Position Math

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Break-Even After Fees Calculator

Fees hit on both sides of a trade. Enter your buy and sell costs to see the exit price where you actually break even.

Trade & fees

break_even = entry·(1 + buy%) / (1 − sell%)

To get back to flat

Break-even exit price—
Gain needed vs entry—
Even small fees on both sides mean the exit price has to clear your entry before you are truly flat.

How it works

What this calculator does

Commissions and spreads are charged on both sides of a trade, so the price that truly breaks you even is higher than your entry. This tool folds the buy-side and sell-side costs into one figure: the exit price at which proceeds exactly cover everything you paid.

The formula

break-even = entry × (1 + buy%) / (1 − sell%)

The (1 + buy%) term grosses up your cost to include the entry fee; dividing by (1 − sell%) ensures the exit fee is paid out of the sale proceeds.

Worked example

You buy at $100 with a 0.1% buy fee and a 0.1% sell fee. Break-even is 100 × (1 + 0.001) / (1 − 0.001) = 100.1 / 0.999 ≈ $100.20. The price has to rise about 0.2% — roughly twice the one-way fee — before you're flat. At higher fees the gap widens fast.

What it deliberately does not do

It models percentage-based fees on both legs; it does not include flat per-order commissions, financing, taxes, or slippage, which you'd add separately. The smaller the move you're aiming for, the larger a share these round-trip costs take, so they matter most to short-term traders. The output is an estimate for planning, not investment advice.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate break-even price including fees?
Gross up your entry for the buy fee and divide by one minus the sell fee: entry × (1 + buy%) / (1 − sell%). The result is the exit price where you've recovered the trade plus both commissions.
Why do I need to gain more than the fee to break even?
Because you pay a fee both when buying and when selling. A 0.1% fee each way means roughly a 0.2% move is needed just to cover costs before any profit.
Do trading fees really matter that much?
On small moves and frequent trading, yes. Round-trip costs can eat a large share of thin profits, which is why active traders watch the break-even-after-fees level closely.
Does this include the bid-ask spread?
If you treat the spread as a percentage cost, you can fold it into the buy or sell fee. The formula handles any percentage-based cost on each side.
Is this the same as the loss-recovery calculator?
No. Loss recovery answers how far you must rebound from a loss; this answers how far above entry you must sell to cover round-trip fees. Both are estimates for education, not advice.

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Information tool only. Every result is deterministic arithmetic (for the simulator, a probability estimate) from the numbers you enter. No live data, no account connection, nothing stored. This is not investment, trading, tax, or financial advice — verify against your own broker or prop firm before acting.
Disclosure. Some outbound links may be affiliate or partner links; they never change how a tool computes.
Position Math · updated 2026-06-27 · all calculators
Information tool only — not investment, trading, tax, or financial advice. All computation runs in your browser.