Raw vs standard account: which one is actually cheaper?
Almost every broker offers two flavours of the same account. A standard account with a wider spread and no commission, and a raw (or ECN, or zero) account with a near zero spread plus a commission per lot. The marketing pushes you toward raw. The maths is less obvious.
Put both on the same scale
The only fair comparison is the round turn cost of one lot, with everything included:
True cost per lot = spread in money + commission (round turn)
Take a typical pair of accounts at the same broker, on EURUSD, where one pip is about 10 USD per lot:
- Raw: average spread 0.15 pips = 1.50 USD, commission 7 USD round turn, total 8.50 USD
- Standard: average spread 1.10 pips = 11 USD, no commission, total 11 USD
Raw wins here by 2.50 USD per lot. On 50 lots a month that is 125 USD, which is real money, but it is not the dramatic difference the 0.0 pip headline implies.
When standard actually wins
The commission on a raw account is fixed. The spread on a standard account is not. If your broker runs a genuinely tight standard account, the numbers can flip:
- Raw: 0.15 pips + 7 USD = 8.50 USD
- Standard at 0.8 pips: 8 USD + 0 = 8.00 USD
Now standard is cheaper. This is common on brokers that use the standard account as their flagship product, and on symbols where the raw spread is not as tight as on EURUSD.
What tips the balance
- Your symbols. Raw pricing is usually sharpest on the major pairs. On exotics, indices or gold the gap often narrows or disappears, while the commission stays the same.
- Your size. Commission scales linearly with lots. Spread cost does too, so this does not change the ranking, but it magnifies whichever one is worse.
- Your style. A scalper doing many round turns a day pays the cost over and over, so a 2 USD difference compounds fast. A swing trader holding for days will be affected far more by swaps than by either spread or commission.
- Spread stability. A raw account with a tight average that blows out during news can end up costing more than a stable standard account, and the average will never show it.
The honest answer
There is no universal winner. Raw is usually cheaper for high frequency trading on majors. Standard can be cheaper on a broker with genuinely tight spreads, on non major symbols, or for anyone who trades rarely. What decides it is your symbols and your volume, not the label on the account.
The practical move is to stop guessing and measure. Our free MT5 panel, Broker X-Ray, shows the true cost per lot of whatever account you are on once you enter your commission, and its SCAN tab does it across all the symbols you trade at once. You can then compare it with what other traders are actually paying.