Fee breakdown
5. Swap across Cardano DEXes to see each fee in a live swap quote before signing.
Every order placed through Surge pays five things: the Surge fee (0.2% of the ADA side), the DEX's batcher fee (a flat 1–2.5 ADA), the Cardano network fee (about 0.2 ADA), the DEX's pool fee (about 0.3%, inside the price you get), and a refundable order deposit (2 ADA, returned when the order fills or is cancelled). Only the first goes to Surge.
The fee table
Surge fee
0.2% of the ADA side of the order — the ADA you spend on a buy, or the ADA you expect to receive on a sell. Reduced by your staking tier. No on-chain minimum; a 0.978 ADA minimum applies to the recorded figure (see The Surge fee and its minimum)
Surge
In the order transaction, as a separate output
Fee breakdown on the swap page; "Surge fee" in every trade record
Batcher fee
Minswap 2 ADA · SundaeSwap 1 ADA (V3 pools) or 2.5 ADA (V1) · WingRiders per pool, typically 2 ADA, max 5 · Splash as configured by Splash, 2 ADA if unknown
The DEX's batcher operator
Locked into the order, paid when the batcher fills it
"Batcher fee" line
Network fee
Set by the Cardano protocol from transaction size; Surge quotes and records ~0.2 ADA [ENV: currently 0.2 ADA; configurable]
Cardano stake pools
Deducted from the order transaction
"Network fee" line
Pool fee
The pool's liquidity-provider fee, typically 0.30% of the trade; some pools differ
The pool's liquidity providers
Never a separate payment — it is inside the exchange rate
"Pool fee" percentage on the swap page; recorded per trade
Order deposit
2 ADA on Minswap, SundaeSwap and WingRiders; none separately on Splash
Nobody — it comes back to you with the fill or the refund
Locked with the order; returned by the batcher
Included in "Required balance" previews; not a fee line
Cancelling a parked order pays one network fee. On Splash, cancelling also needs a plain-ADA coin of at least 5 ADA in the wallet as collateral (not spent unless the cancel script fails).
Worked example: one manual buy
You buy 500 ADA worth of a token on Minswap from your browser wallet, at 0.5% slippage.
Trade amount (goes into the pool)
500.00
Surge fee 0.2% × 500
1.00
Batcher fee
2.00
Order deposit (returned with the tokens)
2.00
Network fee
~0.20
Leaves your wallet when you sign
≈ 505.20
Deposit returned when the order fills
−2.00
Net cost of the trade
≈ 503.20
Pool fee 0.3%, already inside the tokens you receive
≈ 1.50 worth of tokens
Your all-in cost is therefore about 4.7 ADA on 500, or roughly 0.94%, of which Surge's share is 1 ADA (0.2%). At 100 ADA the same flat fees are 2.2 ADA plus 0.2 ADA Surge fee — about 2.7% — which is why small orders are expensive on every DEX regardless of Surge.
Round trips
Grid cycles and arbitrage round trips are two orders and pay everything twice: two Surge fees, two batcher fees, two network fees, and two deposits (each returned). Around 5–7 ADA per round trip before pool fees. See Grid, Sequential arbitrage, and Parallel arbitrage.
Split (aggregated) swaps
When the swap page splits an order across several DEXes, each leg is its own order and pays its own batcher fee, network fee, Surge fee and deposit. The quote's "total fees" line sums batcher + network + Surge across legs; pool fees are inside each leg's expected output. The aggregator only recommends a split when the better price outweighs the extra flat fees. See Manual swap.
How fees appear in your records
Each trade record stores the Surge fee, batcher fee, network fee and pool fee. Analytics sum all four into "fees paid"; realized P&L for grid, arbitrage and rule-based subtracts Surge + batcher + network but not the pool fee, because the pool fee is already inside the fill price. Expect the two numbers on a strategy page to differ by the pool fees. See Profit and loss.
Fees you do not pay
There is no subscription, no deposit or withdrawal fee, no fee for creating or holding a strategy, no fee on refunds beyond the network fee already paid, and no fee for staking or claiming rewards other than the network fee on the payout.
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