How Much Can You Earn Copy Trading? Honest Math, No Promises
"How much can you make copy trading?" is the most searched question about the subject and the one with the least honest answers. Most pages reply with a percentage per month and a stock photo. This one replies with arithmetic. Your result is not the provider's result: it is the provider's result scaled by your multiplier, minus a fixed subscription, minus network fees, minus slippage, and the fixed part of that formula is what decides whether copy trading can work for you at all. Below is the formula, a break-even table for deposits from $500 to $5,000, three scenarios with the provider up, flat and down, and the dispersion of the platform's own test accounts as a reminder of how wide the range of provider outcomes is. No return targets appear here, because nobody can give you one honestly.
Copy-trading profit for a subscriber equals the provider's trading result on the copied trades, scaled by the subscriber's lot multiplier, minus the monthly subscription, minus payment network fees, minus the price difference between the provider's fills and the subscriber's (slippage). The provider's result is unknown in advance; the costs are known exactly, and on small deposits they are the largest term.
Key takeaways
- Net result = provider result × multiplier − subscription − network fees − slippage. Only the first term can be positive, and it is the only one you do not control.
- The subscription is fixed in dollars, so it is a different percentage of every deposit: a $35 provider (about $37.5 with the TRC20 network fee) is 7.5 % of a $500 account every month and 0.75 % of a $5,000 account. The copied trades have to gross that much before you are at zero.
- Below about $1,000 the fixed costs usually win: the provider must out-trade a 4–20 % monthly hurdle just to cover the fee, and lot rounding up to the broker minimum makes a small account's risk larger than its multiplier implies.
- Provider outcomes are widely dispersed. Of the 21 test and demo accounts with reported trades behind SignalSync's catalogue (the platform's own accounts running catalogue Expert Advisors), 7 have a profit factor below 1.0 and 8 a maximum drawdown above 50 %; only 3 combine a profit factor above 1.3, drawdown under 30 % and 100 trades.
- The useful question is not "how much can I earn" but "is my deposit large enough that the fixed costs are a small share of it, and is the provider's drawdown one I can hold through". Both can be checked before paying.
The formula, term by term
Net result = (provider result × multiplier) − subscription − network fees − slippage
Provider result × multiplier
The copier (how it works is covered in What is copy trading) places the provider's trades on your account at the provider's lot size times your multiplier (default 1.0). The provider's balance is never shown, and the card's "recommended deposit" (shown only when the provider filled it in) is the minimum he suggests for a 1.0 multiplier, not his balance, so the multiplier cannot come from a deposit ratio. It comes from risk: after login, open the provider's trade history, take the typical lot and typical stop (or typical loss in pips), work out the dollar risk per trade at multiplier 1.0 (lot × pip value × stop) and choose the multiplier so that risk per trade is 1–2 % of your deposit. If the history shows no stops, use the card's maximum drawdown: multiplier ≈ your acceptable drawdown % ÷ (historical drawdown % × 1.5). The worked arithmetic is in how to calculate position size for copy trading. Once the multiplier is set that way, the provider's percentage results on the card translate into roughly the same percentages on your deposit; a higher multiplier amplifies both profit and drawdown, a lower one shrinks both. The scenarios below assume a multiplier chosen like this, so that the provider's percentage result lands on your deposit.
One mechanical detail bites small accounts. The copier rounds volumes up to the broker's minimum lot (0.01 on most accounts). A provider trading 0.03 lots copied at 0.25 would be 0.0075 lots, which becomes 0.01: a third of the provider's size instead of a quarter. On a small account following a provider who trades 0.02–0.05 lots, nearly every copy is rounded up and the effective multiplier is higher than the one you set.
Subscription
On SignalSync the subscriber pays the provider's monthly price, which the provider sets at $35 or more (the catalogue's priced accounts currently range from $35 to $100), and nothing on top of it: there is no monthly platform fee and no share of profit. The platform's revenue is 10 % of the provider's payout. There is also a one-time $10 USDT charge per connected trading account, which covers the hosted terminal on the platform's Windows VPS, so the subscriber does not rent a VPS.
