TradingView Commission: Per Order or Per Contract?

A commission value of 2 is incomplete information. It could mean two dollars per order, two dollars per contract or two percent of the transaction. The number is innocent; the unit does the damage.

Match both the commission amount and its calculation mode to the fee you intend to model. TradingView applies strategy commission to entries and exits. Before using a backtest to justify automated trading, calculate the fees on one complete position by hand.

In an AlgoWay workflow that connects TradingView signals to live execution, this is part of comparing simulated results with the destination account. A commission assumption in the tester is a cost model, not evidence of what a broker actually charged.

Choose the unit in strategy Properties

Open the strategy settings and select Properties. The Commission setting has an amount and a mode. TradingView's strategy properties documentation defines three choices:

Cash commission values use the strategy account currency. In Pine, the corresponding public settings are strategy.commission.percent, strategy.commission.cash_per_contract and strategy.commission.cash_per_order. The declaration reference explains how these pair with commission_value. For percentage mode, 0.1 means 0.1%, not 10%.

Three contracts expose the difference

Consider a hypothetical USD strategy buying three contracts in one order and selling all three in one exit order. Assume a cash commission input of $2. This is fee arithmetic, not a broker quote or a backtest result.

• Per contract: entry costs 3 × $2 = $6; exit costs another $6. Total commission is $12.
• Per order: entry costs $2 and exit costs $2. Total commission is $4.

Now exit with three separate one-contract orders. The per-contract total stays $12. The per-order total becomes $8: one entry plus three exits, each charged $2. A strategy that scales out can therefore change its modeled costs without changing total traded quantity.

Testing only one unit with one entry and one exit hides this mistake: both cash modes produce $4 in that special case. Repeat the arithmetic with multiple units and multiple exits before trusting the setting.

Percent fees follow value, not your cash deposit

For a simple hypothetical share trade, buy 100 shares at $50 and sell them at $52. With a 0.1% commission, entry costs $5,000 × 0.001 = $5. Exit costs $5,200 × 0.001 = $5.20. The $200 gross trading gain becomes $189.80 after these commissions alone.

Do not calculate this fee from starting equity or margin posted. Those are different quantities. For derivatives, establish the instrument's transaction-value convention before reusing a shares example.

A round-trip quote needs translating

If a hypothetical fee schedule quotes $4 per contract for a complete round trip, entering $4 per contract in a simulator that charges both sides would model $8. Where the fee is symmetric, the matching per-side amount is $2. Confirm what the published figure includes: a commission-only rate and an all-in rate are not interchangeable.

Tiered rates, minimum charges and different maker/taker fees also need care. The three built-in modes do not automatically describe every fee schedule. State your approximation and compare more than one plausible cost assumption if the exact schedule cannot be represented.

Audit costs before comparing returns

TradingView's trading-cost documentation treats commission and slippage separately. A correct commission setting does not prove that spread or fill-price assumptions are realistic.

1. Record the symbol, account currency, fee mode and amount used in the test.
2. Select a completed position and count the actual entry and exit orders and their quantities.
3. Calculate its expected commission, then compare the simulated accounting.
4. For live comparison, use the destination account's recorded fees and fills. Keep subscription costs separate from trade-level charges.

Once the units agree, use trading expectancy after costs to judge how much room the strategy has left. A fee-setting error is easier to fix before it becomes a trading conclusion.