Arbitrage Profit Calculator
A price gap between two markets is only the starting point of an arbitrage trade. Fees on both sides, transfer costs, slippage while your orders fill, and the chance that prices move before you finish all take their cut, and together they regularly turn a winning spread into a losing trade. This arbitrage profit calculator runs the full money picture: it finds the buy side automatically, subtracts every cost you enter, and ends with the figures that decide the trade: net profit in dollars, margin, profit per unit, and the break-even sell price below which the trade loses money.
The worked example is deliberately ordinary: 1 BTC bought at $29,800 on one exchange and sold at $30,200 on another, with 0.1% fees on each side and no other costs, nets $340.00 at a 1.14% margin, with a break-even sell price of $29,859.66. Change the sell quote to $30,010 and the fees to 0.5% per side and the same-looking trade loses $89.05. That swing, from a few keystrokes, is the whole reason this calculator exists.
Estimates from the prices and costs you enter. A positive result means the trade clears its modeled costs on paper; it cannot guarantee the prices will still be there when your orders fill.
Quick Answer
Key takeaways
- Net profit is what is left after buy fees, sell fees, transfer costs, slippage and the timing-risk allowance, in that order.
- The break-even sell price is the most useful output: if the real quote is below it, the trade loses money no matter how wide the spread looked.
- A timing-risk haircut of 10 to 20% turns a textbook answer into an honest one for manual trades.
- Screen first, price second: run the gross spread test before this full calculation so hopeless spreads never reach this page.
- Quick Answer
- Before the money: run the gross test first
- How the net profit is built, step by step
- Worked example: 1 BTC, $400 apart, 0.1% fees
- The thin-spread trap: same trade, worse numbers, real loss
- What each cost control actually does
- The break-even sell price is the output to watch
- The honest limitations: read this before treating a result as money
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
Before the money: run the gross test first
This calculator is step two of a two-step check. Step one is the gross spread: (higher price minus lower price) divided by the lower price, which tells you whether a gap is even in the right territory. Spreads under about 0.5% almost never survive ordinary fees, so they should be discarded before any detailed work. If you have not run that screen yet, the arbitrage percentage calculator does it in one step, with verdict bands for what each spread level can realistically survive. Everything below assumes your spread passed that screen and now needs pricing in dollars.
Bettors arriving from the sports version of arbitrage follow the same two-step logic in a different currency: the percentage article works the implied-probability test that says whether an arbitrage exists, and the stake split that follows it (each stake proportional to its outcome's implied probability) is the betting equivalent of the sizing done here. The formulas differ; the discipline of testing before staking does not.
How the net profit is built, step by step
The calculator treats the cheaper of your two prices as the buy side, so the order you type the markets in does not matter. It then walks the trade through a cost waterfall. Each step is small; together they decide the trade.
Size the trade. Quantity comes from the units you enter, or from your investment amount divided by the buy price if you entered money instead of units.
Cost the buy leg. Purchase cost is quantity times buy price. Buy fees are added on top: purchase cost times the buy-side fee percentage. Your true money committed is the total of the two.
Cost the sell leg. The sell price is first reduced by slippage, giving the effective sell price. Sale revenue is quantity times that price, and sell fees come off the revenue.
Take gross profit. Gross profit is the net sale proceeds minus the total purchase cost, fees included on both sides.
Arrive at net profit. Subtract the flat transfer cost and the timing-risk adjustment (gross profit times your timing percentage). What remains is net profit; divide it by the total purchase cost for the margin, and by quantity for profit per unit.
Worked example: 1 BTC, $400 apart, 0.1% fees
The calculator is pre-filled with this trade, and every line below is an output it returns.
| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Buy leg | Exchange A at $29,800.00 |
| Sell leg | Exchange B at $30,200.00 |
| Price difference | $400.00 |
| Purchase cost (1 BTC) | $29,800.00 |
| Buy-side fees (0.1%) | $29.80 |
| Sale revenue | $30,200.00 |
| Sell-side fees (0.1%) | $30.20 |
| Gross profit | $340.00 |
| Total costs | $60.00 |
| Net profit | $340.00 |
| Margin on money committed | 1.14% |
| Profit per unit | $340.00 |
| Break-even sell price | $29,859.66 |
| Verdict | Good opportunity: a clear profit after all costs |
Two readings matter. First, the $400 price difference became $340 of profit: the two $30-ish fees are visible, itemized, and already out. Second, the actual sell quote of $30,200 clears the $29,859.66 break-even by a wide margin, which is what makes this trade robust. A quote can fall by $340 before the trade turns negative, and that cushion, not the headline spread, is the real measure of an opportunity. Traders who track this ratio across many trades are measuring the same thing a profit ratio calculator expresses for a single buy and sell.
