Tadawul trading cost calculator

Method & sources

Equities, rights and funds

Six components per side. The broker commission is the only negotiable one; the other five are fixed. Together they cap at 15.5 basis points — 0.155% — of executed value.

• Broker commission — up to 10.5 bps, negotiable
• CMA regulatory fee — 3.0 bps
• Exchange trading fee — 0.9 bps, Saudi Exchange
• Clearing — 0.5 bps, Muqassa
• Settlement — 0.5 bps, Edaa
• Safekeeping — 0.1 bps, Edaa

The four post-trade components sum to the 2.0 basis points charged by Tadawul Group subsidiaries under the March 2022 CMA resolution.

VAT — the part most breakdowns get wrong

VAT at 15% applies to every component except the CMA regulatory fee, which is exempt as a government levy. VAT is computed on the taxable subtotal rather than line by line, which avoids compounding rounding across six components.

This is why the all-in cost of an equity trade is not 15.5 basis points but roughly 17.4 — the figure quoted everywhere is the pre-tax cap, not what a client is invoiced.

Margin

Fees are the small number on a derivatives trade; margin is the large one. One hundred MT30 contracts at an index level of 1,470 carry roughly SAR 14.7 million of notional exposure against about SAR 1,200 of trading fees.

• Contract multipliers — MT30 index futures are the index level × SAR 100. Single stock futures and options are 100 shares of the underlying.
• Initial margin is set by Muqassa per contract and revised as volatility changes. It is not published publicly, so it is an input here rather than a fixed rate.
• Variation margin is marked to market daily and settled in cash against the daily settlement price, which is derived from VWAP.
• The ±20% daily limit is the real risk number. A single adverse session at the limit generates a variation margin call of twice the initial margin, if initial margin is set at 10% of notional. This is why margin is monitored intraday rather than at end of day.
• Long options are different. An option buyer pays premium and posts no margin — maximum loss is the premium. Sellers post margin, and Muqassa margins short option positions on a portfolio basis rather than as a flat percentage of notional, so the figure shown here is indicative only.

Derivatives fees

Charged per contract rather than on value. Exchange transaction costs are published by the Saudi Exchange; clearing and expiry components are not published publicly and are marked accordingly in the table above. Brokerage on derivatives is not published at all and defaults to zero here — enter your own.

Limits and assumptions

• Equity figures cover Main Market equities, REITs, ETFs, CEFs and tradable rights, which share the post-trade schedule. Broker commission can differ by instrument.
• Buy and sell carry identical charges.
• Amounts round to two decimals for display; calculation runs at full precision.
• Prices the trade only — not funding, margin or custody costs.
• Sukuk and bond figures are combined exchange and regulator charges; brokerage is uncapped and negotiable.

Sources. Post-trade component rates: CMA Board resolution of 26 March 2022, as published by Saudi Tadawul Group and Muqassa. Derivatives transaction costs, settlement cycles, fluctuation limits and negotiated deal minimums: Saudi Exchange, Market Services — Derivatives. Broker commission and CMA fee: published broker schedules. VAT: 15% standard rate, Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority.

Not publicly sourced. Muqassa derivatives clearing fees, expiry and exercise settlement charges, and the sukuk combined rate. Verify against the current Muqassa schedule before commercial use.

Rates current as of July 2026. Fee schedules are set by the CMA and Tadawul Group and change periodically. Reference tool — not financial or tax advice.

Open questions. Two components are unresolved. They are flagged here rather than quietly settled, because the difference changes the answer.

1. Edaa settlement fee — 0.4 or 0.5 bps? Published summaries differ. The CMA resolution says 0.5, and only 0.5 makes the schedule sum to its own published 15.5 bps cap: 10.5 + 3.0 + 0.9 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.1 = 15.5. At 0.4 the schedule sums to 15.4 and the cap is never reached. This calculator uses 0.5.

2. Does the Muqassa clearing ratio really differ by contract? Clearing is 40% of the exchange transaction cost for MT30 (2.8 on 7.0), but 36% for single stock futures (0.504 on 1.4) and options (0.72 on 2.0). Whether that is a deliberate distinction or an artefact of rounding in the published per-contract figures is unconfirmed. The rates above are used as published.