What a gilt costs to deal is not one fee but a shape — a commission, a spread, or neither — and understanding the shape is what lets a stated dealing cost sit honestly beside the yield the market quotes.
Fees come in shapes
Ask what a gilt costs to deal and the honest answer is that it depends on the shape of the cost, not on a single number. A provider may charge a flat commission per trade, take its margin in the spread between the buying and selling price, charge neither and recover the cost elsewhere, or deal direct and quote a published rate. GiltIQ does not publish any provider's tariff; it records the dealing cost you actually paid per booking, and describes the shapes a cost can take.
That is deliberate. A named provider's fee is the provider's to publish and change, and quoting one here would be stale within a season. What stays true is the shape: whether a cost is a commission, a spread, or neither, and where in the cash it bites.
A market maker quotes two prices, one to buy at and one to sell at, and the gap between them is the spread. If you buy at the higher of the two and later sell at the lower, you have paid the spread whether or not a commission was ever charged. A provider that charges no commission can still carry a cost in a wider spread, so the absence of a fee line on the statement is not the absence of a cost.
This is the cost a reader is most likely to miss, because it never appears as a separate charge. It is embedded in the price, and comparing two providers on the fee alone can leave the spread out of the reckoning.
A commission is per trade
A flat commission is charged each time you deal, so its bite depends on the size of the trade. On a small nominal a fixed fee is a larger proportion of the cash, and on a large one it is smaller. That is why the same commission can be trivial on one purchase and material on another, and why the dealing cost is recorded per booking rather than assumed as a single rate.
Recording it per trade also lets a report show the cost against the cash it was paid on, which is the only way the proportion makes sense. A fee in isolation says little; a fee against the nominal it was charged on says what it cost.
That is also why two trades of very different size on the same tariff can carry the same fee line but very different fee proportions. The percentage is the figure that compares, and it exists only once the fee is set against the nominal it was charged on.
What the site records
Each trade in GiltIQ keeps a fees figure beside the price, entered from the contract note, so the dealing cost sits with the booking it belongs to. The net yield column on the gilt lists is the redemption yield after income tax on the coupons, not after fees; a dealing cost is a cash amount recorded per trade rather than a deduction built into the quoted yield. Beside it, the gross yield is the same return before income tax, so the two columns show the return gross and net of tax, with the dealing cost still a separate, stated figure. A reader wanting the return after a stated dealing cost sets that recorded cost against the cash committed, alongside the net yield for the stated tax band.
Keeping the two apart is what makes the arithmetic honest: the net yield describes the return on the investment, and the dealing cost describes what it cost to enter. Combining them, with both stated, is where a return after cost becomes meaningful.
The shapes of a cost
The table sets out the shapes a dealing cost takes and where each one shows on a statement.
| Cost shape | How it bites | Where it shows |
| Commission | Per trade; larger in proportion on small sizes | A fee line, recorded per booking |
| Spread | Paid on entry and exit, fee or not | Inside the price, not a separate line |
| No explicit fee | Wrapped elsewhere or a published dealing rate | Depends on the provider's model |
Why cost matters less over a longer hold
A dealing cost is a one-off at the point of purchase, and its effect on the yearly return falls as the holding period lengthens, because it is spread over more years. A cost that is material on a one-year hold is a smaller drag on a ten-year one. That is arithmetic, not advice about how long to hold — the point is that a stated cost and a stated horizon have to be read together for the return to mean anything.
The trades ledger keeps the fees with each booking, and the conventional gilts list carries the yields the market quotes, so a reader can set the two side by side with both figures stated.
Why there is no single number
It would be convenient if dealing a gilt cost one advertised amount, and it does not. The cost depends on the route, the size of the trade and the provider's model, and a figure that was right for one of those would mislead on the others. That is why this article describes shapes rather than quoting a tariff, and why the site records the cost you actually paid rather than publishing a rate.
The number that matters to a decision is the one on your own contract note. Set against the cash you committed, it says what the dealing cost in proportion; set against the horizon you expect to hold, it says what it costs a year. Both need the stated cost, not a named provider's headline.
Background, not advice
This article explains the shapes a gilt dealing cost can take; it is general background, not investment, tax or legal advice for any reader's circumstances. Every figure on the site carries the report it came from, a provider's current tariff is the provider's own to publish, and the primary source for a cost you actually paid is your contract note.