A copier funds an account in April, puts it behind one lead trader, and follows every position for a quarter. At the end of it, the leader’s profile shows a gain, and the copier’s account shows a smaller one.
Four costs sit between those two numbers, and on the best copy trading platform as on the worst, the advertised commission is the only one a ranking page ever quotes. The lead trader takes a share of the profit. The spread is paid twice, and the copied order goes in second, so it fills worse. On a perpetual contract, funding is paid every eight hours that the position is open.
Every ranked list of copy trading platforms puts one broker at the top and stops there. None of them adds those four costs into one figure, and none publishes a method for checking them.
This Surgence Labs guide runs the arithmetic in the other order. It publishes the measurement method first, then the numbers that method supports, then 10 platforms compared on what a copier can verify. If you run growth at a venue rather than copy on one, the same table shows where your copy product places, and the playbook covers the rest.
