Futures Trading Platforms Compared: The All-In Cost of One ES and MES Trade

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-11-08

One round turn in the E-mini S&P 500 future costs between $4.28 and $7.28 at seven large US futures brokers, and $2.78 of that is the same everywhere.

CME’s exchange fee and the National Futures Association’s fee are passed through to every customer, so the commission a broker advertises is the smaller part of the bill on a standard contract. On the Micro E-mini, a tenth of the size, the broker’s own charges decide the cost.

This page builds the full price of one trade at each broker from the pages they published on 8 November 2026, runs a month of day trading through them, and then sets the small day-trade margins against how far the market really moves in a day. It does not score platforms on charts or apps, and it names no broker as right for you.

What they are: seven brokers, nine price plans

• Interactive Brokers charges $0.85 a contract a side for the first 1,000 contracts a month, and $0.25 on micro E-mini contracts.
• Robinhood charges $0.75 a side, or $0.50 with its paid Gold subscription, on standard and micro contracts alike.
• tastytrade charges $1.00 a side on futures and $0.75 on micros, plus a $0.30 clearing fee a contract.
• NinjaTrader, a futures broker and a charting platform under one name (see NinjaTrader), sells three plans: Free, Monthly at $99 a month and Lifetime at $1,499 once, each with lower commissions than the last, plus a $0.19 clearing fee.
• E*TRADE charges $1.50 a side, on micros too, except E-nano index futures at $0.75.
• TradeStation charges $1.75 on standard contracts and $0.50 on micros at its lowest tier, plus a $0.10 clearing fee.
• Charles Schwab charges $2.25 a contract a side on every future.

Webull also offers futures; its commission figures did not appear in the page text we could read, so it is left out rather than guessed.

How they differ: commission is the smallest line on an E-mini trade

Each round turn here is two sides: commission plus any broker clearing fee, plus CME’s non-member exchange fee ($1.38 a side for ES, $0.35 for MES, per TradeStation’s pass-through table) and the NFA fee ($0.01 a side since 1 July 2026). Interactive Brokers’ own worked example prices one ES side at $2.24, the same sum.

NinjaTrader’s fee page lists clearing as “$0.19 per contract”, and its own all-in commission table (as of 14 August 2026) adds it on each side: $2.17 a side for ES on Lifetime, $2.57 on Monthly and $2.87 on Free, which doubled are the round turns above. Taking out the fixed $2.78 leaves the broker’s own share of an ES round turn: $1.50 at Robinhood, $1.56 on NinjaTrader Lifetime, $1.70 at Interactive Brokers, $2.36 on NinjaTrader Monthly, $2.60 at tastytrade, $2.96 on NinjaTrader Free, $3.00 at E*TRADE, $3.70 at TradeStation and $4.50 at Schwab. NinjaTrader Lifetime’s $1,499 and Monthly’s $99 are not in these per-trade figures.

A worked example: a month of day trading at each broker

Take a hypothetical day trader who makes 5 MES round turns a day for 21 sessions, 105 in the month, and a second who makes 10 ES round turns a day, 210 in the month. Neither passes a volume tier at any broker here.

The ES month at Robinhood is 210 x $4.28 = $898.80. Of the ES totals, $583.80 is exchange and NFA fees, the same at every broker.

NinjaTrader’s three plans: when a fee pays for itself

The Monthly plan saves $0.10 a side on micros against Free, $0.20 a round turn, so its $99 is covered at 495 micro round turns a month. On standard contracts it saves $0.60 a round turn, covered at 165 round turns a month. The trader above, at 105 micros, pays $78 more on Monthly than on Free.

Lifetime saves $0.60 a micro round turn against Free, so the one-time $1,499 is covered after 2,498 micro round turns in total, about 24 months at 105 a month; on standard contracts after 1,071 round turns.

A Free account that logs in but makes no live trade in 30 days is charged $35, according to NinjaTrader’s fee page.

The original data: a day’s move against the day-trade margin

The data: 251 daily bars of the front-month ES future from Yahoo Finance, 7 November 2025 to 6 November 2026, and the day-trade margins NinjaTrader and TradeStation publish. A full-session range is the day’s high minus its low, and one ES point is $50 a contract.

