DCA Bot Calculator

Far more than the base order suggests. With a volume scale above 1 each safety order is larger than the last, so a $50 base order with five scaled safety orders can commit well over $1,000. This calculator shows the worst case — the amount you must have free if every order fills — and that is the number to size your account against, per bot.

An additional buy the bot places when the price falls a set percentage below the previous fill. It averages your entry down so the position needs a smaller bounce to reach the take-profit. The trade-off is that each one increases position size exactly when the trade is going against you.

Step scale multiplies the gap between successive safety orders, so the ladder spreads wider the further the price falls — that buys you deviation coverage. Volume scale multiplies each order's size, so later, cheaper fills pull the average entry down harder. Both raise capital requirements; volume scale raises it fastest.

Enough to survive an ordinary correction in the pair you are trading. Crypto majors routinely draw down 20–30%, and altcoins far more. A ladder that only covers 10% will be fully filled on a normal week and then simply holds a losing position with no capital left to respond.

Because the ladder ran out. Once every safety order has filled, the bot has no further action but to wait for the take-profit, which may be far above the market. DCA bots work in ranging and rising markets; a sustained downtrend is the failure case, and no setting removes that risk — it only moves the price at which it happens.