Every fill must beat the fees
A grid bot only prints if each captured step is wider than the round-trip fee — otherwise you’re paying the exchange to churn. This tool sizes the spacing, capital and net-per-fill so you can see the fee floor. Model total returns on the grid bot profit calculator.
Grid bots: the spacing decides everything
A grid bot places buys and sells at fixed intervals across a range, harvesting each oscillation. The spacing is the whole strategy: too tight and every fill's profit dies to fees; too wide and the bot fills rarely. The floor: each grid step must exceed roughly 2× the round-trip fee plus spread — at 0.1% taker fees, steps under 0.4–0.5% are working for the exchange.
The worked setup: a coin oscillating in a $1.80–$2.20 range with 0.05% maker fees supports ~20 grids of 1% spacing, each capturing ~0.9% net per completed cycle. The bot's yield then depends entirely on how often price crosses levels — a choppy range might cycle each grid daily; a quiet one, weekly. Backtested "grid APYs" assume the chop continues, which is the actual bet being made.
The failure mode nobody prices: range escape. When price trends out the bottom of the grid, the bot has systematically bought all the way down and holds maximum bags at the worst prices — a mechanical average-down. Every grid needs a hard floor stop, priced as the cost of the strategy rather than a surprise.