Swap-free accounts: the published fee schedules, and what the numbers reveal about the fee
Two brokers publish their swap-free terms in full. We put the numbers in a table, applied the symmetry test to them, and the five-day grace period turns out to be three nights for most of the week.
Most pages about swap-free accounts explain the concept and stop. The terms are published, so here they are, read from the brokers’ own pages on 20 August 2026.
What two brokers actually publish
| IC Markets | Tickmill | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | grace period, then a per-lot holding fee | grace period, then a handling fee on selected instruments |
| Grace period | up to 5 grace days | grace period, length per instrument in their table |
| Forex majors, fee per lot per night | EURUSD 11 · GBPUSD 9 · USDJPY 13 · USDCHF 18 | not published as a schedule |
| Exotics | EURTRY 114 · USDTRY 92 · USDTHB 31 · USDZAR 18 | not published |
| Low-differential pairs | NOKSEK 2 · SEKJPY 2 · NOKJPY 2 | not published |
| Crypto | BTCUSD 13 · ETHUSD 1 · SOLUSD 0.05 | 10% annual swap on longs after 5 days |
| Energies | XNGUSD, XTIUSD, XBRUSD: fees from day 1, no grace | not stated |
| JPY pairs | USDJPY, GBPJPY: fees from day 3, two-day grace | not stated |
| Conversion | applied to the account | any Classic or Raw account converts; all later accounts inherit it |
| Weekends | fees may be charged for calendar days, applied next business day | not stated |
Everything in the IC Markets column is on one page of their site. It is more detail than most reviews of swap-free accounts contain in total, and nobody appears to have put it in a table.
The symmetry test, applied
The question that decides whether a swap-free account is genuinely swap-free is simple: does the fee vary with the interest-rate differential of the pair? If it does, it is a swap with a different name on it. If it is flat across pairs, it is an administration charge.
The published schedule answers it:
EURTRY 114 NOKSEK 2
USDTRY 92 SEKJPY 2
USDTHB 31 NOKJPY 2
USDZAR 18 NZDJPY 4
EURUSD 11 AUDUSD 7Turkish lira and Thai baht carry the largest rate differentials against the dollar and euro of anything on the list. Norwegian and Swedish krona against each other, and against the yen, carry among the smallest. The fee tracks the differential, by a factor of fifty-seven between the extremes.
That is consistent with a swap being recalculated and relabelled rather than a flat administrative cost, and it is the broker’s own published number saying so. We are not alleging anything improper: the fee is disclosed, in a table, before you open the account. What it is not is flat.
Five grace days is three nights
The grace period is where the published mechanics matter most, and IC Markets sets them out precisely.
Grace days are consumed when a position stays open through the overnight rollover. An ordinary rollover costs one grace day. On the triple-swap night it costs three. For forex, metals, bonds and commodities that night is Wednesday; for energies and indices it is Friday.
So a position opened on Monday in a forex pair:
| Night | Grace days used | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 1 | 1 |
| Tuesday | 1 | 2 |
| Wednesday | 3 | 5 |
| Thursday | fees apply | — |
The advertised five days is three nights, for anything opened in the first half of the week. Nothing here is hidden; it is stated on the same page as the headline. It is simply not what “five days” sounds like.
And the five days is not universal. Natural gas, WTI and Brent carry no grace period at all, with fees from day one. USDJPY and GBPJPY get two days, not five.
Tickmill’s crypto clause is the same shape
Tickmill states that any Classic or Raw account converts to Islamic, spreads and execution stay the same, and a handling fee may apply on selected instruments once the grace period ends. Once one account converts, every account opened later inherits it.
Then the specific clause: a yearly 10% swap charge applies to long positions in digital currencies after the 5-day swap-free period. They publish the arithmetic. One lot of BTCUSD held overnight at 66,200 USD works out as
(1 × 66,200 × 10) ÷ (360 × 100) = 18.40 USD per nightA percentage-of-notional charge, computed on a 360-day convention, applied to longs only. Charging longs and not shorts is the signature of an interest cost rather than an administration cost, and it is disclosed plainly.
What to check on any broker’s schedule
The two schedules above give a template that works on anyone’s terms.
Does the fee vary by pair? Compare a high-differential exotic against a low-differential cross. If the ratio is fifty to one, the fee is a swap.
Is it charged on both sides? A fee on longs only, or a different fee long versus short, is interest.
How is the triple-swap night counted? One night that costs three grace days shortens a five-day window to three.
Which instruments are excluded? Energies, indices and crypto are the usual carve-outs, and they are often where the largest positions sit.
Are weekends charged? Calendar-day charging adds two nights a week that a trading-day count misses.
What revokes it? Brokers commonly reserve the right to withdraw swap-free status and, in some terms, to reclaim waived swaps retroactively. That clause is in the account terms rather than the marketing page.
When the broker publishes nothing
Six of the eight brokers we tried do not put a swap-free schedule on the open web at all. That is the normal case, and it changes what you can do rather than removing the question.
Ask for the schedule before opening, in writing. A firm charging a per-lot fee has the number in a system; a firm that will not send it before you fund is telling you something.
Ask the four questions above by name. Does the fee vary by pair, is it charged on both sides, how does the triple-swap night count, which instruments are excluded. Support staff answer specific questions far better than open ones.
Read the account terms, not the account page. Revocation and retroactive reclaim clauses live in the terms and almost never appear in marketing. The wording to look for gives the broker discretion to withdraw the status and to charge back swaps that were waived.
Take a screenshot with a date. These schedules change, and the version you agreed to is the one worth keeping. Every number on this page carries the date we read it for the same reason.
A broker that answers all four in writing has effectively published its schedule to you, which is the outcome that matters.
Where this connects
Both brokers here are covered in our reviews: IC Markets, where the FCA has published a warning about the global site the swap-free account sits on, and Exness, whose UK entity holds no retail permission at all. The account feature and the entity behind it are separate questions and both need answering.
For the underlying rules on what a broker in each jurisdiction may offer, see leverage limits by regulator.
What we checked, and what we didn’t
Every figure comes from IC Markets’ and Tickmill’s own published pages, read on 20 August 2026. The grace-day arithmetic is ours, applied to their stated rules.
We tried to collect the same schedule from six other brokers and could not: their sites block automated access, and we do not republish figures from third-party review sites without seeing the source. So this is two brokers, not a market survey, and we have said which two.
We have not opened a swap-free account, held a position through a rollover, or verified that the published schedule matches what is charged. The observation about the fee tracking interest-rate differentials is an inference from published numbers, not a statement about anyone’s intent.
Sources
- IC Markets — swap-free account, holding fee schedule and grace-day rules
- Tickmill — Islamic account terms