What Is the Break-Even Price? Definition & Example

Break-even is the price at which a trade returns precisely what you committed — no profit, no loss, after every cost. It is never your entry price, and the gap between the two is larger than most traders assume.

Three things push it away from entry. The entry fee, charged when you open. The exit fee, charged when you close. And funding, accruing continuously for as long as a perpetual position stays open. For a long, all three push break-even upward; for a short, downward.

At Hyperliquid's 0.035% taker rate, a round trip costs 0.07% of notional, so break-even sits roughly 0.07% beyond entry. That is trivially small once. It is not small two hundred times: turning over a $10,000 position twice daily for a year means $7.3 million of notional and about $5,110 in fees, which on a $10,000 account is a 51% annual hurdle before profit begins.

On longer holds the ranking inverts completely. Fees are one-off; funding accrues. A position held three days on a pair paying 0.01% hourly accumulates 0.72% in funding — more than ten times the round-trip fee. For swing positions, funding is the dominant cost and fees are the rounding error, which is the exact opposite of the intraday picture.

Two levers reduce it. Filling as maker rather than taker can cut fee cost by more than half, and on rebate venues can place break-even closer than entry. And simply holding for less time reduces funding proportionally. Work out your number with the break-even calculator.