How do swaps actually work?

Until IG added swaps, everything on its crypto account ran through pounds: you bought coins with GBP and sold them back to GBP, full stop. Swaps arrived as part of IG's expansion of the crypto offering, and they close that loop properly.

One transaction, no fiat leg

You choose the coin you hold, the coin you want, and the amount. IG quotes the exchange with the fee included, you confirm, and the new coin replaces the old one in your account almost instantly. Your money never touches pounds in between, which means no waiting on a sale to settle before the second purchase, no spending time out of the market between the two legs, and one fee where the old route charged two. IG's own framing is the accurate one: one swap, one fee.

IG cryptocurrency platform on desktop showing coins available to trade and swap with live prices
Swaps run across IG's full coin range, from the big three down to the long tail of altcoins.

Placing one, step by step

From the crypto section of the platform, open the coin you hold and choose the swap option, pick the destination coin, and enter the amount you want to move. The preview shows precisely how much of the new coin you will receive with the fee already inside the number, exactly as IG's buy flow does. Confirm, and both balances update together. There is no order book to read and no timing decision beyond the one you have already made about the coins themselves.

Which coins can you swap?

Swap functionality spans IG's full range of 100 or more tokens, so you are not limited to routing in and out of Bitcoin. The fee, not the pair, is what changes, and it depends on one question: are both sides of the swap among the big three?

What does a swap cost?

IG applies the same two-tier pricing to swaps as it does to buying: the route between Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana is the cheap lane, and everything else pays the flat rate.

IG swap costs by coin, as published on IG's fees page, July 2026.
Swap Fee Cost on a £1,000 swap
Between BTC, ETH and SOL 0% commission + 0.07% external fee About 70p
Any swap involving another coin Flat 1.49% £14.90

The cost against selling and rebuying

The comparison is where swaps earn their place, so it is worth doing properly for both tiers.

On the big three

Moving £1,000 from Bitcoin into Ethereum as a swap costs about 70 pence, once. Done as a sale and a repurchase, you pay roughly 70 pence on the sell leg and another 70 pence on the buy leg, around £1.40 total, plus you sit in pounds between the two trades while the market moves without you. For rotating between Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana the swap is simply the better tool. It halves the cost and removes the gap.

When altcoins are involved

Swap £1,000 from an altcoin into Bitcoin and the single 1.49% leg costs £14.90; the two-step route through pounds costs roughly £14.90 on the altcoin sale plus 70 pence on the Bitcoin purchase. The swap still wins, but narrowly, and rotating between two altcoins costs the full 1.49% in one hit versus roughly double via pounds. IG has built its pricing around concentrated positions in the majors rather than rapid-fire altcoin rotation.

IG crypto watchlist showing Bitcoin and Ethereum with live pricing
Between BTC, ETH and SOL the swap fee is 0.07%: rotating £1,000 between the majors costs about 70 pence.

When should you swap, and when should you not?

Cheap is not the same as wise, so it is worth separating the mechanical question from the judgement one.

The clear cases for swapping

Rebalancing between the majors, taking profit from one coin into another without leaving the market, and consolidating a scattered altcoin position into Bitcoin or Ethereum are all natural swap trades: one decision, one fee, no time out of the market. Because settlement is near-instant inside the account, the price you are quoted is effectively the price you get, which removes the slippage anxiety of doing the same rotation across two separate trades.

When the two-step route is actually right

If the destination of the money is pounds, sell; a swap only makes sense when you genuinely want the second coin. And if your plan is to sit out of crypto for a while and re-enter later, converting to GBP and waiting is the trade that actually matches that view. The swap's virtue is staying invested through a rotation; if staying invested is not the goal, it is the wrong tool however cheap it is.

IG account dashboard showing the crypto section with holdings
Both balances update together when a swap settles, so the account always shows exactly what you hold.

The catch swaps do not avoid: tax

A common misunderstanding, repeated confidently in every crypto forum, is that because no pounds change hands, no tax event happens.

UK rules do not work that way.

A swap is a disposal

HMRC treats exchanging one cryptoasset for another as a disposal, exactly as if you had sold to pounds at that moment. Any gain on the coin you swapped away counts toward your capital gains position for the year, swap or no swap. IG's platform makes the transaction simpler and cheaper; it does not change what HMRC sees, and with the CGT annual exempt amount as small as it now is, active swappers can accumulate reportable gains faster than they expect.

The record-keeping that saves you in January

For every swap, keep the date, the coins on each side, and the pound value at the time, which IG's transaction history gives you. Whether you owe anything depends on your whole-year position and your circumstances, and this is general information rather than tax advice; if your amounts are significant, a professional's hour is cheap against getting disposals wrong.

Are IG's swaps worth using?

Yes, and for a simple reason: they are the cheaper and faster way to do something you would otherwise do in two double-charged steps. Rotating between Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana at 0.07% a time is genuinely cheap, altcoin swaps still beat the sell-and-rebuy route, and near-instant settlement removes the gap risk of the old two-trade method. Go in knowing the 1.49% tier makes heavy altcoin rotation costly, and that every swap remains a disposal in HMRC's eyes, and the feature does exactly what it should.

New to IG's crypto offering? Start with my walkthrough of buying Bitcoin on IG, see the full pricing picture in my IG crypto fees analysis, or compare the platform against Kraken, eToro and Coinbase.

FAQs

What does it cost to swap Bitcoin for Ethereum on IG?

Swaps between Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana carry 0% commission plus the 0.07% external exchange fee, so about 70 pence per £1,000 swapped. Swaps involving any other coin cost a flat 1.49%, the same single rate that covers buying and selling those coins.

How fast do IG crypto swaps settle?

Near-instantly. The swap executes as a single transaction inside your account, so the new coin appears as soon as you confirm, with no waiting for a sale to settle before buying and no time spent out of the market between legs.

Is a crypto swap taxable in the UK?

Yes. HMRC treats exchanging one cryptoasset for another as a disposal for capital gains tax, the same as selling to pounds. The swap changes the mechanics and the cost; the tax treatment stays the same. Keep records of every swap's date, coins and pound values, and seek advice if your amounts are significant.

Can I swap any coin for any other coin on IG?

Swaps work across IG's full range of 100+ tokens. The fee depends on the coins involved: both sides among BTC, ETH and SOL means the 0.07% route; anything else means the flat 1.49%.

Is swapping cheaper than selling and rebuying?

Yes, in every configuration. Between the majors it roughly halves the cost (one 0.07% leg instead of two) and removes the time out of the market; where altcoins are involved the saving is smaller but the swap still avoids paying two legs. The one scenario where selling wins is when you actually want to hold pounds.

References

  1. IG: crypto fees, including swap pricing
  2. IG: spot crypto account overview
  3. The Investors Centre: my full IG crypto fee analysis