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Trading Costs

Alpaca paper fills charge no fees, so raw paper P&L overstates a scalp's real edge. Every lab strategy must clear the modelled hurdle below before it fires, and every closed trade is re-scored against these costs. The live model uses the current fee tier from config; update it as the account's measured tier changes.

Current cost model

Maker fee
0.150%
Taker fee
0.250%
Slippage / side
5 bps
Safety buffer
10 bps

Round-trip fee floors

Fees only — spread and slippage are added on top by the trade gate.

Liquidity pathFee floor (bps)
Maker → Maker30.0
Maker → Taker40.0
Taker → Taker50.0

All-in hurdle a move must clear

Fees + one round-trip spread + slippage (both sides) + buffer, in bps, at a few example spreads. A strategy's target must exceed this or the trade never fires.

Liquidity pathspread 0.0bpspread 2.0bpspread 5.0bp
Maker → Maker50.0bp50.0bp50.0bp
Maker → Taker60.0bp61.0bp62.5bp
Taker → Taker70.0bp72.0bp75.0bp

Cost vs return — recent lab trades

No closed lab trades with booked modelled P&L yet. Activate a lab strategy and let it trade to populate this.

Alpaca crypto fee tiers (reference)

30-day volume tierMakerTaker
Entry (< $100k 30d vol)0.15%0.25%
$100k – $500k0.12%0.22%
$500k – $1M0.10%0.20%
$1M – $10M0.08%0.18%
$10M – $25M0.05%0.15%
$25M – $100M0.02%0.13%

Reviewed 20 Jul 2026 (playbook platform decision table). Spread, slippage, funding, market impact and FX are excluded from this reference and modelled separately above.