Network fees
Payments are in USDT on the TRON network (TRC20), and each monthly payment carries a network fee of about $2.5. Over a year that is $30, which matters at $500 and not at $5,000.
Slippage
Your orders fill at your broker a fraction of a second after the provider's. SignalSync's benchmark of 2025-12-10 (one MT4 subscriber EA, 200 signals in 71 minutes) put the end-to-end delay at roughly 0.78 s as the sum of stage averages (server 48 ms, queue ≈ 553 ms, EA plus broker ≈ 175 ms); the documentation states 200–800 ms, and the benchmark is about ten months old and MT4-based. In a sample of ten XAUUSD trades on the platform's own test pair, entry prices differed by 0.00–0.27 $/oz: two exact, five in the subscriber's favour, three against, net +$5.69. Slippage is therefore a small and two-sided term for strategies that hold for hours, and a large one-sided term for scalpers. The detail is in Copy Trading Latency Explained; in the scenarios below it is set to a flat $5 against you per month as a placeholder.
Break-even: what the copied trades must gross just to pay the subscription
The table expresses the monthly cost (provider price + ~$2.5 network fee) as a percentage of the deposit. That percentage is not a return target; it is the gross result the copied trades must produce in a month for you to finish at zero. Anything below it is a loss even if the provider was profitable.
| Provider price (monthly cost incl. network fee) | $500 deposit | $1,000 | $2,000 | $5,000 | Yearly cost in dollars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $35 ($37.5) | 7.5 % | 3.75 % | 1.88 % | 0.75 % | $450 (+ $10 connection once) |
| $50 ($52.5) | 10.5 % | 5.25 % | 2.63 % | 1.05 % | $630 (+ $10) |
| $100 ($102.5) | 20.5 % | 10.25 % | 5.13 % | 2.05 % | $1,230 (+ $10) |
Read it by column. At $5,000 the cheapest provider costs under 1 % a month; the question is whether the provider's trading is any good. At $500 the same provider costs 7.5 % a month, 90 % a year, and the question is whether anyone's trading is that good month after month without a drawdown that empties the account first. The catalogue's own numbers (next section) show how many accounts lose outright and how often a high return comes with a large drawdown.
Why sub-$1,000 deposits usually lose to the subscription
- The hurdle is high. 3.75–10.5 % a month gross, every month, just to cover a $35–50 provider.
- Rounding raises risk. Suppose the risk arithmetic says a $500 account should copy a provider at 0.05. The provider opens 0.05 lots; at 0.05 that is 0.0025 lots, which the copier forces up to 0.01, i.e. 0.2 of the provider's size: four times the intended risk, on the account that can least afford it.
- Drawdown arrives before the fee is earned. A provider with a 30 % maximum drawdown, copied at a multiplier that reproduces his percentages, puts a $500 account at $350 at the worst point while the subscription keeps running. If the subscriber stops there (most do), the loss is locked in and the fees are gone.
- The dollar amounts are too small to matter and too large to ignore. The +4 % arithmetic scenario below is $20 on $500; the fee takes all of it.
The practical rule that falls out of the table: choose a provider whose price is a small single-digit percentage of your deposit at most, set the multiplier from the risk per trade in his trade history, and treat the card's recommended deposit (the provider's own suggested minimum for a 1.0 multiplier, shown only when he filled it in) as a floor, not a ratio. Before funding anything, register and use the demo portfolio with virtual $10,000 to see what the copied trades look like on a deposit of that size.
