Tradovate NFA Assessment Fee Per Side

Every futures contract you trade carries a small pass-through charge called the NFA assessment fee. As of 2026 it's $0.01 per side, billed by the National Futures Association to your broker, who then passes it on to you. The words "per side" are what trip people up: you pay it when you open a position and again when you close, so a single round-turn contract costs $0.02 total. It's nothing on one trade. Scalp micros a hundred times a day and it starts to matter.

What the NFA Assessment Fee Actually Is

The NFA funds part of its operations through this assessment on every futures and options-on-futures transaction that its member firms clear. Your broker, the FCM, doesn't keep a cent of it. It collects the fee and forwards it to the NFA. That's why it shows up as its own line, separate from commission, exchange fees, and clearing fees. It has nothing to do with which plan you're on or how sharp a rate you negotiated. Everyone pays the same NFA fee, from a first-week beginner to a firm trading thousands of lots.

How Much It Costs in 2026

Here's the current schedule. Treat the numbers as a snapshot, because the NFA adjusts the rate every so often based on its budget.

Before you bake any figure into a cost model, confirm the live number on the NFA's published fee schedule. Rates that look permanent have a way of moving.

Micros Pay the Same as Minis

This is the catch that surprises new micro traders. The NFA fee is a flat amount per contract, and it does not scale with contract size. A Micro E-mini like MES or MNQ is charged the same $0.01 per side as its full-size cousin, ES or NQ. On a standard contract that's a rounding error against your commission and exchange costs. On a micro, where your entire edge might be a couple of ticks, a flat fee weighs proportionally much heavier. Round-turn ten micros and that's twenty sides, or $0.20 in NFA fees alone, before commission and exchange charges even enter the picture.

Where to Find the NFA Fee in Tradovate

The NFA fee is usually rolled into the total fees shown on your fills, and itemized on your statement. Here's how to pull it apart.

The NFA fee is only one slice of your true cost per trade. Your broker commission is the bigger piece, and it does change with your plan, so compare the Tradovate commission rates for micros and minis when you're working out what a strategy really costs to run.

The Short Version

The NFA assessment fee is a flat, per-side, pass-through charge on every futures trade. In 2026 it's $0.01 a side, doubling to $0.02 on July 1, 2027. It doesn't care about contract size, so micros carry the same fee as full-size contracts. Multiply your fills by the current rate, and always confirm the number against the NFA's live schedule before you rely on it.

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