Free tool
Forex swap calculator
Work out the overnight swap on a forex trade: points or money per lot, lots and nights held, with triple-swap Wednesday and your account currency.
Quick answer: Swap = the swap rate × the value of one point (or the money rate) × lots × nights charged. Wednesday's rollover counts as three nights, so a week held costs seven. On EUR/USD one point is worth $1 per lot, so a swap of −6.5 points on one lot costs $6.50 a night.
Direction
Swap type, as your platform shows it
Every five weekday rollovers include one Wednesday, which is counted automatically. Tick the box if the nights left over (after whole weeks) also include a Wednesday. A negative rate is a charge; a positive rate is paid to you.
Swap rates are illustrative and differ between brokers, accounts and days. Check the current swap long and swap short in your platform's symbol specification. Conversions use illustrative exchange rates, not live prices.
How it's calculated
A swap is the interest charged or paid on a position still open at the daily rollover. Your platform shows a swap long (for buys) and a swap short (for sells) in one of two forms:
- Points per lot. Common on MetaTrader. A point is the smallest price step: 0.00001 on most pairs and 0.001 on yen pairs, so one point is a tenth of a pip (a pipette). Swap per night = points × point value per lot × lots.
- Money per lot per night. Swap per night = the figure × lots.
The total is the nightly figure × the nights charged. Every Wednesday rollover counts three nights, so the calculator adds two extra nights for each Wednesday in your holding period.
Worked example
You buy 1 lot of EUR/USD on Monday and close it the following Monday, before the rollover. The swap long is −6.5 points.
- One point on one lot = 0.00001 × 100,000 = $1.
- Swap per night = −6.5 × $1 × 1 lot = −$6.50.
- Rollovers: Monday to Friday, five of them, including one Wednesday. Nights charged = 5 + 2 = 7.
- Total swap = −$6.50 × 7 = −$45.50, which is 0.91% of a $5,000 account.
Had you sold instead, with a swap short of +1.8 points, you would have received 1.8 × $1 × 7 = $12.60. On a yen pair the point is worth ¥100 per lot, about $0.67 with USD/JPY at 150, so the same number of points is worth less in dollars.
Common mistakes
- Reading points as pips. −6.5 points is −0.65 pips, not −6.5 pips. Treating points as pips makes the swap look ten times bigger than it is.
- Forgetting triple Wednesday. A trade opened an hour before Wednesday's rollover pays three nights on its first night. Over a week you pay for all seven nights whichever days you hold.
- Assuming swap-free means free. A swap-free account usually recovers the cost through a wider spread, an admin fee or a holding limit. Compare the total cost of the trade.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my swap negative on both buy and sell?
The swap starts from the interest-rate gap between the two currencies, then the broker subtracts its own markup from both sides. When the gap is small, the markup can be larger than the interest you would earn, so both the swap long and the swap short end up as charges.
When is swap charged?
At the daily rollover, 5 p.m. New York time, which is about 22:00 UK time. Only positions still open at that moment are charged or paid. A trade opened and closed within the same day has no swap.
Why is Wednesday swap three times bigger?
Spot currency trades settle two business days later. Wednesday night’s rollover moves the settlement date from Friday to Monday, across the weekend, so it carries three nights of interest. Five weekday rollovers therefore pay for all seven nights of the week.
Does a swap-free account make holding trades free?
No. A swap-free account removes the overnight interest, but the broker usually recovers the cost another way: a wider spread, a flat fee after a number of nights, a commission or a limit on how long you can hold. Compare the total cost, not just the swap line.
Learn more
- Academy lesson: the real cost of trading
- Academy lesson: market sessions and the daily rollover
- Academy lesson: leverage and margin
- What is swap in forex? Rollover and overnight fees explained
- Swap-free forex accounts explained
- Forex trading costs explained: spread, commission and swap
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