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What does a short stock trade cost? Four routes compared from a euro account

As of: 19 September 2026

If you buy a stock for a few days and sell it again a few percent higher, you pay twice: on the way in and on the way out. With small amounts these costs decide whether anything of the gain is left. I worked it through for four routes — from the viewpoint of someone in Europe whose money is in euros.

Up front, so the interest is clear: I run rulio. rulio is not a broker but a tool that executes rules at a broker — currently Alpaca. That is why Alpaca is in the comparison, and rulio is counted with its own costs.

The calculation

Buy a US stock, hold it ten days, sell it. Account in euros. Once with €300, once with €3,000. Everything lost between stake and proceeds counts: order fee, currency markup, the spread between buy and sell price, holding costs.

That is the single trade. Two items are not in the table and still belong to the bill: getting the money to the broker and back, and rulio's own plan. Both below.

Where the differences come from

Alpaca charges no order fee for US stocks. On a sale, tiny mandatory US regulatory fees apply — cents. The account runs in dollars: you convert once when you deposit, not on every trade — but that very step is expensive, see "Money in and out".

Trading 212 also charges no order fee in the Invest account, but adds 0.15% to the exchange rate on every purchase and every sale of a stock in a foreign currency. There and back that is 0.3% of the amount — little on €300, more than Interactive Brokers on €3,000.

Interactive Brokers works the other way round: a minimum fee per order and almost nothing percentage-based. On US exchanges about $1 per order on fixed pricing, from $0.35 on tiered pricing; on Xetra 0.05% of the order value, but at least €1.25 (tiered) or €3 (fixed). On €300 you feel that; on €3,000 it is among the cheapest. With a euro account you convert to dollars once for US stocks; that costs about $2.

Capital.com is a different product. What you trade there are CFDs — contracts on a stock's price, not the stock itself. There is no order fee; the costs sit in three places, all published by the provider itself: the spread between buy and sell price, the overnight holding cost (0.022% of the position value, so a good 0.2% over ten nights), and a currency markup of 0.4% when the account runs in euros. The spread depends on the stock: $0.30 per share for Apple, just under 0.1% at a price around $336; $0.10 for Zillow at a price around $30, a good 0.3%. Hence the range in the table. The provider itself states that 74–89% of retail accounts lose money trading CFDs.

Money in and out

The cheapest trade helps little if getting the money to the broker is expensive. For an account funded in euros from Europe:

For €300 at Alpaca that means €4.50 on the way in and $50 as soon as the money is to come back — more than any order fee in the table above. Alpaca is the cheapest route for many trades with money that stays there; for a small amount that is only being tried out briefly, it is the most expensive.

What this means for small amounts

On €300 and a 7% gain, €21 is left before costs. Per trade, this comes off: under €0.05 at Alpaca, €0.90 at Trading 212, up to €6 at Interactive Brokers on Xetra with fixed pricing. The route decides about up to a quarter of the gain — and whoever first has to send the money across the Atlantic has already spent the gain of several trades on the deposit.

On €3,000 the picture turns: the minimum fee no longer matters, the percentage markup does.

And rulio itself?

rulio's basic tier is free (three active rules). Plus costs €19 a month. For a €300 portfolio that would be more than any broker difference in this table — Plus pays off only once the automation is worth more than the fee. That belongs in an honest comparison.

Assumptions and limits

• Prices as of 19 September 2026, as the providers themselves publish them (price list, fee page, per-instrument details). Nothing was measured independently.
• A US stock with a narrow trading spread; for small, rarely traded stocks the spread is wider on every route.
• Taxes are not included.
• Not investment advice. The comparison says what a trade costs — not whether it is worth making.

Sources

• Trading 212: fees in the Invest account
• Capital.com: fees and charges (EU)
• Capital.com: instrument details for Apple — spread and overnight fee
• Capital.com: instrument details for Zillow
• Alpaca: is there a cost for withdrawing funds?
• Alpaca: Brokerage Fee Schedule (PDF)
• Interactive Brokers: stock commissions Europe
• Interactive Brokers: Xetra fees

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