Research ·
How much do fees cost a trend bot? The same rules at six cost levels
About 688 orders a year, trading 45 times the account's value. Every 0.01% of cost per trade takes roughly half a point a year off the return, and at 0.25% per trade the weak year 2025 goes negative.
A backtest can pick any cost per trade it likes. Ours uses 0.07%: Binance's standard taker fee of 0.05% plus 0.02% for slippage. Here's what happens if that assumption is wrong, and how much of it you can control.
How much the bot trades
In the backtest of the live rules, January 2021 to September 2026, the bot sent 3,944 orders, about 688 a year:
| Kind of order | Count | Typical size (% of account) |
|---|---|---|
| New position | 807 | 10.1% |
| Close | 792 | 6.9% |
| Trim (make smaller) | 1,316 | 3.7% |
| Add (make bigger) | 1,029 | 2.7% |
Stop-loss exits are extra; they're orders on the exchange, not sent at the 4-hour close.
Added up, the orders trade about 45 times the account's value per year. Most of that isn't new trades: it's resizing. As prices and volatility move, the bot keeps each position near its target size. At 0.07% per unit traded, all of this costs roughly 3% of the account a year.
Six cost levels
| Cost per unit traded | Return per year | Sharpe | Worst drop | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0% (impossible) | 50.4% | 1.80 | −17.7% | 10.2% |
| 0.04% (maker fees, no slippage) | 47.7% | 1.72 | −18.1% | 8.4% |
| 0.07% (what we assume) | 45.7% | 1.67 | −18.5% | 7.0% |
| 0.10% | 43.8% | 1.61 | −19.0% | 5.6% |
| 0.15% | 40.6% | 1.52 | −20.1% | 3.4% |
| 0.25% | 34.4% | 1.33 | −22.8% | −0.9% |
Hypothetical backtest of the live rules, funding not included (funding is here).
The rule of thumb: every 0.01% of cost per trade costs about half a point of return a year. Over six years that's modest. In a thin year it decides everything: at 0.25% per trade, 2025 goes from a small gain to a loss.
Is 0.07% realistic?
So far, yes. On Binance's demo platform the bot's fills landed within ±5 basis points (0.05%) of the real market price at the same minute, and the one new position in that window filled 74% as a maker order. Exits were the problem: waiting for a maker fill on an exit cost 9–22 basis points, so exits now go straight to the market. The full measurement.
What you control if you copy
- Your fee tier. Copied orders pay your own account's fees. Binance's standard futures fees are 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker; paying fees in BNB gives a discount.
- Your account size. A copy that's too small can't place the smallest resizing orders at all, which is a different problem: how small is too small.
The bot's own lever on costs is how often it resizes: it only resizes a position when the target moves more than 30% away from what's held. We tested wider gaps and decided the savings weren't worth it.