Swing RSI vs Scalping RSI: 0 of 45 M5 Settings Beat a 1-Pip Cost, 26 of 36 on H1 Did, and RSI 168 on M5 Never Touched 30 or 70

Scalping RSI and swing RSI use the same formula. The difference is the chart and the holding time: scalpers read RSI on M1 or M5 and are out within minutes, swing traders read it on H1 or H4 and hold for hours or days. Most RSI advice online mixes the two without saying which one it means.

I have tested scalping RSI several times on this blog, in RSI 7 vs RSI 14 for scalping and Stochastic vs RSI for scalping, and it lost after costs. Here I put it next to swing RSI on the same bars and split the difference into its parts. The full grid of swing settings is in my RSI settings for swing trading test.

How did scalping RSI and swing RSI compare?

Pips per trade. Halves split at July 15, 2026.

The middle row is the useful one. It keeps the M5 signal and changes only the hold. That alone moved the result from -0.94 to +0.86, and it beat a coin on the same bars (a coin with 410 trades reached +0.43 in its best 5% of runs). But the second half was negative, so it is not a setup I would trade.

The H1 chart did the rest. It fired 13 times less often, only after an hour-scale move had stretched RSI, and those 32 trades were worth almost 6 pips each before cost.

Why does the spread hurt scalping RSI so much more?

Settings with at least 30 trades: RSI 7, 9, 14 and 21, levels 30/70, 20/80 and 40/60 and a 50-line cross, held 3, 6 or 12 bars.

A scalper pays the same 1 pip as a swing trader but for a move a quarter the size. On M5 the cost took 28.2% of a normal half-hour move. A scalping rule has to be that much better than random just to break even, and none of the 45 was. My spread and swap measurement has the cost numbers, and the stop-loss distance test shows the same effect from the stop side.

H4 did not continue the trend because of sample size: 345 H4 bars made 10 signals at 30/70 in twelve weeks, too few to measure.

Is RSI 14 on H1 the same as RSI 168 on M5?

This is a common tip: there are 12 five-minute bars in an hour, so multiply the period by 12 and you can watch H1 RSI on your M5 chart. I checked it at every hourly close:

The two lines rise and fall together, but RSI 168 on M5 is squashed towards 50. The reason is in the formula: inside an hour, some 5-minute bars go up and some go down, and RSI 168 counts all those small gains and losses separately. H1 RSI only sees the net change of the hour. So the M5 version never reaches 30 or 70, and a 30/70 rule on it never fires.

A straight-line fit says H1 levels 30 and 70 match about 44.4 and 55.7 on M5 RSI 168. I traded those translated levels, held 6 hours:

Moving the levels by 2 points flipped the result from +3.59 to -2.17. That is not a copy of the H1 signal, it is a different and much touchier indicator. If you want H1 RSI, open an H1 chart, or use a multi-timeframe RSI that reads H1 bars directly. More on those in my MT4 vs MT5 comparison, where the timeframe lists differ.

Is the result the same on gold?

No. Gold’s cost was already small on M5, $0.30 against a normal $6.20 half-hour move, and RSI still lost there. Moving to H1 raised the count of profitable settings from 5 of 45 to 13 of 36, which is about what luck produces. RSI 14 at 30/70 on gold H1 made +$1.85 a trade overall, +$7.57 in the first half and -$2.03 in the second. On gold the spread was not the problem, so a bigger timeframe had nothing to fix. The gold MT4 settings test found few survivors on M5 as well.

Which one should you use, scalping RSI or swing RSI?

• If you use RSI 30/70 on EURUSD, use it on H1. On these bars the scalping version lost on all 45 settings; the swing version made money on 26 of 36.
• Expect far fewer trades. RSI 14 at 30/70 gave 32 trades in 12 weeks on H1, fewer than 3 a week.
• Do not fake H1 RSI with a long period on M5. RSI 168 on M5 tracked the shape but never reached 30 or 70.
• If you want to keep scalping, cost is the enemy, not the indicator. The M5 signal was worth 0.06 pips before a 1-pip spread. Compare it with Bollinger Bands vs RSI on the same M5 bars.

Frequently asked questions

Is RSI better for scalping or swing trading?

Swing trading, in this test. On EURUSD, RSI 14 at 30/70 lost 0.94 pips per trade on M5 with a 30-minute hold and made +4.98 on H1 with a 6-hour hold, after a 1-pip cost.

What RSI period equals H1 RSI 14 on the 5-minute chart?

None exactly. RSI 168 on M5 moved with H1 RSI 14 (correlation 0.984) but stayed between 33.6 and 66.0 for 12 weeks, while H1 RSI 14 went from 12.7 to 90.1.

Why does RSI scalping lose money?

On EURUSD M5 the RSI signal was worth 0.06 pips per trade before costs. A 1-pip spread is 28.2% of a normal 30-minute move, so the cost wipes out a signal that small.

Does holding an RSI trade longer help?

Partly. The same M5 RSI 14 signals held 6 hours instead of 30 minutes went from -0.94 to +0.86 pips per trade, but the second half of the data was negative.

What is the best RSI setting for scalping?

None of the 45 M5 settings I tested made money on EURUSD after a 1-pip cost. The least bad was RSI 14 at 30/70 held 15 minutes, at -0.83 pips per trade.