Dollar-cost averaging means buying a fixed dollar amount on a schedule, whatever the price. This calculator replays a plan on your own daily price file or a scenario path, with your platform's published commission, and shows what it cost, how deep it went underwater, and how it compares with investing the same total on day one. Canadian platforms charge very different amounts per buy, and on a plan with dozens of purchases that difference adds up.
How to use it
- Choose the Coin, then a scenario path or paste or upload your own daily CAD prices.
- Enter “Each purchase” and “How often”, and the first purchase and valuation dates.
- Choose a Platform cost to load a published commission, or enter your own “Spread / commission per buy” and “Flat fee per buy”.
- Read the result against the money put in, the lump-sum comparison and the worst moment along the way.
- Try other shapes or start dates to see how much the result depends on the path.
What averaging does, and what it does not
A fixed dollar amount buys more coins when the price is low and fewer when it is high, so your average cost per coin ends up below the simple average of the prices you paid. That is arithmetic, not a forecast. DCA changes when you buy, not what the asset does: whether a plan ends in profit depends on where the price finishes compared with your average cost.
Compared with a lump sum, DCA does better when prices fall after you start and worse when they rise. The tool's lump-sum figure invests the same total on the first purchase date, with the same costs, which assumes you had all the money on day one.
Worked example: the price halves, then recovers (illustrative)
Suppose a coin starts at $100,000, falls in a straight line to $50,000 over 360 days, then climbs back to $100,000 over the next 360. You buy $250 every 30 days with a 1.5% cost per buy: 25 purchases, $6,250 put in. The price ends exactly where it started, yet the coins are worth $8,446.28, a 35.1% gain, because most of the buying happened below $100,000. Your average cost is $73,997.11 a coin, against a simple average purchase price of $76,000.
A lump sum of $6,250 on day one would be worth $6,157.64 (−1.5%): the costs, and nothing else. The path still hurts along the way. At the worst point the plan was 33.5% below the money put in, and it stayed underwater for 501 days in a row.
Change the shape and the comparison flips. On a steady climb from $50,000 to $100,000 over the same 720 days, the plan gains 37.1% but a lump sum gains 97.0%. On a steady fall from $100,000 to $50,000, the plan loses 31.5% and a lump sum loses 50.7%.
| Price path | DCA value | Lump sum on day one |
|---|---|---|
| $100,000 → $50,000 → $100,000 | $8,446 (+35.1%) | $6,158 (−1.5%) |
| $50,000 → $100,000 | $8,566 (+37.1%) | $12,315 (+97.0%) |
| $100,000 → $50,000 | $4,283 (−31.5%) | $3,079 (−50.7%) |
What platform costs do to a plan
In the halve-and-recover example, 1.5% per buy cost $92.36 over 25 purchases. At 0.2% the plan ends at $8,555.86, $109.58 more; at 2.5% it ends at $8,363.87. On a longer plan, or a larger one, the gap grows in proportion.
The Platform cost menu loads the commission each platform publishes, checked 2026-11-01. Most also charge a spread inside the quoted price that they do not publish; where that applies, add your own estimate to the commission. These figures are for comparison only and are not a recommendation of any platform.
| Platform option in the tool | Published commission | Caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Wealthsimple | 0.5% | Plus a spread not published; $1 surcharge under $100 |
| Shakepay recurring BTC | 0% | Recurring Bitcoin buys only, from 7 days after setup; other buys carry a spread not published |
| Newton Tier 1 (BTC, ETH) | 1.00–1.15% (1.15% used) | Tier 2 assets such as SOL: 1.25–1.45% (1.45% used) |
| NDAX | 0.20% | Order-book price; the market's bid/ask gap still applies |
| Bitbuy Pro | 0.50% | Express trades have no fee but a spread not published |
| Kraken instant/recurring | 1% | Plus a spread not published; Kraken Pro taker 0.80% |
Limits, and the records a plan creates
The price history is the file you supply or a simplified scenario path, one price per day; real fills differ by time of day and by the platform's quote. Monthly means every 30 days, so purchase dates drift through the calendar. A replay is not a forecast, and a scenario path is a simplification of how prices actually move.
Every purchase adds to your adjusted cost base, and nothing is taxable until you sell or swap. A recurring buy can also trigger the superficial loss rule if you sell the same coin at a loss within 30 days of a purchase. Import your platform's history into the ACB calculator to keep the average cost right.
What this means for you
Use DCA to reduce the regret of bad timing, not to make a bad asset good. Compare the plan against a lump sum on the same path to see what spreading the buys actually did.
Spreads compound across many small buys. On Canadian platforms that quote a spread rather than a fee, a 1.5% spread on every buy costs as much as a 1.5% fee.
Definitions
- Spread
- The difference between the price you pay and the market price, kept by the platform.
- Average cost
- Total invested ÷ coins bought; the cost base of the stack.
- Lump sum
- Investing the same total on the first day, for comparison.