Rebate, CPA or hybrid: how IB commission plans compare

Three plans, two things to pay for

Every plan a broker offers an introducing broker pays for activity, arrivals or both. A rebate pays a fixed amount per lot your clients trade, month after month. A CPA — cost per acquisition — pays once for each new client who meets the programme's conditions. A hybrid plan pays some of each, at lower rates. For the model behind all three, see what an introducing broker is.

All three are offered by eplanet¹. Below, each plan is taken apart, then all three are run against two illustrative books.

How a rebate plan pays

A rebate is a fixed amount per standard lot traded by a client you referred, paid for as long as that client trades. A standard forex lot is 100,000 units of the base currency — the contract size MetaTrader 5's documentation uses for one lot of EUR/USD² — so a 0.1-lot trade earns a tenth of the rate. The rate is set in your partner agreement; the structure around it is what moves it.

Ladders: how a rate climbs

Many rebate plans are tiered. The rate sits on a ladder of rungs, and your rung is set by the month's traded lots, its active client count, or both. Where both ladders apply, programmes often pay on whichever is higher — so a large book of light traders climbs on client count, and a small book of heavy traders on volume.

Take 60 active clients who traded 300 lots between them. Volume puts them on rung 1, at an illustrative $5; client count puts them on rung 2, at $7. Under whichever-is-higher they are paid $7 on all 300 lots: $2,100, not $1,500. Check whether a rung covers every lot in the month or only lots above the threshold. Agreements differ.

Instrument groups and account types

The rate is rarely one number. Programmes commonly give each instrument group — metals, forex, everything else — its own ladder, and account types split it again, because the broker earns differently on each. The rebate plan at eplanet, for instance, distinguishes account types and the groups metals, forex and other, and climbs on volume and client-count ladders, whichever is higher¹. A book's mix matters as much as its size.

Markup: the part the client pays

Some programmes let the IB add a markup — an extra amount per lot on top of the rebate. The broker does not fund it: it is added to the client's cost, usually as a wider spread or a higher commission, so it raises the IB's income and the client's cost by the same amount. Disclosure rules can apply. In the United States, NFA's forex guidance says a forex dealer member or IB that represents its services as commission free must prominently disclose how it is compensated³. Check the rules where you and your audience are.

How a CPA plan pays

A CPA is a single payment for each referred client who qualifies, and the qualification rules are the whole plan. A client who deposits, places two trades and leaves is worth nothing. The conditions usually stack:

• A minimum first deposit, so that small test accounts do not qualify.
• A minimum volume in lots, often within a set window after the account opens.
• A minimum number of trades, so that one large position cannot meet the volume test alone.
• A minimum trade duration, for the same reason holding-time rules exist on rebates.

Two further structures are common. CPA amounts are often tiered by the client's country, because a client's expected value to the broker differs by market. And many plans add a bonus when qualified clients in a period cross set thresholds. The same number of clients can be worth very different sums depending on where they live and when they qualified.

CPA pays early and pays once. The money arrives when the client qualifies, whatever that client does next. Read the other way: a client who trades for five years earns a CPA IB exactly what a client who trades for five weeks does.

How a hybrid plan pays

A hybrid pays part of the CPA upfront for each qualifying client, then a rebate set lower than the pure rebate plan's — typically a rung down the same ladder. Both sets of conditions apply. You give up part of the rebate on every future lot to be paid something now, and most of the CPA for a stake in what those clients trade later. It pays best in the middle: on clients who stay long enough to trade real volume, but not so long that the full rebate would have been worth more.

Twelve months, two illustrative IBs

Every figure in this section is illustrative — round numbers to show the mechanics, not any broker's rates. Three plans: a rebate of $7 a lot; a CPA of $300 per qualified client; and a hybrid paying $120 per qualified client plus $5 a lot, a rung down the ladder above. Rates are held flat for the year.

The educator runs a course and a small community: five new clients a month, four in five of whom qualify for CPA, each trading 5 lots a month, with 95% still trading the following month. The creator posts short videos to a large audience: thirty new clients a month, half qualifying, each trading 1.5 lots a month, with half still trading the following month. New clients arrive at the same pace all year.

The creator's column is the simple one. The average client trades 3 lots in total — 1.5 a month for two months — so a rebate has almost nothing to pay on, while CPA collects $300 on each of 180 qualified clients. The plan that pays for arrivals wins by a wide margin, as long as clients keep qualifying. On the same assumptions, if only one in five qualified, CPA would fall to $21,600.

The educator's column is the instructive one. CPA still pays most in year one, because a rebate book takes time to build: a client who joins in month 11 has traded for only two months by year end. But by month 12 the rebate pays about $1,610 a month against CPA's steady $1,200, and the clients already in the book have roughly $30,000 of rebate still to trade. The CPA has nothing more to pay on any of them.

a qualified client's lifetime volume at which the illustrative hybrid overtakes the $300 CPA

36 lots

at which the illustrative $7 rebate overtakes the $300 CPA

43 lots

at which the illustrative $7 rebate overtakes the hybrid

60 lots

Those thresholds are the comparison compressed. On these illustrative rates, a qualified client who will trade fewer than 36 lots in their lifetime is worth most on CPA; between 36 and 60, on the hybrid; above 60, on the rebate. The educator's average client trades about 100 lots; the creator's, 3. Clients who never qualify earn nothing on CPA and still earn on a rebate.

Retention is the deciding variable

Every comparison above turns on one number: the lots a client trades over their whole time with you — activity multiplied by retention. A book that keeps 95% of its traders each month keeps the average client for twenty months; one that keeps 50%, for two. In the example, a dollar on the rebate rate shifts the CPA break-even by five to seven lots. Retention alone moves the average stay by a factor of ten.

So measure it before you choose. If you already refer clients, your own history is the evidence: how many of last year's clients still trade, and how much. If you are starting out, the audience carries signals — whether people return, ask questions and stay for months. How to read a trading audience honestly covers what can be measured from outside. Choose the plan that fits the retention you can show, not the one you hope for.

A rebate book is an asset only while it is looked after; retention is partly the IB's own work, not only a property of the audience. The marketing that keeps referred traders informed and returning pays on a rebate plan for as long as they stay — how IBs win and keep clients covers both halves of that work.

What to check in the agreement

The partner agreement is where a plan actually lives; the marketing page is a summary. Read these clauses before the first referral.