The thin-spread trap: same trade, worse numbers, real loss
Now keep the buy price at $29,800 but let the sell quote slip to $30,010 and the fees rise to 0.5% per side, which is a normal retail fee tier on many exchanges. The price difference is still $210, which looks like found money. Run it: purchase cost $29,800 plus $149.00 of buy fees is $29,949 committed. The sale brings $30,010 minus $150.05 of sell fees, which is $29,859.95. Net result: a loss of $89.05, and the calculator's verdict is "Not profitable: costs eat the whole price gap. Skip this one."
Nothing exotic happened. Two half-percent fees need a full 1% price gap just to stand still, and this gap was 0.70%. The lesson generalizes: costs are certain and spreads are not. Any arbitrage routine that starts from the gross spread without this cost pass will systematically chase trades like this one. If you want to see the same effect expressed as a rate rather than dollars, the rate of profit calculator shows how quickly a fee load drags a nominal return down.
What each cost control actually does
Per-side fees. Fees are entered separately for each market because they are rarely equal: maker and taker schedules, VIP tiers and venue promotions all differ. A cheap buy side and an expensive sell side is a common real pattern, and averaging the two would misprice the trade.
Transfer costs. A flat dollar amount for withdrawals, network fees or moving fiat between venues. Flat costs punish small trades disproportionately: a $20 transfer fee is a rounding error on a $30,000 trade and a deal-breaker on a $500 one. This asymmetry is why small-scale manual arbitrage so often fails on paper before it fails in the market.
Slippage. The gap between the quoted price and the price your order fills at, applied here to the sell leg because the sell is usually the leg executed under time pressure after a transfer. If your buy leg slips too, the honest fix is to raise the buy fee percentage slightly to absorb it.
Timing-risk haircut. A percentage of gross profit held back for the risk that prices move against you between the legs. At 0% you get the textbook answer. At 10 to 20% you get the answer experienced manual traders actually plan around, because some fraction of trades will always complete late or partially. Expressed differently, the haircut converts an optimistic percentage profit figure into a planning number.
The break-even sell price is the output to watch
Net profit tells you about the trade you priced. The break-even sell price tells you about the trade you are about to do. It is solved backwards through the same cost model: the lowest sell quote at which net profit is exactly zero. Compare it with the live quote in front of you. If the live quote sits comfortably above break-even, the trade has a cushion against slippage and delay. If it hovers at or below break-even, the trade is a fee donation with extra steps. When timing risk is set at 100% or a fee at 100%, a break-even cannot exist and the calculator shows n/a rather than inventing a number.
The honest limitations: read this before treating a result as money
A positive net profit on this page means the trade clears its modeled costs at the prices you typed. It does not mean those prices will be available when your orders arrive. Quotes move in seconds on liquid pairs; order books can be thinner than the displayed price suggests; withdrawals get delayed by network congestion, compliance holds and venue outages; and venues actively defend themselves against arbitrage flow, widening spreads, raising fees for frequent movers, or limiting accounts. There is also plain operational risk: a mistyped price, a partial fill, or funds landing on the wrong network can each erase a year of careful small wins. Arbitrage is lower-risk than directional trading because the positions offset, but lower-risk is not risk-free, and the honest use of this calculator is as a filter that rejects most trades, not as a machine that approves them. Never commit money you cannot afford to lose on the strength of a paper result.
What competing calculators miss
We reviewed the tools and guides ranking for this keyword before rebuilding the page. The gap between a spread tool and a profit tool is where most of them fall down.
Winning move 1: the full cost waterfall, itemized. The crypto spread guides subtract a single combined fee figure and call the remainder profit. This calculator prices buy fees, sell fees, transfer costs, slippage and a timing allowance as separate lines, because each one has a different cause and a different fix.
Winning move 2: a break-even sell price. Almost no competitor returns one. Guides mention break-even as a concept; one quant-focused guide derives a break-even spread formula and stops there. A dollar break-even quote you can compare against the live market is more actionable than either.
