Free trading bots: what's behind the zero-cost price tag

When a free trading robot hits the market, the natural question is how it’s funded. If it has no license price, requires no subscription, and has no costs to start trading, it is free in the literal sense. But that doesn't mean it generates no revenue: all maintenance has a cost, and understanding exactly how it works avoids confusion later on.

The bot is not for sale: there is no price, license, or subscription

Most trading software on the market follows a classic model: you pay to use it, whether through a one-time fee or a monthly subscription, and that payment exists regardless of the results. Boosty does not follow that model. The bot, the course, and the community have no access fees, and this does not depend on whether your account makes or loses money: the software itself is never billed, neither when you first connect it nor at any point thereafter.

There are also no entry costs associated with the initial deposit. The capital you put into your broker account to start trading remains yours at all times and can be withdrawn in full, at any time, without penalty or waiting periods, regardless of whether the account has made a profit.

This is not the same as saying "there is no revenue for Boosty." It means that this revenue is not tied to having the bot installed, but to something completely different: whether or not the bot helps generate real profits in your account. We cover the full operation of that piece of software in how the trading bot works.

Revenue comes from a success fee, not a usage fee

Revenue comes from a success fee: Boosty keeps a percentage of the actual profits the bot generates in your account, not a payment for using it. That percentage is applied only to the profit that exceeds the previous all-time high reached by the account, known in the industry as a high-water mark.

In practice, the commission is never charged twice on the same profit. If your account goes up, down, and back up to the same previous point, nothing is charged for that second leg, because it does not represent new profit above the previous record. Only when the account value exceeds that all-time high is a commission generated, calculated exclusively on the portion that is effectively new profit.

Selling software creates a different incentive than charging for results

If Boosty charged a fixed price for the bot, the incentive would be to sell as many licenses as possible, regardless of whether those accounts performed well or poorly afterward. By not selling the bot and instead relying on a commission on real profits, that incentive shifts:

This is not a promise of results: aligning incentives in this way does not eliminate market risk or ensure that every account will generate profits. If you want to understand in more detail exactly what the component that executes trades under this model is, and what it decides on its own versus what the team behind it decides, we cover it in what is a trading bot.

When do you pay and when do you pay nothing?

The question that really matters is this: can you end up paying out of your own pocket without having earned anything at all? The answer is no. The commission is deducted from realized profits, never from the capital you deposited, and that capital, with or without profits, can be withdrawn in full at any time. An example with an account starting with 1,000 euros shows this clearly:

The calculation is always based on the account's all-time high, not on the previous day's balance or an average.

Free means the bot is not for sale, not that there are no costs

A free trading robot, in Boosty's case, is free in the literal sense of the word applied to software: the bot has no price, it is not for sale, there is no paid version hidden behind it, and no future update will reveal a hidden cost. What exists, in parallel, is a commission on the profits it generates, charged only when those profits exist. That is the complete distinction: it is not that there is no cost associated with the service, but that this cost is not in the bot itself, but in the result it produces.