Commissions & economics

A-Book Revenue Share is a partnership model where an IB or affiliate earns a percentage of the broker's core income - the spread and commission - generated by their referred clients' trading volume. Because those orders…

Active Trading Days (ATD) are the unique calendar days within a measurement window on which a client places at least one valid trade. Brokers and prop firms count these days to gauge genuine engagement and to unlock mil…

An affiliate is a marketing partner who promotes a broker or prop firm through digital channels — websites, blogs, YouTube, social media, email, or paid ads — using a unique tracking link. When someone clicks that link,…

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based model in which a partner earns a commission for sending qualified traffic or customers to a broker, using unique tracking links across digital content. The broker pays only whe…

An auto-rebate is a broker-provided system that automatically returns a set portion of an IB's earned commission to the referred trader, with no manual calculation or transfer by the IB. The partner portal computes the …

B-Book Revenue Share is a partnership model in which the introducing broker or affiliate earns a percentage of the net trading losses of the clients they refer. The broker keeps those clients on its internal "B-book" — …

Baseline CPA is the standard, starting Cost Per Acquisition payout a broker offers an affiliate for each qualified depositor referred, before any performance tiers, bonuses, or negotiated uplifts apply. It is the defaul…

A CPA trigger is the set of conditions a referred client must satisfy before a broker releases the fixed Cost Per Acquisition payment to a partner. It usually combines a minimum deposit with a minimum trading activity r…

A Cashback Website is an affiliate portal that aggregates broker offers and returns a portion of its IB commission or CPA to the traders who sign up through its links. Traders use these sites to lower their effective tr…

A Commission Bump is a negotiated or performance-based increase in an affiliate's CPA rate or an IB's revenue-share percentage. Brokers grant this temporary or permanent raise to reward partners who drive high volumes o…

Commission mark-up is an extra per-trade fee an Introducing Broker (IB) adds on top of the broker's standard trading commission. The broker charges the client the combined amount, keeps its base commission, and passes t…

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is a payment model in which a broker pays an affiliate a fixed one-off fee for each new client who becomes genuinely active. The referred client must usually clear defined qualification criter…

Cost Per Action (CPA) is a performance-marketing model in which an affiliate is paid a commission each time a referred user completes a defined action. The action is whatever the advertiser specifies — it might be a reg…

Cost Per Lead (CPL) is a compensation model in which an affiliate is paid when a referred user registers and submits their contact details to a broker, whether or not that user ever deposits funds. The paid event is the…

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total spend required to convert one new depositing client, found by dividing all acquisition costs over a period by the number of funded clients won in that period. It is the partn…

Dynamic CPA is a Cost Per Acquisition model where the payout is not flat but varies with the measured value of each referred client. Instead of one fixed fee, the amount scales up for higher-value clients — those from p…

Earnings Per Click (EPC) is the average commission a partner earns for each click on their tracking link, calculated as total commissions divided by total clicks. It compresses traffic quality, conversion rate, and payo…

Effective CPA (eCPA) is the real average amount an affiliate actually earns per qualified acquisition once every adjustment is applied, calculated by dividing total CPA revenue by total qualified acquisitions over a def…

An Evaluation Account is a simulated trading account sold by a proprietary trading firm as a skill test. A trader pays a one-time fee, then must hit a set profit target without breaking strict drawdown and risk rules to…

First Time Deposit (FTD) is the first transfer of real money a referred client makes into their new live brokerage account. It is the milestone that converts a registered lead into a funded, active client and, for most …

A Fixed Commission is a predetermined, unchanging payout an IB or affiliate receives per lot traded or per acquired client, set as a flat amount regardless of the asset traded, the client's deposit size, or market volat…

Flat Rate CPA is an affiliate compensation model in which a broker pays the partner one fixed amount for every qualified depositing client, regardless of how much that client deposits, where they live, or how actively t…

Forex Cashback is a rebate paid back to a trader for every trade they execute, funded from the spread markup or volume commission that the broker or Introducing Broker earns on that trade. It lowers the trader's effecti…

