How we calculate pricing: a transparent methodology

Summary

BrokerTech publishes a flat annual price of $72,000 for the full broker tech stack — CRM, IB management, MT5 plugins, mobile app, PSP integrations, KYC — with zero setup fees and month-to-month billing. This page documents the exact inputs behind that number, the spreadsheet we use to compare three-year total cost of ownership against B2Core, Leverate and FXBO, the line items competitors typically leave out of their first quote, and the scenarios where a competitor may genuinely be a better fit than we are. Pricing transparency is a commercial choice, not a marketing tactic: we would rather lose a deal than win it on a number we cannot defend.

Why publish our methodology

Broker tech pricing in this industry is opaque by convention. Public pricing pages are rare. First quotes are routinely below the negotiated contract value. Renewal uplift clauses, module add-on fees, and per-integration charges are disclosed late in the sales process. The result is that ops leads have to negotiate contracts without a clear benchmark, and internal stakeholders ask reasonable questions the vendor has not answered in writing.

We publish our methodology because a buyer who understands how we price is a buyer who stays a customer. Month-to-month billing only works if the customer can check the math every month and conclude the number is still correct. If we raise a price we say why. If a competitor is cheaper for a specific use case we say that too.

The BrokerTech pricing inputs

Our $72,000 annual price is built from the following components, averaged across the Tier-2 brokers we typically serve.

Fixed costs we absorb. Infrastructure (16+ microservices across managed Kubernetes, database clusters, object storage, CDN), 24/7 on-call engineering, quarterly security audits, SOC-style logging and retention, compliance tooling, and ongoing platform development. These costs are constant regardless of which customer is using the platform.

Variable costs per customer. Tenant provisioning, dedicated staging environment, PSP integration work for the customer's specific providers, MT5 plugin deployment to the customer's server, onboarding engineering hours, and 60 days of post-cutover hypercare. These costs are real but predictable.

Benchmark inputs. We track publicly stated and negotiated pricing from the three most common competitors in our segment — B2Core, Leverate and FXBO — plus two regional alternatives. Benchmarks are refreshed quarterly from a combination of customer disclosures (with permission), published reseller rate cards, and publicly available contract filings where they exist. Benchmarks inform where our price sits; they do not set our price. We set our price by adding a reasonable margin to our true cost of delivery and then checking it against the benchmark for sanity.

What is deliberately not an input. We do not price by customer revenue, by trading volume, by number of clients, or by assets under management. Those variables belong to the broker's business, not to the software. A flat price means our incentives stay aligned with the customer's growth rather than taxing it.

Comparing TCO: the spreadsheet we used

The table below is the actual comparison we run for prospects evaluating a switch. All figures are in USD. Competitor figures are based on public rate cards and customer-disclosed quotes as of the most recent benchmark refresh. Where a figure is an estimate rather than a published number we mark it "est." Ranges for competitors reflect the spread we have seen across deals; we use the midpoint for the TCO calculation.

The headline 47% lower TCO claim is computed against B2Core using 3-year totals: (411,000 − 216,000) / 411,000 = 47.4%. The $65,000+ annual savings figure is the Year 1 delta against B2Core (137,000 − 72,000 = 65,000).

A few notes on how to read this table honestly:

• Year 2 and Year 3 uplifts are modeled using the midpoint of published renewal clauses we have seen. Actual uplift varies by contract.
• Add-on line items (IB module, mobile app, PSP integration) are included in every quote we have seen from B2Core and FXBO. Leverate bundles the IB module but charges separately for the mobile app.
• The contract-minimum row is material: B2Core and Leverate 12-month minimums mean a mid-year exit costs the full remaining term. Month-to-month with BrokerTech means a one-month notice.

What we don't charge for

The following are included in the $72,000 annual price. None of them are "free trial" or "first year free" — they are permanently included.

