Can a scalping EA make money after costs?

EA Trade Tester Demo lab How we test For AI agents

Published 11 November 2026 · methods v2.5 · by TrueTest

Scalping EAs promise many small wins. The arithmetic is unforgiving: with small targets and stops, the cost of each round trip is a large share of every trade. Here is what our own search found, and how to work out what your scalper needs.

Test my scalper with real costs See a full example first

Drop your .mq5/.mq4 code, a Python bot or an MT5 report on the home page. The first read takes seconds and needs no sign-up; the lab verdict is free too. Only the detailed technical report is paid (the full PDF report is GBP 49). The price shown is the total price: no VAT is added. TrueTest is not VAT-registered in the UK. We read your code as text and never run it as given; an outside AI service drafts the rule card only if you tick the box (see Security). Not financial advice.

What did our scalping search find?

We tested 8,506 short-timeframe scalping settings and 48 published scalping bots on real prices with costs.
Before costs, the best settings made about 0.3 pip a trade; a EURUSD round trip cost about 1.1 pip in that search.
0 of 3,912 indicator and time-anchored settings made money after costs on the data set we ranked them on.
Of 4,594 time-of-day windows, one held up, and it was too weak across the whole data set to use.
All 48 bots lost money in our test once costs were included.

These are counts from our own tests (What our tests taught us), not a forecast for your EA.

What win rate does a scalper need?

With a target of T pips, a stop of S pips and a round-trip cost of c pips, a win pays T - c and a loss costs S + c, so the break-even win rate is (S + c) / (T + S).

Worked example: EURUSD in the London morning costs about 1.17 pips a round trip in our lab (spread, slippage, commission, safety margin). A scalper with a 5-pip target and a 5-pip stop then needs to win (5 + 1.17) / 10 = 62% of its trades just to break even, not the 50% the equal target and stop suggest. At the roll-over hour the cost is about 1.57 pips and the bar is higher again.

Why do scalping backtests look better than live?

A fixed spread in the tester hides the hours when the spread is several times wider.
Bar data cannot show what happened inside a bar; a 5-pip target and a 5-pip stop can both be touched in one M15 bar. Our lab assumes the stop first.
Live fills slip more on fast moves, exactly when scalpers trade.

More guides: Is my EA backtest real or luck? · MT5 Strategy Tester report checker · Is my EA martingale or grid? How to tell · How to test a gold (XAUUSD) EA properly · How many backtests? Overfitting explained · TrueTest vs StrategyQuant, Forex Tester, MT5 · MQL5 / MQL4 EA code checker · EA trading at the wrong hour? Server time · Does my EA repaint or look ahead? · Does my EA make money every year? · Will my EA pass a prop-firm challenge? · What to check before you buy an EA

Questions people ask

Is scalping always unprofitable?

We do not say that. In our tests it was the extreme case of costs eating the edge; a scalper needs an unusually large edge before costs.

Will a raw-spread account fix it?

It lowers the spread but adds commission. Compare the whole round trip in pips at the hours your EA trades.

Can you test tick-level scalpers?

Our bars are 15 minutes, so a scalper that lives inside one bar cannot be judged exactly; the lab says when a rule cannot be rebuilt fairly.

Is this financial advice?

No. It is arithmetic and our test counts. Not financial advice.