Gross Deposits is the total amount of money an IB's referred clients pay into their trading accounts over a period, before any withdrawals are subtracted. It is a top-line funding figure that measures how much capital y…

Gross Revenue is the total income a broker earns from the trading activity of an IB's referred clients before any expenses, IB payouts, bonuses, or operating costs are deducted. It is the raw revenue pool from which Rev…

A High-Water Mark is the highest peak value an investment account has ever reached, and it becomes the threshold above which a money manager can charge a performance fee. In retail-brokerage partnerships — PAMM, MAM, or…

A Hybrid Commission Model pays a partner two ways at once: a smaller upfront CPA (a one-time bounty when a referred trader funds and qualifies) plus an ongoing revenue share or IB rebate on that trader's activity for th…

A Hybrid Execution Partnership is an IB or affiliate arrangement with a broker that runs both A-Book and B-Book execution and routes each referred client to whichever model the broker chooses. Your compensation can shif…

An Inactivity Fee is a recurring charge a broker deducts from a trader's account balance when the account has had no trading activity — and sometimes no login — for a set period, commonly 3 to 6 months. It is typically …

An Introducing Broker (IB) is an individual or firm that refers clients to a brokerage and is paid ongoing commission tied to those clients' trading activity, usually per lot traded or as a share of the spread. Unlike a…

The LTV:CAC ratio compares the lifetime value (LTV) a client generates against the customer acquisition cost (CAC) spent to win them. It is the single clearest measure of whether a partner's marketing turns ad spend int…

Lifetime Commission is a partner agreement under which an IB or affiliate keeps earning a share of a referred client's generated revenue for as long as that client trades actively — with no fixed expiry date. It replace…

Lifetime Value (LTV) is the total revenue a single client is projected to generate for an affiliate or broker across their entire relationship, from first trade until they stop trading or leave. It converts the vague id…

A lot rebate is a fixed cash amount an Introducing Broker (IB) earns from a broker for every standard lot (100,000 units of the base currency) that a referred client trades. It is the most common way retail-brokerage pa…

A markup cap is the maximum amount a broker allows an Introducing Broker or partner to add on top of the broker's base spread or commission. It sets a hard ceiling on the extra cost a partner can pass to their referred …

A master affiliate is a top-tier digital marketer who runs a multi-level affiliate program: instead of only referring traders directly, they recruit and manage other affiliates (sub-affiliates) who promote the same brok…

A Master Introducing Broker (Master IB) sits at the top of a multi-tier IB hierarchy. Instead of referring traders directly, a Master IB recruits and supports Sub-IBs, then earns a share of the trading volume produced b…

A micro lot is a forex position size equal to 1,000 units of the base currency, or 0.01 of a standard lot. It is the smallest volume most retail brokers allow, letting traders take real positions with very little capita…

The minimum deposit requirement is the smallest sum a trader must fund an account with to activate it. In partnerships it also names the minimum a referred client must deposit before the affiliate qualifies for a CPA pa…

Minimum pip profit is a broker rule requiring a client's trade to move a set number of pips before it counts toward an IB rebate or CPA volume target. Trades that open and close inside that pip band are excluded from co…

Minimum trade duration is a compliance rule requiring a referred client to keep a position open for a set length of time — for example two minutes — before that trade generates IB commission or counts toward a CPA volum…

Minimum Trading Volume is the number of lots a referred client must actually trade before a partner's payout is unlocked or a higher commission tier is reached. It is the broker's proof-of-activity gate: a deposit alone…

A Multi-Tier Affiliate Program rewards a partner for two things: the clients they refer directly, and the clients referred by the sub-affiliates they recruit. Each recruited layer generates an override commission that f…

Negative Carryover is when a partner's Revenue Share balance falls below zero — because referred clients won more than they lost — and that deficit is carried into the next month instead of being reset. Until fresh clie…

Net Deposits are a referred client base's total deposits minus their total withdrawals over a period. It measures the money that actually stayed on the platform, not the gross amount that ever arrived, and it is the fig…

