For Business

Market Basics

What Is a Commission

A commission is a fixed fee some brokers charge on each trade, once on the way in and once on the way out. This paper shows you the two ways a broker can be paid for the same trade, what the commission took from one real trade at one lot, what the same fee is at three sizes, and where it shows on your own platform.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
6 min
Pages
7
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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Two booths, one charge

A commission is a fixed fee your broker charges for handling a trade. It is charged twice, once when the trade opens and once when it closes, and it is quoted per lot — a lot being 100,000 units of the first currency in the pair. Not every account has one. Some brokers charge it openly; others charge nothing they call a commission and take their money through a wider spread instead. The spread is the gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at, and you pay it the moment a trade opens. A pip is the fourth decimal place of the price, worth ten dollars per lot on the euro. On the two example accounts at the open of 3 September 2026, one charges 1.5 pips of spread and no fee; the other charges 0.2 pips of spread and seven dollars a lot. Both are the broker being paid.

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