as secondary.
2. Convert both accounts to money for your normal trade size: spread in pips times the pip value, plus the round-turn commission.
3. Multiply by the number of lots you actually traded last month, not the number you intend to trade.
4. Check which entity the published figures belong to, and confirm the same figures appear on the entity that will hold your account.
5. Look for a per-pair figure in the contract specifications. If there is none, record the cost as not disclosed and plan on the account-level number being a best case.

For the account structures these costs attach to, see forex account types and their pricing models, and for how the same costs are framed in a different product, spread betting against CFDs.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a good spread on a major pair?

There is no single threshold, because a spread only means something next to the commission on the same account. An account quoting 1.6 pips with no commission and one quoting 0.0 pips with a 6 dollar round-turn commission can cost within a couple of dollars of each other on a standard lot. Compare the pair of numbers, not the headline.

How do I turn a spread into a cost in my account currency?

Multiply the spread in pips by the value of a pip for your trade size. On a standard lot of a pair quoted in US dollars a pip is 10 dollars, on a mini lot 1 dollar, and on a micro lot 10 cents. A 1.2 pip spread on a standard lot is therefore about 12 dollars, paid at the moment you open.

Is a lower spread always cheaper overall?

No. Every raw-pricing account checked for this page replaces the spread with a per-lot commission, so the advertised zero is only part of the price. Once you hold positions overnight the swap enters as well, and beyond roughly a week it is usually the largest of the three.

Why does my spread widen at certain hours?

A variable spread tracks the liquidity available in the underlying market. It is normally tightest during the busiest sessions and widens when fewer participants are quoting, which typically means around scheduled news releases and at the daily rollover.

When does spread stop being my main cost?

Roughly when your holding period passes a week. The spread is paid once per trade while the swap is charged every night a position stays open, and on Wednesdays it is usually charged three times to cover the weekend, so time moves the balance steadily toward the swap.

Sources checked 29 August 2026: Bank for International Settlements, OTC foreign exchange turnover in April 2025, Triennial Central Bank Survey · EasyTradeWeb broker verification workbook, evidence_log entries for Exness, Tickmill, FXTM and XM, captured 26 July 2026.