• Median full-session range: 80.5 points, $4,025 a contract. That is 8.05 times NinjaTrader’s $500 ES day margin and 2.78 times TradeStation’s $1,447.25 intraday margin.
• Every one of the 251 sessions ranged more than $500 a contract, and 248 ranged more than $1,447.25.
• Regular hours only: the S&P 500 index itself had a median range of 61.64 points over the same 251 days, $3,081.98 at ES’s $50 a point, 6.16 times the $500 day margin.
• The widest session, 5 November 2026, ranged 392.75 points, $19,637.50 a contract.
• Four quarterly expiry days (19 December, 20 March, 18 June and 18 September) close at the settlement price and may cover a shorter session; leaving them out moves the median to 80.75 points.

Why it matters. The margin is a deposit, not a limit on loss. On the 6 November close of 7,402, one ES contract controlled $370,100, about 740 times NinjaTrader’s $500.

A move of 10 points against the position uses up that deposit, and 28.95 points uses up TradeStation’s. A range is not a loss, since few traders hold from the high to the low, but it shows how far price travels on an ordinary day.

Download the data: ES daily range vs day margin and round-turn costs by broker. Either file may be reused with credit and a link back here, under the site license.

Overnight is a different account

Day margins end at the close. NinjaTrader’s initial margin to hold one ES contract overnight was $28,631.65 (as of 31 August 2026), 57.3 times its day figure; TradeStation listed $28,945 for a long position, 20 times its intraday figure. For one Micro E-mini the numbers are $2,863.17 and $2,894.

A position still open when the day rate ends needs that cash, or the broker can close it. How margin and leverage work on a single contract is set out on how to trade futures.

Which to pick: the plan that fits your contract mix

Robinhood and Interactive Brokers cost the least per ES round turn when you trade on a standard plan: $4.28 and $4.48, against $7.28 at Schwab.

Interactive Brokers and NinjaTrader Lifetime cost the least on micros when micros are most of your trading: $1.22 and $1.28 a round turn, against $5.22 at Schwab and $3.72 at E*TRADE, which charge micros the full commission.

NinjaTrader’s Monthly plan costs less than its Free plan only when you trade at least 495 micro or 165 standard round turns a month.

A broker’s day margin matters less than it looks when the trade’s stop is wider than the margin: at $500 on ES, a 10-point stop already spends the whole deposit.

When it fails: what a per-trade price leaves out

It fails when the price page is out of date. Robinhood’s derivatives fee schedule still says the NFA fee is “$0.02 per contract, per side” as of 2018; the NFA’s own page says $0.01 since 1 July 2026, rising to $0.02 on 1 July 2027. That change will add $0.02 to every round turn in the table.

It fails when data and routing are left out. Market data subscriptions, order-routing fees ($0.25 a contract for Rithmic at NinjaTrader) and platform licenses are separate from commission and can exceed it for a small account.

It fails on a margin call. If the account falls short, the broker can close the position at a price it chooses and charge for doing so: NinjaTrader lists $25 for a first margin liquidation and $50 after that, and TradeStation $75. Those fees sit on the same pages as the commissions.

It fails when the firm is not registered. A futures broker serving US customers must be registered with the CFTC and be an NFA member. Check that yourself, as set out on how to verify a broker, before comparing any price.

Futures costs and margins: short answers

What does one E-mini S&P 500 trade cost?

On 8 November 2026 price lists, one ES round turn cost $4.28 to $7.28 all in, of which $2.78 was CME and NFA fees.

Which futures broker has the lowest commissions on micros?

NinjaTrader Lifetime lists $0.09 a side, but once its $0.19 clearing fee is added, Interactive Brokers' $0.25 comes out lower per round turn, $1.22 against $1.28, before Lifetime’s $1,499 plan fee.

Is a $50 or $500 day margin enough?

It is enough to open the position. Over the last 251 sessions the median ES day ranged $4,025 a contract, so the margin covers only a small part of a normal day’s move.

Related: the contracts behind these costs

The contract itself, its tick value and its expiry, is covered on how to trade futures, and the smaller contracts that make the MES column possible are explained on micro futures. If options are the alternative, futures vs options compares what each contract costs to hold, and trading fees covers the costs of a trade beyond commission. Per-contract option fees, assignment charges and Rule 606 payments are compared broker by broker on options trading platforms.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.