Three scenarios: provider up, flat, down
The percentages below are chosen for arithmetic, not as expectations: +4 %, 0 % and −4 % in one month on the copied trades, with a multiplier set from risk per trade so that the provider's percentage lands on your deposit, a $35 provider ($37.5 with the network fee) and the $5 slippage placeholder. The $10 connection charge is left out because it is paid once.
| Deposit | Provider +4 % (gross on your account) | Net after $37.5 fee and $5 slippage | Provider flat (0 %) | Net | Provider −4 % | Net |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $500 | +$20 | −$22.5 (−4.5 %) | $0 | −$42.5 (−8.5 %) | −$20 | −$62.5 (−12.5 %) |
| $1,000 | +$40 | −$2.5 (−0.25 %) | $0 | −$42.5 (−4.25 %) | −$40 | −$82.5 (−8.25 %) |
| $2,000 | +$80 | +$37.5 (+1.9 %) | $0 | −$42.5 (−2.1 %) | −$80 | −$122.5 (−6.1 %) |
| $5,000 | +$200 | +$157.5 (+3.2 %) | $0 | −$42.5 (−0.85 %) | −$200 | −$242.5 (−4.9 %) |
Three things are visible at once. In the "up" column the $500 and $1,000 accounts still lose, because the fee is larger than 4 % of the deposit. The flat month, which is the most common month for many strategies, costs exactly the fee plus slippage in every row, so a provider who merely does nothing costs a $1,000 subscriber over 4 %. And the down month is the provider's loss plus the fee: the subscription does not scale with results. Whether your provider delivers the left column or the right one over a year is the part no table can tell you.
How dispersed provider results actually are
The honest substitute for a return target is a distribution. SignalSync's catalogue is small and the accounts behind it are the platform's own test and demo accounts running catalogue Expert Advisors, not third-party traders, so the figures below are a calibration of how wide the spread is, not a performance claim. Of the 30 active provider accounts, 21 had reported trades in October 2026:
| Statistic (21 accounts with reported trades; internal data) | Accounts |
|---|---|
| Profit factor ≥ 1.3 | 11 |
| Profit factor < 1.0 (losing on closed trades) | 7 |
| Maximum drawdown ≤ 30 % | 12 |
| Maximum drawdown > 50 % | 8 |
| Win rate > 80 % | 4 (not all of them profitable) |
| 100 or more trades | 10 |
| 90 or more trading days | 2 |
| Profit factor ≥ 1.3 and drawdown ≤ 30 % and ≥ 100 trades | 3 |
Two readings matter for the earnings question. First, a third of the accounts lose on closed trades and more than a third have halved at some point; the "provider result" term in the formula is negative for a large share of accounts, before any fee. Second, the public provider list applies a filter (positive net profit, at least 10 trades, maximum drawdown under 80 %), so what you browse is the subset that currently looks good; an account drops out of the list when it stops qualifying, which is not the same as never having been bad. The card does not flag demo versus live either. How to read a smooth curve against its drawdown and trade history is the subject of the scam-protection guide.
What the provider card can and cannot tell you about your earnings
The public card shows relative metrics only: gain %, drawdown %, win rate, profit factor, number of trades, monthly return, risk level, price, subscriber count and recommended deposit. After login you can open the provider's trade history without money amounts (symbol, direction, lots, prices, times, result in pips). Balance, equity and profit in currency are visible to the account owner only. So the card gives you the first term of the formula as a percentage and the second term as a price; it does not give you a dollar forecast, and you should distrust anyone who extracts one from it.
What the card does let you compute, before paying:
- Fee share: price ÷ your deposit, monthly. From the break-even table, keep it in the low single digits.
- Drawdown in your dollars: maximum drawdown % × your deposit at a multiplier that reproduces the provider's percentages. If that number would make you stop, lower the multiplier (if the history shows no stops: your acceptable drawdown % ÷ (historical drawdown % × 1.5)) or skip the provider.
- Trade count and days: fewer than 100 trades or 90 days and the monthly return on the card is a small sample; two of the 21 accounts above clear 90 trading days.