Winning move 3: honesty dials and corrected math. The timing-risk haircut has no equivalent in the simple tools, and the thin-spread warning example on this page now uses figures re-run against the calculator code: the loss is $89.05, not the $290.05 an earlier version of this page claimed. The code was right; the prose was wrong; the prose now matches the code everywhere, including the Quick Answer and this table.
Frequently asked questions
Buying an asset on one market and simultaneously selling it, or an equivalent position, on another market to profit from the price difference. Because the positions offset, price risk is close to zero in theory. Execution risk, the risk that prices move or a leg fails before both sides complete, is very real in practice.
Because arbitrage only works in one direction: buy where the asset is cheap, sell where it is dear. The cheaper of your two prices becomes the buy leg, with its market name and fee rate moving together, so you can enter the two markets in any order without mispricing the trade.
Gross profit is the sale proceeds after sell fees, minus the purchase cost including buy fees. Net profit then subtracts the flat transfer cost and the timing-risk adjustment. Net profit is the figure to judge a trade by; it is also what the margin percentage and the verdict are based on.
A percentage of gross profit held back to represent prices moving against you between the buy and the sell. Setting it to 0% gives the textbook answer. Setting it to 10 to 20% gives a more honest planning figure for manual trades, where delays and partial fills are routine.
The calculator solves net profit equals zero backwards through the full cost model, including buy and sell fees, slippage, transfer costs and the timing-risk haircut. The result is the minimum sell quote that leaves you with nothing lost and nothing gained. If the live quote is below it, the trade loses money.
Because costs are certain and spreads are not. Two 0.5% exchange fees need a 1% price gap just to break even, before transfer costs, slippage and timing risk. In the worked example here, a $30,010 sell quote against a $29,800 buy with 0.5% fees per side loses $89.05 on a 1 BTC trade, despite a $210 headline price difference.
Either. Enter quantity when you know how many units you will trade. Enter an investment amount instead, with quantity at zero, and the calculator derives quantity as investment divided by the buy price. If both are entered, quantity wins, because an explicit unit count is the more precise instruction.
There is no universal threshold, and this calculator's verdicts use one anyway as a guide: above 2% margin after all costs is excellent, above 0.5% is good, and anything positive but thinner is labeled marginal because ordinary price movement can erase it. Your own floor should rise with volatility and with how long your transfers take.
Add This Calculator to Your Website
References
- Investopedia, "Arbitrage: What It Is and How It Works in Investing" - definition, mechanics and why arbitrage opportunities are typically small and short-lived. Investopedia: Arbitrage. Accessed October 2026.
- Investopedia, "Slippage" - why executed prices differ from quoted prices, the cost modeled on the sell leg of this calculator. Investopedia: Slippage. Accessed October 2026.
- Investopedia, "Bid-Ask Spread" - the spread inside a quote and why displayed prices are not guaranteed execution prices. Investopedia: Bid-Ask Spread. Accessed October 2026.
- Investopedia, "Transaction Costs" - the categories of trading cost, commissions, fees and market impact, that a net profit model must include. Investopedia: Transaction Costs. Accessed October 2026.
- US Securities and Exchange Commission, Investor.gov, "Understanding Fees" - how fees and costs reduce returns, with the questions investors should ask about total costs. Investor.gov: Understanding Fees. Accessed October 2026.
- US Securities and Exchange Commission, Investor.gov, "The Fuss About Fees" - why small percentage fees have outsized effects on outcomes. Investor.gov: The Fuss About Fees. Accessed October 2026.
- Opportuna, "Crypto Arbitrage Tutorial: How to Start Trading" - a practical cost checklist for crypto arbitrage including trading fees, withdrawal fees and slippage ranges. Opportuna: Crypto Arbitrage Tutorial. Accessed October 2026.
- LiveCryptoPrices, "Crypto Arbitrage Calculator: The Complete Quant Guide" - the cost waterfall model of arbitrage, including fixed-fee asymmetry on small trades and the break-even spread formula. LiveCryptoPrices: Crypto Arbitrage Calculator Guide. Accessed October 2026.
- TradingPlatformsForCrypto, "How to Use a Crypto Spread Calculator for Arbitrage Trading" - a worked two-exchange example netting a percentage spread down after trading fees. TradingPlatformsForCrypto: Crypto Spread Calculator for Arbitrage. Accessed October 2026.