The hidden cost of off-the-shelf trading tech
The licence is the cheap part. The integration tax is what kills the budget. Here is how we estimate true total-cost-of-ownership for a typical broker tech stack.
Administrator
Founders see the platform licence and assume that is the cost. It almost never is.
The real cost of broker tech stack is the integration tax — the cost of making CRM, KYC provider, payment processors, bridge, manager API, and reporting layer talk to each other in a way that survives 24-month-old data.
A worked example
For a medium-complexity new broker, our typical first-year breakdown looks like:
- Platform licence: 25%
- Hosting + DR: 15%
- LP credit / posting: 10%
- Bridge + risk tools: 15%
- Integration + ops: 35%
That last line is the one most decks under-quote.
Why
Because the assumption is that integrations are one-time costs. They are not. They are operating costs. Vendor APIs change. KYC provider terms change. Card processors come and go. Every change touches your stack.
What we recommend
- Plan integrations as a team, not a checklist.
- Own the source code for anything custom you commission.
- Treat integration tests like trading risk: they protect you from the unknowable.
The brokers we run are cheaper to operate after year one. That is not luck; it is design.
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