- Holding time from the trade history: trades held for hours are nearly immune to the 200–800 ms copy delay; trades held for minutes are not, and the slippage term grows.
Pick a candidate on the provider list and run those four checks; the provider selection checklist adds the rest.
Making the arithmetic work in your favour
- Set the multiplier from risk per trade (typical lot × pip value × typical stop from the trade history, kept to 1–2 % of your deposit), treat the card's recommended deposit as the provider's suggested floor for a 1.0 multiplier where he gave one, and accept that minimum-lot rounding limits how far down the multiplier can go.
- Treat the subscription as a cost of capital and compare it with the provider's drawdown, not with their best month. A 1 % monthly fee against a 15 % drawdown is a different proposition from a 7.5 % fee against a 50 % drawdown.
- Use the controls. Copied stop losses stay on by default; the multiplier limits size (on MT4 the subscriber EA also caps lot size per order; on MT5, where the default copier does not apply the cap, the multiplier is the control); the Copy Trading toggle pauses copying when you want out.
- One provider per connected account. Each connected MT4/MT5 account follows one provider; to diversify across two providers, connect two accounts ($10 one-time each, both hosted on the platform's VPS). Two to four providers is a reasonable ceiling before monitoring becomes a job.
- Keep a ledger. Record the subscription, network fee and your account's monthly change; after three months you have your own version of the formula with real numbers, which beats any article's.
Everything above applies to any copy-trading service with a fixed subscription, and most of it to percentage-fee models too; the trade-copier software comparison lists the fee structures side by side. The hosted path on SignalSync, with the terminal on the platform's VPS and the copier pre-configured, is described on the features page and in the documentation; the MT5 setup guide covers the settings to check before the first copied trade. Ready to run the numbers on a real card? Create a free account and open the demo portfolio first.
FAQ
How much can you make copy trading?
Nobody can state a figure honestly. Your result is the provider's result scaled by your multiplier minus fixed costs; the first part ranges from strongly positive to a total loss across providers, as the dispersion table shows. What you can state exactly is the cost side, and whether your deposit makes it small.
Is copy trading profitable with $100 or $500?
With a fixed subscription from $35 a month, a $100 account pays 37.5 % of its balance in fees monthly and a $500 account 7.5 %; the copied trades would have to gross that before any profit. Minimum-lot rounding also makes the real risk higher than the multiplier suggests. The demo portfolio with virtual $10,000 is the better way to learn at that size.
Does the subscription fee depend on my profit?
No. You pay the provider's monthly price plus about $2.5 in network fees whether the month was up or down; there is no platform fee on top of the provider's price and no share of profit. The platform keeps 10 % of the provider's payout.
Does a higher multiplier mean higher earnings?
It means larger copies of the same trades: profit and drawdown scale together. A multiplier above the one your risk-per-trade arithmetic gives turns a provider's 30 % drawdown into a bigger percentage of your account; nothing about the provider's trading improves.
Why is my result different from the provider's monthly return?
Four reasons: the multiplier does not reproduce the provider's sizes exactly (minimum-lot rounding), the subscription and network fee are deducted from you but not from the provider's statistics, your fills differ by slippage, and any trade you closed or missed while copying was paused diverges from the provider's history.
Can I see how much the provider has earned in dollars?
No. The public card shows percentages and relative metrics; the trade history after login shows lots, prices and pips but no money amounts; balance and equity are visible only to the account owner. Compute your own dollar figures from the percentages and your deposit.
Are the catalogue statistics real trading?
The accounts behind the current catalogue are the platform's own test and demo accounts running catalogue Expert Advisors, several on demo servers; statistics are pulled from the trading accounts automatically. The card does not flag demo versus live; ask through the contact form if it matters for your decision.
What is the biggest cost in copy trading?
On small deposits, the subscription; on large ones, the provider's drawdown. Slippage is a minor two-sided term for strategies that hold trades for hours and a real cost only for scalping.