• Free migration. Phases 1–4 of a standard migration are performed at no cost. Assessment, ETL, integration, testing, go-live, hypercare. If your migration needs more than 14 days of elapsed time for reasons within our control, we absorb the additional engineering cost.
• Free PSP integrations. Each PSP we integrate against is free. Our standard target is 3–5 business days per PSP once the PSP has provided credentials and test cards. You can add more PSPs later at no charge.
• No setup fee. There is no one-time onboarding fee, implementation fee, provisioning fee, or activation fee.
• No lock-in. Month-to-month billing with a 30-day notice period. If you choose to leave we provide a full data export in standard formats (CSV, JSON) at no charge within 10 business days.
• Training. Up to 8 hours of live training plus recorded walkthroughs. Additional training is available at cost.
• All standard modules. CRM, IB management, KYC integration, email and SMS transactional, reporting, audit log, admin panel. Mobile app is a line item at $7,200 because it carries real marginal cost (app store presence, platform certificates, per-platform release engineering).

What competitors don't tell you

The following are the line items most commonly missing from a first quote in our segment. They are not always hidden on purpose — sometimes the salesperson has not been asked the right question. Ask them anyway.

• Renewal uplift. Is there an annual uplift clause? What is the cap? Is CPI-linked or fixed percentage? Can it be waived in exchange for a longer term?
• Training credits. Does the quoted price include training hours? How many? What is the per-hour rate after?
• Module add-ons. Is IB management included or add-on? Mobile app? Affiliate program? White-label portal? Multi-language support?
• Integration fees. Per-PSP fees. Per-KYC-vendor fees. Per-SMS-gateway fees. Custom-report engineering fees. MT5 manager plugin fees.
• Environment fees. Is a staging environment included? A sandbox? Per-environment uplift?
• Support tiering. Is 24/7 support standard or premium? What is the SLA? What is the escalation path?
• Exit cost. What does data export cost on termination? In what format? On what timeline?

If you want a single checklist to bring to a competitor sales call, the seven bullets above are it.

When we're more expensive

We are not the best choice for every broker. The following scenarios are cases where a competitor may genuinely be cheaper or better-fit than BrokerTech, and we will tell you so during the assessment.

Very high-volume IB-only brokers. If your business is 90%+ IB-driven with minimal direct retail acquisition, and your IB count is well into the thousands with complex multi-level override structures, the incremental value of our end-to-end stack is lower. A specialist IB-focused vendor may match our functionality on the IB module alone at a lower cost. We integrate cleanly with third-party IB tools if that is the right answer.

Legacy MT4-only setups with specialized plugin stacks. We are MT5-first. If you run MT4 with a specific set of third-party plugins (certain bridge providers, certain risk engines) that have not been ported to MT5, the integration effort may push the effective price above a competitor who already supports your plugin stack on MT4 natively. We will not quote a fictional number to win the deal.

Single-regulator micro-brokers under $30,000/year. If your entire tech budget is under $30,000/year and you serve a small client base in a single jurisdiction, a lighter-weight regional CRM may be more appropriate than our full platform. Our $72,000 price assumes you need the full stack. If you only need 40% of it we are not the efficient choice.

Custom BI-first organizations. If your differentiator is a proprietary BI layer and you want full database-level access to build it against, our managed model is a constraint rather than a benefit. We expose a comprehensive reporting API but we do not give direct access to underlying production databases.

Specific regulatory regimes requiring on-premise deployment. Our standard deployment is multi-tenant cloud. If your regulator mandates strict on-premise hosting within a specific jurisdiction with no cloud option, the per-customer infrastructure cost rises materially and we will either quote accordingly or decline the engagement.

Get a customized TCO estimate

The spreadsheet above uses midpoint figures. Your actual TCO depends on your specific PSP count, IB structure, mobile app needs, and existing contract exit timing. We will run the math for your stack and send you a written estimate with the full workings — including the scenarios where a competitor might beat us. Request a customized TCO estimate and we will return it within two business days.