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Profit and loss calculator: what did a trade really make after fees?

Enter what you paid, what you sold for, how much you traded and the fee on each side. The calculator shows the profit or loss after fees and the sale price you need just to break even.

By the Bitfolio Explainer Desk · Checked against primary sources · 5 min read

Education only, not investment, tax or legal advice. Crypto-assets are high-risk — risk disclosure.

Close-up of an old handwritten bank account ledger with columns of figures — Photo: “Pen to paper Project 365(2) Day 145” by Keith Williamson, CC BY 2.0, via flickr.com · Edited: duotone, cropped.

The short answer

Profit or loss is what you receive after the sell fee minus what you paid including the buy fee. Buying 0.25 units at $30,000 and selling at $33,000 with 0.5% fees each way makes $671.25, not $750.00, and breaks even at $30,301.51.

Key takeaways

Profit = proceeds after the sell fee − total cost including the buy fee.
Fees are charged on both sides, so a trade needs a price rise just to get back to zero.
Break-even sell price = buy price × (1 + buy fee) ÷ (1 − sell fee).
The result is before tax, spreads, slippage and transfer costs, and a taxable gain can differ.

How do you use the profit and loss calculator?

Five inputs

1
Buy price per unit
The price you actually paid per coin or share, from your trade confirmation.
2
Sell price per unit
The price you sold at, or a price you are considering.
3
Quantity
How many units you traded. Fractions are fine, such as 0.25 of a bitcoin.
4
Buy fee and sell fee
Each as a percentage of the trade's value. Check your platform's fee schedule; many charge different rates for different order types.
5
Read the results
Total cost, proceeds, profit or loss, return on cost and the break-even sell price.

What formula does the calculator use?

Total cost = buy price × quantity × (1 + buy fee)
Proceeds = sell price × quantity × (1 − sell fee)
Profit or loss = proceeds − total cost
Return on cost = profit or loss ÷ total cost × 100
Break-even sell price = buy price × (1 + buy fee) ÷ (1 − sell fee)

Fees are entered as percentages and converted to decimals, so 0.5% becomes 0.005. Treating the buy fee as part of cost matches how the IRS describes crypto cost basis: the amount spent to acquire it, including fees and commissions¹.

Figure · Two sides of every trade

Total cost

Buy price × quantity
Plus the buy fee
$7,537.50 in the example

Proceeds

Sell price × quantity
Minus the sell fee
$8,208.75 in the example

Profit or loss is the right-hand total minus the left-hand total.

Worked example: a 10% price rise on 0.25 units

Worked example

Buy at $30,000, sell at $33,000 (illustrative)

You buy 0.25 units at $30,000 and sell at $33,000, paying 0.5% on each trade.

Cost: $7,500 + $37.50 fee = $7,537.50. Proceeds: $8,250 − $41.25 fee = $8,208.75. Profit: $671.25, a return of 8.91% on cost, even though the price rose 10%. Fees took $78.75 of the $750.00 price gain.

Same trade at different sell prices (illustrative, calculator formula)

Sell price	Proceeds	Profit / loss	Return
$27,000.00	$6,716.25	−$821.25	−10.90%
$30,000.00	$7,462.50	−$75.00	−1.00%
$30,301.51	$7,537.50	$0.00	0.00%
$31,800.00	$7,910.25	$372.75	4.95%
$33,000.00	$8,208.75	$671.25	8.91%
$36,000.00	$8,955.00	$1,417.50	18.81%

Selling at the original $30,000 still loses $75.00: the two fees. The price has to reach $30,301.51 before the trade stops losing money.

How much do fees change the result?

Keeping the example trade the same and changing only the fee rate on each side:

Same trade, different fee rates on each side (illustrative)

Fee each side	Profit	Return	Break-even
0.0%	$750.00	10.00%	$30,000.00
0.1%	$734.25	9.78%	$30,060.06
0.5%	$671.25	8.91%	$30,301.51
1.0%	$592.50	7.82%	$30,606.06
1.5%	$513.75	6.75%	$30,913.71

Moving from no fees to 1% on each side cuts the profit from $750.00 to $592.50. The SEC makes the same point about ongoing investment fees: small percentages add up to large sums over time³.

Is the calculator's profit the same as a taxable gain?

Not always. Under U.S. rules, a capital gain or loss is the difference between your adjusted basis in an asset and the amount you realized when you sold it². For crypto, basis includes fees and commissions paid to buy¹, which is how the calculator treats cost. For sales from 1 January 2025, Treasury regulations subtract fees paid to sell a digital asset from the amount realized⁵, as the calculator does with proceeds. Which units count as sold and other adjustments can still change the taxable figure.

Holding period. Held one year or less, a gain or loss is short term; more than one year, it is long term².
Which units. With several purchases, the IRS treats crypto as sold first in, first out unless you specifically identify units¹. Our average cost calculator handles many buys.
Losses. Net capital losses deductible against other income are capped each year at $3,000, or $1,500 if married filing separately, with the rest carried forward².

What does the calculator leave out?

Spreads and slippage. A market order's price is not guaranteed and may differ from the last traded price⁴. Enter the prices you actually received.
Flat and network fees. Withdrawal, deposit and blockchain network fees are not percentages of the trade; add them to cost separately.
Tax. All results are before tax.
Currency conversion. If you paid in one currency and sold in another, exchange-rate moves and conversion fees are ignored.

Risk warning

A calculator does not reduce risk

Crypto prices can fall far below your buy price. Running numbers on a hoped-for sale price says nothing about whether it will happen. Only trade money you can afford to lose.

Common beginner mistakes

Counting only the price change
A 10% move made 8.91% here, after fees.
Forgetting the sell fee
It is charged on the larger sale value when you are in profit.
Treating return on cost as yearly return
The calculator ignores how long you held. A 9% gain over three years is very different from 9% in a week.

Frequently asked questions

Does this work for stocks as well as crypto?

Yes. The arithmetic is the same for any asset bought and sold at a price with percentage fees. Commission-free stock trades can be entered with a 0% fee.

What if my fee is a flat amount?

Divide the flat fee by the trade value and enter the percentage. A $5 fee on a $1,000 trade is 0.5%.

How do I calculate a short trade?

This calculator assumes you buy first and sell later. For a short or leveraged position, use our leverage calculator.

Why does my platform show a different profit?

Platforms may show unrealized profit at the current price, leave out fees or use an average cost. Check which prices and fees its figure includes.

The bottom line

A trade's real result is proceeds after the sell fee minus cost including the buy fee. In the example, a 10% price rise became an 8.91% return, and the break-even price sat above the purchase price. Use the calculator to see how fees and sale prices change the outcome, then remember tax, spreads and transfer fees can shift it further.

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions on Virtual Currency Transactions — Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 2026 Primary source
Topic No. 409, Capital Gains and Losses — Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 2026 Primary source
How Fees and Expenses Affect Your Investment Portfolio (Investor Bulletin) — Investor.gov, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025 Primary source
Types of Orders — Investor.gov, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Primary source
26 CFR 1.1001-7, Digital assets (T.D. 10000) — U.S. Department of the Treasury / IRS, via eCFR, 2024 Primary source

How we checked this page: every figure above links to the numbered source it came from. Spotted an error? Tell the desk — see our editorial policy.