Net Revenue is the money a broker actually keeps from a client's trading activity after subtracting the direct costs of servicing that activity. Starting from gross revenue (spreads, commissions, and any losses the clie…

Notional Volume is the total underlying market value controlled by a leveraged position, not the margin the trader posts to open it. One standard lot of EUR/USD carries a notional value of €100,000 even though the clien…

An Offline Affiliate acquires trading clients through in-person, real-world channels rather than digital advertising. They run live seminars, local trading academies, physical offices, and face-to-face networking to int…

An Overnight Fee, or Swap, is the interest adjustment applied to a leveraged position held open past the daily market rollover (typically 22:00 GMT). It reflects the interest-rate differential between the two currencies…

A pip rebate is an Introducing Broker (IB) or affiliate commission structure that pays a fixed number of pips from the spread or commission on every trade a referred client executes, instead of a flat dollar amount per …

Profit share is a compensation model in which a money manager, prop-firm trader, affiliate, or introducing partner earns a predetermined percentage of the net trading profits generated, rather than being paid on trading…

A Qualified First Time Deposit (QFTD) is a newly referred client whose initial deposit has cleared and who has also satisfied every additional condition the broker sets before an affiliate's CPA commission is triggered.…

A qualified trader is a referred client who has passed a broker's compliance and KYC checks, funded their account, and traded actively enough to satisfy the specific trigger conditions in a partner's commission agreemen…

A rebate is the slice of a client's trading cost — the spread or the commission — that a broker pays back to the Introducing Broker (IB) who referred that client. It is earned per trade, on volume, and the IB can keep i…

A rebate sharing system is a broker-provided tool inside the partner portal that automatically splits a Master IB's earned commissions and distributes a configurable percentage down to sub-IBs or back to clients as cash…

A Regional Partner is a senior IB or affiliate granted exclusive or semi-exclusive rights to represent a broker across a defined geographic territory — a country or region. They run localized marketing in the native lan…

Return on Investment (ROI) measures how efficiently an affiliate's marketing spend turns into broker commissions. It is net profit — commissions earned minus marketing cost — expressed as a percentage of that cost, so i…

Revenue Share is a partnership model in which an affiliate or Introducing Broker (IB) earns an ongoing percentage of the revenue a broker generates from their referred clients. That revenue may come from spreads, commis…

A Round Turn is the complete lifecycle of a single trade: opening a position and later closing it. It is the standard unit on which trading commissions and IB volume rebates are calculated, so a "$10 per lot" rebate alm…

Spread Mark-up is an IB compensation arrangement where the broker widens the spread on referred clients' trades by a set amount, and pays that added portion to the IB. If the broker's raw EUR/USD spread is 0.2 pips and …

Spread Share is an IB compensation model where the broker pays the partner a fixed percentage of the spread the client already pays, without adding any mark-up. The client trades on the broker's standard pricing, and th…

A Standard Lot is the base unit of trade size in forex, equal to 100,000 units of the base currency. On EUR/USD one standard lot is worth roughly $10 per pip, and brokers use it as the reference volume for margin, posit…

Sub-IB Commission is the override a Master IB earns on the trading volume produced by the clients of the Sub-IBs beneath them. Instead of referring traders directly, the Master IB recruits and supports other partners an…

A Sub-Introducing Broker (Sub-IB) is a partner who registers under a Master IB rather than directly with the broker. They refer their own traders and earn their own per-lot rebates, while a slice of their volume flows u…

Swap Commission is a partner payout in which the broker shares a portion of the overnight financing fees — swaps — charged to an IB's clients for holding positions open past the daily rollover. It is a rebate stream tie…

A Tiered Commission Structure is a partner-payout model where an Introducing Broker's (IB's) rebate rate, or an affiliate's CPA amount, climbs to a higher level once the partner crosses a defined monthly threshold of tr…

A Volume Tier is a specific threshold of traded lots (or net deposits) that a partner's referred clients must collectively reach within a period to unlock a higher payout rate inside a tiered commission structure. It is…