How much is brokerage in New Zealand?

Brokerage varies by platform, from a small flat fee or percentage to higher charges for full-service brokers. On small trades, even a modest fee can be a large percentage of the amount invested, so it pays to compare.

Why do fees matter more on small trades?

A flat fee is a bigger share of a small trade than a large one. A $5 fee on a $100 trade is 5%, but on a $5,000 trade it is 0.1%, so frequent small trades can be quietly expensive.

What is the break-even move?

It is how much the investment must rise just to cover the buy and sell fees before you make any profit. The higher the fees relative to the trade, the more it has to rise simply to break even.

Brokerage Fee Calculator

This calculator shows how much brokerage and transaction fees really cost when you buy and sell shares or funds in New Zealand, and why those fees can quietly eat into returns on smaller or more frequent trades. You enter your typical trade size, the flat fee your platform charges per trade, the percentage fee it applies, and how many trades you make in a year. The calculator doubles the fee to cover both the buy and the sell side of a round trip, then works out the total cost as a percentage of your trade. It returns the fee per trade in dollars, the break-even rise needed, which is how far the investment must climb just to cover both fees before you make any profit, and your estimated fees for the year based on how often you trade. Use it to compare platforms with different fee structures, to check whether a flat fee or a percentage fee suits your usual trade size better, and to see why investing larger amounts less often is often more fee-efficient than frequent small top-ups. It is especially useful before committing to a share trading or investment platform, since fee structures vary widely and a fee that looks small in dollar terms can be a large share of a modest trade. This is an estimate to guide your comparison, not financial advice.

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Trade size

Flat fee per trade

Percentage fee per trade

Trades per year

total buy and sell fees as a share of your trade

Fee per trade$0

Break-even rise needed0%

Fees per year$0

The break-even rise is how much the investment must gain just to cover buying and selling fees before any profit. Fee structures vary widely between platforms, so compare flat fees and percentage fees for your typical trade size. Estimate only, not financial advice.

How it works

The fee on a trade is the flat fee plus the percentage fee applied to the trade size. To complete a round trip you pay this on the way in and again on the way out, so the calculator doubles it to show the total buy and sell cost as a percentage of your trade. The break-even rise is that round-trip cost expressed as the gain needed just to cover fees. Multiplying the per-trade fee by your trades per year shows your annual fee bill.

Worked example

A $1,000 trade with a $3 flat fee and a 0.5% fee costs $8 each way, so $16 to buy and sell, which is 1.6% of the trade. The investment must rise 1.6% just to break even. On a $5,000 trade the same fees would be far smaller as a percentage, which is why larger, less frequent trades are more fee-efficient.

Related calculators

Managed Fund Fee Drag Calculator: ongoing fund fees.
Investment Calculator: project investments.
Dollar-Cost Averaging Calculator: regular investing.
ROI Calculator: return on investment.

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