What a spread really costs you
From pips to dollars: how entry plus exit pays the full spread once, and why a tight spread beats a flashy split.
How to read the live board
What each row is measuring, why the leader keeps changing, and what the board does when a firm stops sending data.
In short
- Every cost is one firm's sampled spread converted to dollars for a one-lot round turn, with its published commission added.
- Ranking runs on a fifteen minute average, so the order moving is normal rather than a sign something is wrong.
- A firm whose feed stops is marked offline with the time of its last quote, and leaves the ranking until it returns.
One row, one firm, one cost
The board looks like a price screen and behaves like a cost screen. Each instrument has its own table, each row is a firm, and the cost column is not the raw quote a terminal would show you. It is that quote converted into estimated dollars for one standard lot opened and closed once, with the firm's published round-turn commission added on top.
That conversion is the entire point. A raw account quoting 0.2 pips and a standard account quoting 0.9 pips cannot be compared until both sit in the same unit, and neither can be compared until commission is included. The board runs that arithmetic on every update, so the column you scan is a like-for-like cost rather than a marketing number.
Reading a row honestly
Next to the cost sits the spread itself, as a fifteen minute average, and a small marker comparing that average with the last hour. Tighter and wider than the hour are tinted differently, and each carries a word and an arrow, so the direction never depends on colour alone.
None of it is a forecast. It is a readout of the quotes the firm's feed sent, which is why a wider than usual reading around a scheduled release is ordinary rather than alarming.
Why the leader keeps changing
Ranking uses the fifteen minute average instead of the newest tick, so a single extreme quote can neither crown nor sink a firm, and a firm needs at least five quotes in that window before it ranks. Two firms priced within a few cents of each other will trade places through the session as their quotes land. An order that never moved would mean the window was too long to describe current conditions.
Position also depends on which firms had valid data during that window. A firm whose feed stops is marked offline, with the time of its last quote, and leaves the ranking until it returns, rather than disappearing quietly or keeping a stale figure in the race. While a market is closed, its last quote is shown as indicative and nothing is ranked.
Turning the board into a decision
Scan the instrument you actually trade rather than the headline pair. A firm that leads on EUR/USD can sit mid-table on gold or on indices, because the liquidity behind each instrument differs and so does the commission model applied to it.
Then set your real lot size on the same page, read the cost per round turn, and multiply it by the trades you place in a month. The board tells you who is tighter right now. Your own frequency decides whether the difference is worth moving an account for.
Live now
Where to go next
Read next
Slippage is not spread
Two costs that get spoken about as one. Why the site measures the first and labels the second as an assumption.
When spreads are tightest
The trading day has a shape. Where liquidity concentrates, where it thins out, and how to pick a window that suits your costs.